My first SQL Saturday of the year, SQL Saturday #815 — Nashville, TN, took place Saturday, January 12th, 2019. As with prior years (I’ve attended 3 of their 6), everything ran very smoothly and there were no glaring issues that I noticed. Lunch was excellent (a hot lunch featuring catered BBQ — pork, chicken, and mac & cheese!) and the session selection was excellent. The venue split sessions among three floors, but it was easy enough to get from one to the next with plenty of time to spare and no session that I attended had issues with the room being too small for the crowd.
I usually (either consciously or unconsciously) theme the sessions I select to attend. The theme for this event was definitely Data Science, with a number of sessions on Python, Azure Data Bricks, R, and other data science technologies. It’s a pretty rare occurrence for a lunch session to be the most enjoyable of the day, but in this case, I really enjoyed the lunch session which I attended — a panel discussion on the future of the data professional, given by a number of well-known community speakers, many of which are or were Microsoft MVPs and many of which are current Microsoft employees. A really fun and informative session!
The whole day was great and I look forward to Nashville each year. At only a 4 hour drive from Atlanta, and always a great selection of sessions and pre-cons (which I was unable to make this year), this event is always time well spent!
