SQLBits XIV Superhero Edition was my first SQLBits experience, and it was a truly amazing week! I want to start with a massive thank you to the organizers: Darren Green, Simon Sabin, James Rowland-Jones, Chris Testa-O’Neill, Allan Mitchell, Jonathan Allen and Annette Allen. You did one heck of a job to make this the best conference in the universe! 👏🏻 I also want to say thank you to all the sponsors, volunteers and speakers who made this a great event. And to all the attendees, I hope you had a blast and that I’ll see you again next year!

I spent the past couple of days in Darmstadt, Germany for SQLKonferenz 2015 (Deutsche SQL Server Konferenz 2015). This was the first time I spoke at a conference (not a SQLSaturday), and it was an absolutely amazing experience. I want to thank PASS Deutschland for doing a fantastic job to make this a great event!

The one thing I would like to have changed is that I should have learned German before going to Darmstadt 😅 The quality of speakers, sessions and topics covered was very impressive, and there were many sessions in German that I wanted to see. But I can’t complain at all, I got to see some great sessions and have learned new things that I look forward to trying.

Yesterday I had the pleasure of speaking at The Code Pub Oslo, a meetup for women who are interested in IT. It’s a great concept where they get together, learn about new technology, and spend the rest of the evening working on projects. It was their one-year anniversary and in just one year they have grown from 5 to over 130 members.

My presentation was an introduction to Business Intelligence and Data Warehousing, as well as how you can benefit from getting involved in a community like PASS. I like working on presentations because I learn so much from it. It was a bit of a challenge trying to sum up Business Intelligence because there is so much happening and things are changing rapidly. (And I only focused on the Microsoft world!) It was a bit of an eye-opener when I pulled out a book I bought less than two years ago and I realized it was already outdated. So many exciting things have happened in just a couple of years, things like Predictive Analytics and Machine Learning, all the Power BI tools, cloud services and real-time Big Data.

My focus was on what Business Intelligence is, why it’s important, and all the different things you can work with if you pursue a career in Business Intelligence. I explained what Data Warehousing is, and how it is evolving from the traditional to the modern Data Warehouse. I finished my presentation by telling my story of how I’ve gone from being the shy girl who didn’t know anyone to being part of the SQL community, and how life-changing it has been for me.

I hope it was interesting for the attendees, and I hope I’ve inspired some of them to get involved in their own communities. Thank you to Netlight for hosting The Code Pub and for giving me the opportunity to present!

SQLSaturday #337 Oregon was a great event, and I’m so happy I could be there and help out as a volunteer! Arnie, Paul, Vern, Sopheap, Rob, Theresa and everyone else who spent time working on this event, thank you so much. There were 52 volunteers helping out at this event. 52! That’s amazing. I hope you had a great time and I look forward to seeing you again next year!

Isn’t this one of the coolest name badges you’ve seen? Staff, speakers and volunteers all had name badges like this. Each group had a different color with their own pictures and text on it. The QR code takes you to a website where you can get in touch with the person. They were laminated and the same on both sides, so you didn’t have to worry about it flipping over. You didn’t have to worry about people not seeing it either, because it was large and very visible. I may have to borrow a few ideas from this name badge for our next SQLSaturday 🤓

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.