Every now and then a special event comes up where you can’t help but think “I really, really want to be there”. This happened to me with Data Moshpit in Berlin and again with Fabric February. When the first information dropped, I was waiting for both the call for speakers and the ticket sales. There was no way I was going to miss this one.
My sessions usually focus on Azure infrastructure, SQL Server DBA work or non-technical subjects. For this one, I had to create a brand new session in a relatively new area, even though I had been blogging on the subject. I decided to take a shot, create an abstract and submit it. When my session got accepted, it only added to the excitement and anticipation.
Preparation
Now I had to build the session. The blog to base it all on was already written but going from blog to session takes some work. And this time I had to plan for a different rhythm in the session. I always plan 5-10 minutes for questions during and after the session, now this was kind of forbidden. The main idea being that questions should be taken in the community zone to create some buzz there as well.
This meant that I had to create a new session, with a new rhythm. Then news followed that the main event moved from the Microsoft offices in Norway to a cinema. Meaning I would stand in front of a huge amount of seats, hoping any would be filled.
Slight sidestep to 10 or so years ago. I had visited my first SQL Saturday in Utrecht, had an amazing day and it was career-changing for me. After a long day and, luckily boring, trainride back home, I had a nightmare at standing there as a presenter, in front of a filled room and having a total blackout. With people either laughing at me or being angry.
After having only positive speaking experiences (if you have a blackout, be open about it and people will try to help you out. I’ve never seen people being laughed at or mocked, kudos to the community!), those fears were slight but they did come up a bit.
Speaker dinner
The travel from Schiphol was a bit delayed but with good company and after some work at the hotel (stupid planning from my side) it was time for the speaker dinner. We were invited for underground golf with food and drinks. The latter didn’t improve the game but made sure we had a lot of fun. It’s one of my favorite moments of any conference. It’s the best way to catch up with people, meet new data friends and expand your network. There’s also always room to leave for whatever reason. At the end we were given some mementos for the event including my personal favorite; a hand-written personal card. These cards are treasured as they are the most personal reward I can get.
Main event
The next day I was early at the event (a little after 7) to help as a volunteer. We had so much fun setting things up, making sure everyone could come in and feel welcome. It also gave me the opportunity to welcome two coworkers from Axians who travelled to Oslo with the sole purpose of learning a lot. The shine in their eyes during the day showed the magic an event can have on people. They were happy, inspired and full of new things to do, explore or dig deeper into. Everything an event like this has to achieve. By playing the game of divide and conquer, the three of us managed to broaden the shared knowledge a lot.
The core, speaking!
After lunch, I moderated a session and the amazing Heine Illmarinen unknowingly provided me with a critical piece of the puzzle my session was missing; recaps. I totally forgot to include them and after her cool session comparing Fabric with Databricks I ran to my laptop to update the session. Just doing that relaxed some of the nerves, only to have them come back at me in full swing about an hour before the start. At that moment I only found friendly faces cheering me on, offering help and support. Pro-tip: if you run into this yourself, fiend a friend at talk to them, be open about your nerves. Because one thing nerves can’t handle is being talked about, they diminish. At the same time, having nerves is a good thing, it shows that you care what you’re talking about and I think you need a level of nerves to be on top of your game. Those nerves can be embraced.
In the cinema room, there was a very friendly technician offering every help he could but at the same time staying out of my way when I was messing about getting it all to work. When the screen was set up and the clicker worked, only then he came up to me for the audio. He told me he was a speaker himself so I guess he knew what I was going through.
Then the magic happened, people kept walking in. In total about 75 humans decided I could have something useful to tell.
Wow. After some first jitters, the talk started to flow. We had some laughs (with me), some questions and all in all an amazing experience. There were a number of nodding heads when I tried making a point and it was very clear people were paying attention as there was a mistake on one of the slides. It was pointed out te me like ‘didn’t you mean to put …’.
After the session there was a quick, well organised raffle after which we had to brake down all the stuff and move to the location for the afterparty and dinner. We had a lot of fun again at the table and at some point I decided to walk back to the hotel as the post-con day was starting at 7 again.
Post con
This day was a repetition of the previous day, though without me having a session. I was moderating the data engineering session (hardly any work) meaning I could learn a ton and connect with a few people. Again with my coworkers we split out over the available topics to combine the learning later on.
In the break some people actually hunted me down for my session the day before… There I got some extra, extremely valuable, feedback on my session. One thing I’ve learned is that you really have to ask for feedback, and when you ask other speakers you’ll only mine gold and diamonds. Ask them for improvements you could make and see what happens. You won’t be disappointed!
Drained
After this day, the event was over. The last hour when taking away all the stuff, I noticed that my translation service started to fail. The first sign that my brain was getting overloaded and it was time to back down. After an hour or so of watching funny youtube shorts I went to a simple dinner and a walk. This helped in resetting after which a 9 hour uninterrupted sleep did the rest.
Looking back on the event I can only tell you to be aware of new announcements for this conference. The organisers really know what they are doing. There are always things to do better but you need to nitpick to find them. Overall, especially for a first time, it was awesome. Cathrine, Emilie and Marthe (alphabetical order) did an amazing job getting everything done.
Some new things that really worked in my opinion were the use of Ticket Butler to print out the tags for the attendees (reducing waste with unused ones) and the raffle system where you had to log in to an app at the end of the event to participate. This made short work of giving away the gifts without having to try and find the person still in the room. I think other events can benefit from these technologies as well.
Will I return to this event. YES! In any capacity for that matter.
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