I attended my first Data Saturday, this past Saturday — Data Saturday #28 – Atlanta, GA. Data Saturdays are the successor to SQL Saturdays and this was the first one of those in Atlanta since the pandemic shutdowns of 2020.
Being the first event since the pandemic shutdowns, it was a smaller event than the mega events of the past, but that didn’t hinder its quality. The event was held at the Atlanta Station Microsoft office — my first time visiting this office (prior events were held at the Microsoft office in Alpharetta).
I appreciate the hard work of the organizers, volunteers, sponsors, and speakers and thank you for putting on a great event!
Matthew Roche presenting “The Unplanned Career: 25 Years in Tech Without a 3 Year Plan”Matt Gordon presenting “This is Fine – Firefighting for the DBA”Joey D’Antoni presenting “Understanding Azure Active Directory for Data Professionals”Tim Rayburn presenting “Help Your Teams Avoid Burnout and Apathy”
In what has become a yearly tradition, I attended my first SQL Saturday of the year in Nashville — SQL Saturday #933 — Nashville, TN, which took place on Saturday, January 18th, 2020. As with prior years (I’ve attended 4 of their 7 now) the event was well worth the drive from Atlanta.
While the weather wasn’t great (cold and rainy) at least it wasn’t snowy and icy like we’d had in previous years. Fortunately, the entire event takes place indoors — so the cold and gloom outside was easy to ignore with all the action inside. The schedule this year, as usual, was made up of a ton of great options and all of the speakers were fantastic. Lunch in Nashville is always a treat — hot and delicious BBQ and everything was well run and professional.
I had a great time at the event and look forward to attending the 10th anniversary next year!
Morning registration at SQL Saturday 933 – NashvilleContinue reading
With fall in the air and pumpkins and skeletons making an appearance, the third Saturday in October was the day for something else to make an appearance the annual SQL Saturday BI Edition for Atlanta, GA.
For the third consecutive year, I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to attend the BI Edition of SQL Saturday, which was held conveniently nearby — once again at Alpharetta Microsoft office.
With the Atlanta events, it’s pretty easy to take for granted how well run they are. Registration was a snap for those with pre-printed SpeedPasses, GuideBook was available for keeping a copy of the schedule handy, and the venue offered just enough room (with one exception — a jam-packed session by Patrick LeBlanc) for all of the sessions.
The schedule was a good mix with plenty of great picks throughout the day and the whole event had the usual well-run feel to it. For anybody that hasn’t attended this event (or the May event) before, you should definitely look into the next one!
As always, I’m thankful to the organizers, speakers, sponsors, and great attendees for a fantastic and well-spent Saturday and look forward to the next!
Reza Rad presenting “Architecture Blueprints for Power BI Implementation.”Ed Watson presenting “The Psychology of Better Power BI Reporting.”Patrick LeBlanc presenting “Data Modeling and DAX Tips for Power BI” and “Power BI Performance in 6 Demos.”Shabnam Watson presenting “Aggregations in Power BI.”Raise your hand if you learned something today at SQL Saturday.Outside the venue at lunch, in the rain, some event or filming was taking place as one street of the Avalon outside of the Microsoft building was lined with these amazing machines.A whole lot of money parked along this street. Might’ve been cheaper to actually pave the street with gold.
The Microsoft Business Applications Summit was held June 10th and 11th at the Georgia World Congress Center here in Atlanta. While I wasn’t able to attend that event, a great benefit to the event being held locally was that the SQL Saturday Crew organized to have a much smaller event, titled Power BI Palooza on Saturday, June 8th preceding the event.
The event was held at the Alpharetta Microsoft Offices and followed a standard SQL Saturday format — a full day of 1 hour sessions, on a Saturday, made up of three tracks from which you could mix and match.
It was great seeing so many national (and international!) speakers present, with a great variety of Power BI topics. While I can’t see there being a repeat of this event in Atlanta next year (the MS Biz Apps Summit will be in Anaheim, CA next year), I’m very appreciative to the organizers and speakers for putting this event together!
Saturday, May 18th marked the 10th anniversary for SQL Saturday Atlanta. As per usual, an army of organizers, sponsors, speakers, and volunteers helped to pull off another incredible event. The scope of SQL Saturday Atlanta never fails to impress and this year was no exception with no shortage of incredible speakers and fascinating topics, not to mention a very large number of folks who traveled multiple states to attend the event.
A theme is tradition for SQL Saturday and officially the theme was “Office Space,” which is a pretty fun one to work with. Unofficially, I think the theme was “Docker” and “Kubernetes” based on the number of sessions mentioning one of the other (usually both) and the huge amount of buzz about those topics in the halls. It’s going to be really interesting how these new technologies shape the SQL Server world over the next 5 years.
