A Speaker’s Journey: SQL Saturday Albany 2024

Presenting 3 Minutes

SQL Saturday Albany 2024 took place on August 3, 2024, in the Massry Center for Business at the University of Albany.

Our departing flight was late, so we barely made our connecting flight. We also had a delayed connecting flight on our return home, so we spent a lot of time just sitting in the airport. I need to start taking advantage of these unexpected opportunities and using them to write more.

We made it up there in time to have dinner with Tony Wilhelm. We initially met Tony at the Crab Pot SQL Family Dinner on the last day of the PASS Summit in 2022. We then both gave our first presentations at SQL Saturday Jacksonville in 2023. Looking back, I am so glad we did not skip this community event at PASS Summit to do our own thing (which has happened in the past).

We attended the speaker dinner on Friday night and had a wonderful time. Speaker dinners are always an excellent chance to catch up with fellow speakers, organizers, and sometimes volunteers. We are lucky that some have become friends over the years. Friday may be the only chance to talk to certain speakers because you may be unable to attend their session, or they may have to leave earlier on Saturday to travel back home.

My wife was volunteering, so I dropped her off early on Saturday and went to get coffee for us. This morning, I chose Uncommon Grounds for our coffee. Sometimes, I drop her off first because the coffee place may not be open before her scheduled arrival time.

I attended John Kerski’s presentation Querying Power BI REST APIs within a Power BI Dataset (GitHub slides). Using the Power BI REST APIs to report on your Power BI environment is a great demonstration of using Power Query custom connectors. This is one of those sessions where I want to try out what I learned that night but know I need to be in the moment and wait till we get home.

This was the first time I was part of a lightning talk. One benefit of the lightning talks is due to the variety of topics you get people in your session who may not usually attend. I was presenting on Blogging: Lessons I Learned the Hard Way (GitHub slides). Each was a 10-minute session on a variety of topics:

My session on blogging was very personal because I tried to convey things I had struggled with. I spent more time on the blogging platform, theme, and syntax highlighting than writing. I have written several technical blog posts, but they are on configuring various aspects of the blogging software and not Power BI. One benefit of using blogging platforms like Hugo and Docusaurus was that I learned to use Git.

I presented my session, Power up your Fabric Development with DAX Studio and Tabular Editor (GitHub slides). This is one of my newer sessions centered around the requirements for the DP-600 certification and using external tools. I hope I have encouraged people to take the certification and understand how Tabular Editor and Dax Studio can help them on their Power BI Journey.

When I present a session, I note any questions or clarifications needed during the presentation. After reading the feedback from the session, I incorporate this information into the next version of the presentation. For example, a better illustration might be provided, or I might need to explain a particular concept in more detail.

I missed Tony Wilhelm’s session Intro to PowerShell with dbatools for the DBA because we were scheduled for the same time slot. However, I attended the session at Ohio North SQL Saturday.

We attended the post-event dinner, which is always great because everyone can attend. It is an opportunity to talk with speakers, volunteers, and attendees.

For Sunday Fun Day, we met with Tony Wilhelm and took a paddlewheel boat cruise on Lake George. We then ate a late lunch of BBQ at Dinosaur BBQ – multiple people at the conference recommended the restaurant. We even managed to sit by the window with a magnificent view of the Hudson River.

This trip started with some travel delays, and we were stressed about whether we would make our connecting flight. It also ended with more delays in getting back home. But so many moments in between made this conference worth it.

Published