Great Event - SQLSaturday #341 Porto

I was honored to be selected as a speaker for SQLSaturday #341 in Porto, Portugal this weekend, and I had such a great time that I hope to come back next year for SQLSaturday Lisbon or SQLSaturday Porto.

First of all I want to say a huge thank you to everyone who organized and volunteered at this event. You guys did an amazing job and I hope you finally got some sleep after working around the clock for a week! Niko, Paulo, Ivan, Rui, André, Pedro, Vitor, Quilson and Nuno - thank you. I also want to thank Ines for being our photographer, she was running around everywhere all day taking pictures and filming. I can’t wait to see the result! 😃

SQLSaturday #341 Porto Speakers and Organizers

This was a very special and memorable weekend for me. It was my first trip to Portugal and the first time I was selected as a speaker for a SQLSaturday other than my own event. It was a very different experience being there as a speaker compared to being an attendee, volunteer or organizer. As an attendee and volunteer I want to learn as much as possible and help out where needed, as an organizer I’m in the middle of a crazy whirlwind trying to remember everything I need to do, and as a speaker I have one main goal: that the attendees in my session will learn something they can start using in their projects right away.

The most interesting and important experience was when my presentation did not go as I had planned at all. My computer decided that “Nope! I do not want to be friends with the projector today!” and my demo-based session suddenly had no demos at all because I couldn’t use my computer. I panicked for a moment, but did my best using my presentation with screenshots of the demos. At the end of my session I invited those interested to come up on stage and see the demos on my computer. I just hope they learned something even though the session didn’t go as planned.

There was a SQL Clinic with Scott Klein and friends, where most of the speakers were available for an hour or more during the day. This was a great concept, but I think most attendees preferred to attend sessions because not many people showed up. I was happy fellow Biml enthusiast João (@SQLSniper) and I could help one attendee with some tasks he was struggling with at work 😊 Maybe it would have been better to have it closer to the sponsors and snacks where attendees spent most of their time during breaks? Maybe it just needed a bit more promotion? I hope to see something like this again, it was a great way to meet attendees and share even more knowledge.

The speaker room was located in a separate hallway with direct access to the classrooms, which made it really easy to bring laptops and equipment in and out of the sessions. There was also a coffee bar at the venue where they served the cute, little caffés that are like caffeine shots compared to the liters of coffee I usually drink every day 😂 I was also happy to see a lot of activity and pictures on Twitter, that’s always fun!

Except for my session problems it was a great day and a well organized event. The organizers did an amazing job, from an exciting keynote with lots of announcements to the fun end-of-day raffle where international speakers tried to read Portuguese names 😅

Beautiful Porto

Thank you all for a great event, thank you for taking such good care of my the whole weekend, and I hope to see you again soon!

About the Author

Cathrine Wilhelmsen is a Microsoft Data Platform MVP, international speaker, author, blogger, organizer, and chronic volunteer. She loves data and coding, as well as teaching and sharing knowledge - oh, and sci-fi, gaming, coffee and chocolate 🤓