A Speaker’s Journey: SQL Saturday Orlando 2024

SQL Saturday Orlando 2024 was held on October 19th, 2024. Hurricane Milton delayed the conference by a week. We were fortunate that other commitments had changed for that new date, and we could change travel plans and attend. Some speakers had prior commitments or were dealing with the effects of the hurricane and could not participate. Due to this, some of us were asked to present two sessions.

We had lunch at East End Market at Hinckley’s Fancy Meats. While there, we picked up some cookies and a cake slice from Gideon’s Bakehouse to last the rest of the weekend. They also have a location at Disney Springs, where people wait hours to buy their baked goods. Upon returning home, we watched the episode of Somebody Feed Phil, in which he visits the East End Market.

Thanks to a tip from our friend Rob Volk at the speaker dinner, we stopped for coffee and a bagel at Brooklyn Water Bagel on the way to the conference.

Sheila volunteered at the registration desk. I have said this before, but if you walk into the conference unsure if you should attend, my wife makes you feel welcome. If she learns your story, she will be your biggest champion.

I started the day by presenting Power BI and External Tools: This is the way! (GitHub Slides). This session, which has a Star Wars theme, is fitting for Orlando (home of The Parks). It was well attended, and there were lots of questions and interest. This session was added to the schedule to help fill one of the gaps.

After my session, I attended the “hallway track,” a chance to decompress from presenting and talk with other speakers and attendees.  

Once I started speaking at conferences, I put together a kit of things I may need depending on the environment. One of the main things is a collection of different video adapters. It was handy for one of the speakers who needed a HDMI-to-USB-C adapter. Also, another speaker had the provided HDMI cable break at the plug. I was glad I could jump in there and borrow another HDMI from the provided setup to use instead. As much as I don’t want to carry even more stuff (It is already fun at Airport Security with multiple laptops and chargers), I will start carrying an HDMI cable in case someone needs it.

Next was my primary session,  Power up your Fabric Development with DAX Studio and Tabular Editor (GitHub Slides). Lots of the same people attended both of my sessions. The sessions fit together nicely since the first session introduces you to Power BI and External Tools, and the second goes deeper into using the tools DAX Studio and Tabular Editor to fix a slow Power BI report.

Lunch was great, and I took another chance and sat with some fantastic people. Again, I am instantly teleported back to grade school and where to sit at lunch. Even when people are welcoming and invite me to sit with them, there is still that little thought in my head of whether they really want me to. But if I had listened to that voice, there would have been people I would not have become friends with over the last couple of years.

After lunch, I attended Cecilia Brusatori’s Introduction to Power BI for Data Analysis & Visualization. Before I started speaking, I attended one of her sessions for the first time at SQL Saturday Jacksonville 2022. It was centered around data modeling in Power BI and was a great session. I love how excited she gets about using Power BI and how much potential the tool has for the developer. I decided not to attend her Data Modeling 101 for Power BI only because I wanted to attend another session to learn more about Copilot.  

I am looking at the SQL Saturday Orlando schedule, reminding me how many great sessions I could not attend. Some were scheduled at the same time I was presenting, or at the same time as a session, I picked to attend. Picking a session to attend is difficult. It is a balance of wanting to see the speaker, a topic currently relevant to your work, or a topic you need to learn more about.

The last session of the day was Discover the Magic of Copilot in Power BI by Angie Rudduck. It answered many questions and encouraged me to use Copilot with Power BI. This was one of those sessions where you learn something new in Power BI without it being the purpose of the session. I did not realize that in Power BI, you could update the model with changes made in the DAX Query view. 

The after-event was at Gators Dockside, and it was great that so many attendees were there. At the post-event, you usually get to know people and what type of work they do. You also get to talk about non-data topics like your love of Disney.

We got another recommendation from one of the conference volunteers and ate brunch at Peach Valley Café. It was excellent, and we sat outside with a lake view. Not much time was built into this trip for an extended Sunday Fun Day. The primary purpose was to participate in the conference. On the way to the airport, we stopped at WaWa for a coffee since we do not have these in our area. 

Earlier this year, I wrote an article for Simple Talk titled “The Value of Conference Speaking.” I need to write a follow-up article at some point. Everything I wrote in that article is still relevant today. I wrote about the benefit of speaking at conferences, but attending multiple conferences yearly is just as important. One of the benefits you get from seeing people throughout the year is building lasting relationships (One-To-Many Relationships).