I spoke at SQL Saturday Baton Rouge 2024 on July 27, 2024, at Louisiana State University (LSU).
My wife and I usually travel to these conferences together. For most Saturday conferences, we leave Thursday night after work, work from the hotel Friday, and attend the speaker dinner Friday night. Since my wife usually volunteers, we arrive at the conference early on Saturday (sometimes, I drop her off and get coffee for us). We have made it a point to leave open our schedule for Saturday night for any post-event dinner and travel back Sunday night. One of the things we started doing was prioritizing any event connected to the conference and any chance we got to hang out with friends that we had made along the way. Sunday before we travel back, my wife has dubbed it “Sunday Fun Day.”
We looked forward to the speaker dinner on Friday since it is a great time to catch up with the organizers and other speakers. As a bonus, there were boudin balls.
One of the sessions I attended was DataOps 101 – A Better Way to Develop and Deliver Data Analytics (GitHub) by John Kerski. I enjoy John’s sessions and learn things I can take back and apply to my current environment. This session was about version control and Power BI.
Patrick LeBlanc’s keynote titled Data in the Era of AI was great. I love Patrick’s sense of humor and always leave his sessions feeling inspired. One thing about attending a conference is that you are surrounded by people who love Data as much as you and come back motivated. But depending on your environment, that feeling may start to fade. That is why I try to listen to Podcasts throughout the week. I was recently catching up on Patrick’s Insights Tomorrow Podcast. I could have listened to a five-hour episode when he interviewed Scott Hanselman.
There were many hallway conversations with other speakers and attendees. I cannot emphasize how important these can be for making lasting friendships and learning life lessons that may not be discussed in a session.
One of the things about presenting later in the day is that I must go over my session at least once. I was unsure if it was just because I am newer at speaking, but it seems like many experienced speakers still must do this, making me feel better. To paraphrase one of the speakers, you want to do a good job, so you must keep practicing.
I presented in the last time slot. My session was Power BI and External Tools: This is the Way! (GitHub). This topic was how I got my start with speaking. I designed the session using Star Wars to discuss the many External Tools that can enhance your Power BI development journey. The two most notable are DAX Studio and Tabular Editor. Over the last year I have changed which of the other tools I cover based on which I think would be most valuable. The key takeaway from my session is that you can improve your professional development by using these tools for Power BI and now Fabric development.
On this trip, we visited the Tabasco Factory on Avery Island. My wife noticed what appeared to be a Power BI dashboard on the assembly line. I am wearing a shirt we bought from Amelia Island this year as part of our Sunday Fun Day after speaking at SQL Saturday Jacksonville. We visited Mike the Tiger at LSU and Coffee Call for some beignets and Cafe’ au Lait. Someday, if I get a sponsor to help pay for these speaking engagements – I hope it is a coffee company.
The DAX Shepherd 
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