Description: SQL Server Business Intelligence
One of my goals for 2023 was to speak at a SQL user group again. I set this because in 2021 I’d felt like I was starting to build a speaking profile. I’d spoken at New Stars of Data , and that had gone really well , and I’d applied to GroupBy and DataMinutes and been accepted for both. For reasons I’ve already gone into , I didn’t keep going with it, but it felt like I had some momentum at the time and giving a talk at a user group seemed like a good first step to getting that back without setting myself to
Anyway, last Thursday I spoke at Data Bristol . I gave a modified version of the Visual Studio database projects talk from New Stars of Data, gearing it more towards people who didn’t necessarily have any prior experience with the tool. I felt like that was important for an audience like a user group, where people don’t have any choice of sessions, it’s fine to pitch an expert level talk at a large conference where attendees have other sessions they can go to instead but at a user group everyone has to list
I felt like the talk went pretty well. I wasn’t as prepared as I was for the New Stars of Data talk, and that showed in a couple of places when the transition between slides wasn’t that smooth, or I lost the thread of what I was saying a bit. I also felt that the lack of prep affected my confidence a bit, and because of that I didn’t project well enough in places. With that said, I got some great feedback and a few questions, so overall I feel pretty good.