Speaking at my first conference.

Recently I had the opportunity to speak at DATA:Scotland. It was my first time speaking at a conference where I presented my session on Guillotines, Sat-Nav and the Query Optimiser. During my time there I met quite a few people who were interested in speaking too but hadn't quite yet made the jump, so I thought I'd try and use a blog post to give people a helpful nudge.

Firstly, although this was my first conference I did get the opportunity to speak at a couple of local(ish) user groups beforehand. This was ideal because I could try out the session in front of a very friendly crowd and get a lot of instant feedback too. I could also get a feel for some of the bits that worked and some of the bits that didn't. 

I'd also read a lot about public speaking but in truth when it comes to actual delivery style I guess that's just develops (or is constantly developing) quite naturally. For me I throw in quite lot of humour into my session which helps me break the ice with the audience and build a rapport with them, but that is something that fits my personality and works for me. I guess if I try to be or present as someone else then it's probably not going to work.

I also try to speak about topics that I am really interested in, it sounds obvious but it's also true. I'm quite happy to talk about the query optimiser because I really enjoy the inner workings of SQL Server, particularly around optimisation. Ask me to talk about merge replication and a session will be totally different, or more than likely non-existent!  

Practice is key. Another rather obvious bit of wisdom but another that is also completely true. I would go over parts in the car, in the shower, in my sleep and to my rehearsal audience of the dogs. For me it's about constantly tuning the delivery; what works, what doesn't sound right, would this slide be better over there, does this even make sense etc etc?! 

I'd also add that the practice doesn't end after delivery, I'm still very much making tweaks!

Having the support of DATA:Scotland was crucial. They provided me with a speaker mentor, Alex Yates, who provided some absolutely priceless insights into speaking and gave me some awesome advice on my session. After our first talk I genuinely was full of ideas because I was able to look at the session from an attendees perspective, something I hadn't really done. Now I had questions such as, "why is this useful to me?" or "how does this make me do my job better?" in mind when putting it all together.

Having the newcomer session option was a big nudge for me. I'm not even sure I would have submitted a session without it and genuinely I think it's brilliant. Not only did I have a superb mentor but there was also a couple of web sessions on presenting. Also, being introduced as a new speaker at the conference helped too, it didn't feel like I was plunging into the deep end as much!  

There's loads more and I'll definitely write more about the experience but what I will say/write is that just before I went into the room I told myself that never again would I be experiencing speaking at a conference for the first time again. This was it and I needed to immerse myself in the experience, nerves and all, as much as I could. I like to think I did just that and as such it was one of the most rewarding experiences of my life.

It's also rather addictive. 

If you are wondering about it then reach out to the community, local user group or even me, I'm more than happy to share my experience of speaking and give any advice that I can (though wisdom may be rather limited).

DATA:Scotland 2019. Unleashing the Guillotine!!!

Friday 13th of September will be my first ever appearance at a conference as a speaker at DATA:Scotland. Needless to say I cannot wait and I'd like to thank the organisers, selectors or whoever it was that drew out the short straw that is me.

I'll be presenting my intriguingly titled 'Guillotines, Sat-Nav and the Query Optimiser' session which I presented at the Manchester and Leeds User Groups earlier this year. The user groups have proved to be a really useful experience as some of the questions that were raised from the audience I've taken onboard and added in, basically I've been stealing their ideas.

My session starts at 12 which unfortunately for me is when my daily caffeine intake usually starts to wear off right at the same time I start to get hungry so I might take up a flask of espresso and a couple of wagon wheels to keep me going. I'll be in conference room 7 which also happens to my lucky number, so that's good news.

Something very new to me is that there will be presenters presenting their sessions at the same time as me and as such I need view these SQL superstars as, well, the competition I guess. I'm not entirely sure what tactics to deploy to get people to come and see me instead; media smear campaigns, good old fashioned kidnapping or perhaps just go really heavy on the propaganda...a bit like this blog post.

The truth is I'm very much overwhelmed at seeing my name up there on that schedule surrounded by people who in all honesty I hold in the absolute highest regard, and I also promise not to kidnap anyone (is their an emoji for fingers crossed behind your back?).

So what can people expect? Well at the moment we're in the midst of an amazing shift in the technical landscape. We've got all this funky cool new stuff like AI, the cloud, containers, Kubernetes etc etc etc and obviously I thought not to cover any of that. No, apparently vintage is all the rage these days so I'm jumping right on that bandwagon!

It may be old school but the query optimiser to me is like the magic box of SQL Server. We all throw queries at it and it goes off and does what it does, that's the beauty of it but at the same time we don't often get chance to open the box and have a good root around - and that's where this session comes in. So I'll be covering how the optimiser works, some of the magic tricks that it performs, how we can use SQL to keep a very close eye on what the optimiser is doing and of course how to break it!

It's worth adding that I will also be trying my best to seamlessly link the query optimiser to guillotines and satellite navigation - that'll teach me to come up with a great title before the actual presentation. I say that but I am currently working on a new session called "fixing your availability groups with sticky back plastic", take note Blue Peter (is that even still on?).

As well as the actual learning stuff (which I promise, there's plenty) there's a few ice breakers in there which I'll not give away right now and there's a good sense of humour throughout, which is mostly directed at the expense of myself.

So if you are attending DATA:Scotland all that's left is for me to beg, plead, perhaps even bribe you to come along to my session; if you choose otherwise I'll not hold it against you...and if you're not attending but stumbled on to this post by accident then thanks for reading if you got this far!