My Experience Giving a Talk In-Person at a Data Event for the First Time

I Gave My First In-Person Talk at a Data Event!

Intro

I gave a talk at SQL Saturday SLC 2024! SQL Saturday is a data platform and SQL Server community event. People gather to give sessions mainly on Microsoft Data Technologies and learn from each other.

I believe it used to be focused on stuff around SQL Server, but in recent years, more and more sessions around analytics and data engineering have been seen at these events.

One of my goals for 2024 was to speak at 2 different data conferences. I spoke at the Power BI & Fabric Summit back in February, so this SQL Saturday SLC 2024 is my 2nd conference for the year. That means my goal has been accomplished!

For this SQL Saturday event, I submitted 3 talks and 1 of them was accepted. Given the size of the event, that seems reasonable. There were only 17 sessions on the day of the event.

How My Talk Went

I gave a session on “an end-to-end data project in Microsoft Fabric“. It was about an hour long session. Overall, it went great! From introducing myself and the topic, covering the overview of Microsoft Fabric, and to doing a demo of a data pipeline.

One thing is that I felt I spoke too fast throughout the session, but I managed to finish my talk just 5 min early. Doing a demo of building a sample data pipeline seemed scary and it was scary, everything from typing code in front of real people and to waiting for my code to run.

I was glad that there were several questions from the audience I was able to help answer. To me, no question is typically not a good sign.

If I remember correctly, there were around 20 people who joined my session. And 3 of those were my LinkedIn connections! It was so great to meet them in person.

One regret I have is that I wanted to prepare a bit more. I didn’t start preparing my session early enough that I couldn’t add much entertainment aspect into my talk (which I always value in any presentation!).

Summary

I learned a lot about the topic as I prepared my session. I also learned where I could improve my delivery and presentation as I reviewed my session. Overall, giving a talk at SQL Saturday was a great learning experience for me.

You may want to ask, does attending events like this lead to landing new clients for my consulting gig? My answer is “maybe“. This type of data event is typically developer-focused, so the direct buyers like the CEO, CTO, etc probably won’t be here, although, a few of the attendees told me they’d reach out if there is my help on the topic. So, to say the least, speaking at these events is defintely an opportunity to get some visibility into you and your business.

One of the reasons I want to get myself out there and speak at data events is the same reason why I started posting on LinkedIn. I’d like to keep learning and give it back to the community. And if any of the efforts lead to my consulting gig, that’s like a dream come true.

Let me know if there is any data community event you’d recommend attending that’s local to Utah or anywhere in the US!