SQL Bits – A view from a volunteer part 2

SQL Bits – A view from a volunteer part 2

Welcome back (or welcome for the first time if you haven’t seen my first post yet! A View from a Volunteer.

I’m a SQL Server-aficionado, as well as a recruiter, which means that I spend a lot of my time getting to know people in the SQL Server community. I’m a regular at meet-ups and events (even hosting a few myself) and have attended the SQLBits event for the last six years now, both as a delegate and more recently as a volunteer. I wanted to show people the amount of hard work that goes into making SQLBits so successful and give even more back to the community. It may even inspire you to join us next time.

Day 3

The final day follows a slightly different format, as instead of being a whole day session, there are six hour-long sessions of quick-fire knowledge sharing across 12 rooms. Each session is hosted by a new speaker and relates to a different topic.

5:30am wake-up.

Bright-eyed and bushy tailed, I head over to Kensington.

7:30am – morning briefing with Annette.

A chance for reminders and trouble shooting.

8am doors open

Set-up Paul Andrew’s room for his “Azure Data Lake – The Services, The SQL, The Sharp” talk, while listening in on the key note speech from Connor Cunningham and Simon Sabin.

9:30am session 1

And we’re off! An hour of Data Lakes and U-SQL later, I collect feedback forms, have a brief chat and scoot around the room for a quick tidy. Then it’s off to explore the rest of the sessions.

If you’ve ever volunteered anywhere, you’ll understand that one of the best things about it is getting to explore an event for free, and often behind the scenes. As a SQLBits volunteer, not only was I exposed to some of the best SQL Server minds in the world, I was also given a free pass for the days I volunteered. I was also allowed to handpick 3-4 sessions to cover, as well as 2-3 to attend as a delegate. What’s not to love about that?

10:45am break time.

Coffee, cake and a catch-up.

11am session 2.

For my first session as a delegate, I decided to attend Vitor Fava’s talk on “What is the Azure SQL Datawarehouse?” It was great to see someone so excited about the potential of the Azure SQL Datawarehouse compared to previous versions and I came away with some new ideas.

12pm break.

12:15pm session 3.

Room monitoring for James Rowland Jones’ “Maximise Compute Performance with Azure SQL Data”. I don’t mind saying that this was a little above my competency level, so I didn’t follow everything, but a quick glance around the room told me that people were surprised and there were a lot of questions afterwards. Might be one to watch.

1:15pm lunchtime.

A chance to check out the “British” menu on offer. Missed out on almond and raspberry crumble slice initially due to overrunning with the tidy-up following session 3, but used spy network (fellow volunteers on Slack) to locate and devour a new batch. Crafty.

2pm session 4.

I was monitoring for Prathy Kamasani’s “Power BI Deployment Strategy for Publishing”. Being a Power BI guru now I thought it may be a good one to sit in on. It was great to see some of the SQL committee sitting in on this one, showing that they are constantly trying to increase their knowledge on the behemoth that is SQL Server.

3pm break.

3:30pm session 5.

On to setting up my new Power BI-buddy Michael Johnson’s “Analysing Real-Time Data Using Azure Streaming Analytics” talk. Caught-up with Michael afterwards about the Arsenal game the night before; Michael is a huge fan but lives in South Africa so took the chance to watch them lose 2-0 at home live. I’ll say no more… I was also lucky enough to run into a fellow room monitor who I placed three years ago and has now progressed to senior architect in the same company.

4:30pm break and home time.

Life commitments meant a slightly early home-time for me, which is a shame because Friday is the big party. This year the theme was “SQL Magical Spectacular”, which included penny farthing racing, magicians, quidditch, live performers and SQL-philes donning their best magic-themed fancy dress. Can’t wait for those incriminating photos!

In short.

So, what did I think about my third year volunteering at SQLBits?

Well I have to say that first and foremost I absolutely love doing it. I feel like I’m giving back to a community that has provided me with a great job and a decent lifestyle through placing candidates in the market for the last 11 years.

Secondly, I’ve got to say that year on year I am more and more impressed by the coordination, organisation, scale and effort that is thrown into the event. The SQL Committee work tirelessly to make this a great event and I’m certain most if not all of the delegates agree with me.

The fact that most people don’t seem to notice what we do in the background means we must be doing our jobs correctly.

Of course, it’s great to be able to attend for free, but that’s not the main reason us helpers volunteer. We genuinely love helping make the conference run smoothly. We genuinely care about keeping SQL Server as the best data technology in the world. We are a community.

Hopefully this has given you all a little inside knowledge on what is expected of a volunteer, but mostly why it’s so damn great to be one.

Sound like fun? Then e-mail [email protected] to sign up for next years event!

And if you’d like to get in touch with me to discuss the event, career opportunities within SQL Server or how to become a dab hand at identifying secretive batches of pudding, find me at [email protected] or reach out on 0207 654 1034.

Dom is part of onezeero. a specialist tech recruitment business focussed on established and emerging technologies across the entire tech landscape. Our ethos has always been to tap into pre-defined candidate networks and to offer the optimum route to market for our clients and candidates to deliver the right person at the right time.