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”
Data for SQL Saturday events is maintained via the sqlsaturday.com website. The site makes available an XML feed for each event which includes all of the basic information for the event, including information about the event, venue, sponsors, speakers, and sessions. The data is available freely from the SQL Saturday website without the need to log in or authenticate to the site.
While getting data for an individual event is pretty straightforward (thanks to the handy XML file), there are some nuances to the process and the data which complicate things somewhat.
The SQL Saturday Website Upgrade
The most notable factor is when the event occurred relative to the SQL Saturday website upgrade. The website upgrade went live at the beginning of April, 2015. For events that were created and occurred before this time, their data would need to be upgrade or recreated in the new site (I’m not sure what process they followed, but it was not smooth for historical events). For anything post-upgrade, those events would natively exist in the new system, so the data will generally be better and more complete.
Screenshot from the old sqlsaturday.com website from before the April 2015 upgrade.Continue reading
In October of 2013, I attended a SQL Saturday event in Charlotte, NC presented by Julie Smith and Rob Volk titled “Harvesting Web Data Using Power Query & Other Tools” (the link to the session has since broken).
Julie Smith and Rob Volk presenting ” Harvesting Web Data Using Power Query & Other Tools”
In the session, Julie and Rob downloaded data about SQL Saturday events from the sqlsaturday.com website using two different methods.
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.
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!
This past Saturday, May 19th marked the 733rd SQL Saturday Event — 
