Last saturday I was speaking in Göteborg at the local data saturday, hosted by Mikael Wedham (T | B). The day before a speaker dinner was organised at an island with a very nice restaurant. After a boat ride of about an hour (where we picked up some late arrivals along the way) we got at a wonderful place with great food. This turned out to be the setup for the entire weekend, lots of laughs, good stories and new people to meet.
The next day was an early breakfast followed by a nice walk to the venue. It is something between 30 and 45 minutes (depending on your pace) but you’re treated with some nice views. The venue itself is part of the technical university and has enough equipment to make presenting easy. Plug in your power and HDMI cable and you’re done.
I got to speak on choosing your Azure database tier with care (the first time I got to do this session) and that made things somewhat exciting. I had a nice crowd who were listening, taking pictures and taking notes. And were trying to stay awake because the first session after lunch is the hardest one. You’ve eaten, you’re relaxing a bit and it’s easy to nod off. I’ve been there as well. The session went OK, I got some laughs and generally the feeling attendees picked up some of my main take-aways. Because there was no formal feedback form, I started hunting for it. Because I really wanted to know where to improve. And I got some seriously good feedback, both on points that went well and things to improve. This process continued into the after-party as well, a nice place to relax, have a drink and talk to new people.
In the end, it was an excellent experience with a lot of nice, friendly people in a very relaxed and welcoming environment. If you were there, my slides and script are online in my Github repository and if you have any feedback, please let me know.
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