About two weeks ago I had the immense pleasure of speaking in Berlin for the first time. Now, I’m used to regular events like data saturday’s and SQL Bits or dataMinds Connect as outliers because they’re larger and different events. But speaking at this one is on a whole different level.
As you might gather from the title, the event is built around the heavy metal culture. A taste in music that was shared between more speakers than I’d thought beforehand. But the love of the music is most certainly there.
Call for speakers
During the call for speakers, there was a buzz between speakers at other events; helping each other with nice titles and ideas that could work as a session for that event. Not only did we have to come up with a metal title for the session, the demo’s had to be metal themed as well AND we were asked for a song to start the session by. For some reason the entire concept made me happy and I had so much fun coming up with session titles and in the meantime scrolling through my playlists. In the end I submitted two sessions where I could create a good connection between title and music. (don’t tell anyone but I’m already working on things for next year, all we need is to convince Ben, Frank and ‘Ozzy’ to do this again. This is my offer for help by the way).
When the day came when sessions where either confirmed or declined, tension rose a bit until I got the mail. It was clear that the organisers had gone out of their way to keep it all in theme. Both confirmation and decline mails were so much fun to read, I just laughed out loud reading them through. Horns high for that!
As my ‘theme’ was Rammstein, I just had to ask if there were any fire options but it seems that the location people wanted to keep the building intact. In this case, I had to provide the fire myself, ending up in adding fire effects to the presentation, fire backgrounds and other fire related things.
Of course, I wore a Rammstein shirt on the day with their logo in flames.
Speaker dinner
Travelling to Berlin was easy by plane (for some reason the railways made it hard to plan) and after a short walk and ride with the U-bahn I got to the speaker dinner. A lovely place with beer and burgers. We got our speaker shirts there and the accompanying poster. Again, the organisers went two steps further by keeping it in the theme. The shirt is really like a concert shirt with the speaker names on the back, in the font of their preferred bands. The poster resembles this as well.
After a good, fun dinner where new friendships were made, time to head back to the hotel and get ready for speaking.
Data event
The event had an amazing, metal, opening and then things got running. The location people had to get used to the geeks walking everywhere and trying stuff out but it all worked out. The main stage hosted the sessions expected to draw a large crowd, the backstage was an inverted room where the presenter sat down low and the audience had higher stools or even stood to follow the session.
My session was backstage with a small but interested audience and much interaction which made it real fun and rewarding.
Metal event
After that time to get a quick bite and get ready for the concert. Ben also plays music and sings in a band. This band was the closing act with some special guests as well. I’d never expected Matthew Roche to jump on stage and perform an AC/DC song in a data theme. With matching T-shirt.
After the concert, we had to clear out of the venue and at that point, I was getting close to being over-stimulated and it was time give my head some rest and sleep.
Being a tourist
The last day, there was a sightseeing tour through Berlin where Ben showed he’s got some excellent tourguide skills as well.
After the walk it was time to go to the airport, have a quick bite with some datafriends and get on the plane.
This was one hell of a special event. If it returns or not, I will never forget it as I look back on it with gratitude to have been a part and just loving the experience from end to end.
Thank you so much Ben, Frank, Michael for the amazing experience and all the work that has gone into it to make this day such a success.
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