Exciting News: I will be attending SQL Bits at ICC Wales (Newport/Southwales) later this year (14.3.-18.3.)
This is something i had in my mind for the last 1.5 years and i would have been willing to go there in my free time (vacation) and on my own budget. However, my company is/was really very generous and so it turned into an official business trip with all costs covered.
Thanks again for the opportunity! 1
To be honest, i would have preferred the event taking place in London (like SQL Bits 2022) or Las Vegas (Power Platform Conference anyone?), but not having that many distractions might be a good thing in the end.
General Sessions (Thursday to Saturday)
The hardest part will be to decide on which general sessions to attend to. There are so many interesting ones, i am almost glad that there are at least a few, that i can rule out right away. But there’s still time to make up my mind and in the worst case, i will just roll a dice (D20). That would also be very fitting to this year’s event motto/theme which is Dungeons & Dragons.
Like any credible nerd, i played quite a bit of pen & paper AD&D back in the days and probably went through pretty much all noteworthy AD&D games released for PC (mainly Bioware’s Baldurs Gate, Neverwinter Nights, Dragon Age Origins, …). In my case the lack of a costume will be made up for with profound AD&D lore knowledge 
On a sidenote: Many sessions this year evolve around database development & deployment with DevOps/Git and even Git in general. I would be more than interested in attending all these sessions, but i think in terms of learning new stuff any other topics are more rewarding for me. But maybe i manage to get ahold of one of the speakers and have a little in-depth talk regarding some questions, that have been boggling my mind for a while now, even though i’d say i accumulated quite some knowledge and practical experience in this field. So, if you are one of said speakers/experts, you better run if you see me lurking around near you.
Training Sessions (Tuesday & Wednesday)
The training sessions have/had to be booked in advance, so i picked those two:
The latter one must sound like a joke to people who know me and my dislike for reporting/frontend topics. That dislike is due to me spending 5+ years on designing & implementing financial reports in a multitude of frontends. I really feel like i have done my part in that regard (for this lifetime and the next). However, this specific session seems to be more focused on the modeling side of things in Power BI, in accordance with various Synapse architecture approaches at different scales. This will be quite interesting as well as extremely relevant for my daily work. Besides, attending this session will allow me to be even more of a smartass who tells his colleagues on how to do their job (feeling a bit bad for them already…).
Regarding Lakehouse in a day: I really don’t know what could possibly take a whole day when building a lakehouse (i can do it in 45 minutes tops!). Stupid jokes aside, i am curious and very much looking forward to that session, since it will look at lakehouses from various perspectives (Databricks, Azure Data Factory, Synapse). But the real reason for attending is to finally meet Simon Whiteley in person, after having watched tons of his videos in the past. And the best thing is: he can’t even run away from my (stupid) questions 
. The Synapse Espresso guys are co-hosting, so quite the “celebrity” lineup, at least in data engineering terms.
Networking & Party
And then i will also get to meet (or at least see) all these people in person, whose blogs i have been visiting over the past years, as well as some fellow data nerds from all over the world. Looking forward to having some serious (and not at all serious) discussions and knowledge exchanges. This should be at least two months worth of reading Stackoverflow packed into one week. Let’s just hope that the party on Saturday doesn’t wipe out all the newly gained knowledge right away. Maybe wearing a recording bodycam for the whole event wouldn’t be too bad of an idea (besides the legal issues)
Traveling & Sightseeing
Not sure if there will be a lot of time for anything besides SQL Bits, but if anyone wants to share some must-see spots around Newport or on the way there (coming from Bristol), please let me know!
I still don’t feel obliged to take any written notes
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