As always, a fantastic event and time very well spent for anybody in the field. The event organization was very professional and the entire day flowed great. Avoiding room capacity issues while still having huge Microsoft speakers such as Bob Ward and Buck Woody sessions is an accomplishment all in of itself!
Do yourself a favor and attend this event next year (if you missed this year)!
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!
SQL Saturday #800 – the annual BI Edition for Atlanta, GA, took place on Saturday, September 22nd at the new Microsoft Avalon offices in Alpharetta, GA. This was the second large-scale event I’d attended in this space (the first being Azure Data Fest). Initially, I’d had some reservations about the size of rooms vs. the number of attendees, but everything was planned excellently and no session on my wishlist was over capacity to the point where seats weren’t available. No small feat for the planners! The entire day went off great and the sessions were some of the best I’d attended to date. Unofficially, it seemed the like underlying theme of the event was performance tuning SSAS Tabular and Power BI, which was very timely for me as that is currently an area I’m focusing on.
I just recently had the pleasure of attending the inaugural Atlanta Azure DataFest #1 ,which took place Thursday, August 16th and Friday, August 17th at the Alpharetta Microsoft office. This two-day conference, primarily organized by Stuart Ainsworth, was similar in structure and content to SQL Saturday events, but with some interesting changes. The biggest of which was that the conference was held over two days instead of one (and on week days no less.) This allowed for more diversity in the structure of the offered sessions.
Day 1 included multiple sessions which were more “keynote” in nature, in which the entire conference attended the same sessions in one big room. Day 2 included a choice of 3-hour workshops for some in depth lab work, more similar to a traditional pre-con. Both days additionally had the three tracks of sessions allowing attendees to pick and choose the topics of interest. While all sessions were Azure themed, there was enough diversity that anybody should have been able to find something of interest. About my only critique of the sessions would be that too many of them were 3rd-party vendor-centric, spending the entire time going through the details of a non-free piece of 3rd party software rather than only using free or native tools. That likely speaks more to the gaps in the Azure ecosystem (and not being able to do everything efficiently without 3rd party tools) than anything else.
At $50 for the two days, both of which included an excellent hot lunch, the event was a bargain. Everything was very well run and hopefully this new event continues on to future years.
Organizer Stuart Ainsworth starting things off with some morning announcements and Trey Johnson presenting his “Whistle Stop Tour of SQL Server and Azure BI” on Day 1 of Atlanta Azure DataFest.
This past Saturday, May 19th marked the 733rd SQL Saturday Event — SQL Saturday #733 – Atlanta. Being my home event, and consistently a large and well-executed event, I look forward to this one every year and also volunteer to help out with room proctoring and any other help that is needed. Since the loss of the GSU Alpharetta Campus as a venue, the event has bounced around looking for a new home. This year, it was hosted at the Alpharetta Campus of Gwinnett Technical College, which I felt was an excellent venue (though not quite as convenient to me as last year’s Duluth Campus).
Like previous years, I felt the event was executed very well — with an army of organizers and volunteers, it seemed like everything was handled well with only minor mishaps here and there. The new location was great and will hopefully end up being a new permanent home for the event. As I was helping to work the event, I didn’t get to attend as many sessions as I would have liked, but everything I attended was excellent and time well spent.
Marco Russo presenting “DAX Optimization Examples” — my favorite session of the day. He easily could’ve filled multiple hours with his content and I look forward to seeing him speak again whenever I next get the opportunity!
On Saturday, January 13th, despite a pretty snowy winter weather forecast, Nashville held SQL Saturday #698. I watched twitter like a hawk in the hours leading up to making the drive, watching for reports on the roads in the area. All-in-all, the roads ended up being in decent condition for the drive, and I only really encountered any ice in the parking lot when I finally arrived at the hotel.
Saturday morning was frigid and it snowed throughout the day, but that wasn’t enough to stop the event. The organizers did an excellent job enduring the stress caused by the weather and in my opinion the event was a great success and went off without a hitch. Lunch was hot BBQ, which was excellent and a great upgrade from the standard boxed sandwich lunches which are typical fare at SQL Saturday events. As an added touch (and part of the yearly tradition) after the end of day raffle, SQL Saturday customized pint glasses were given out to all the attendees to take home as a souvenir. Another one for the shelf!
It was a great day and well worth the drive up to Nashville. Looking forward to attending again next time.
The snow fell throughout the day on Saturday at SQL Saturday Nashville.
I just recently had the pleasure of attending the inaugural 
This past Saturday, May 19th marked the 733rd SQL Saturday Event — 
