I’m excited to be able to go to my 4th PASS Summit having attended in 2012, 2014 and 2016 (a little bit of a trend there). PASS summit is always the highlight of the Microsoft Data Platform community (more than just SQL nowadays), and I look forward to reconnecting with old friends and meeting new ones. Flying from South Africa to Seattle is always a bit of an effort from both a time and cost perspective, so I like to bring as many people as possible with me especially people who have not had the opportunity before.  This year I joined by two first-timers, James McGillivray (T) and Charl Heinemann (T) along with some repeat attendees like as JP Voogt (T) and Jody Roberts (T). While I have always enjoyed my trips to PASS Summit, this year is going to be a little more interesting.

Microsoft Data platform MVP

This will be the first time I attend PASS Summit as a Microsoft MVP, while there are no extra perc’s to being an MVP at the event it’s always nice to add one more ribbon to my attendee badge and reconnect with some of the many people I met at the MVP Summit.

Speaker Idol

This year I have been selected to take part in the Speaker Idols competition. The Speaker Idols competition consists of several 5-minute lightning talks over four rounds, the first three rounds are made up of four contestants (12 in total) who each present to a panel of judges, a winner is chosen from each group who then go onto the final round held on Friday afternoon. I will be presenting in the second group also made up of Leslie Andrews (T), Janusz Rokicki (T) and Paresh Motiwala(T) all of whom I have never met before so I look forward to getting to know each of them as well as the judges.

Power BI World Tour

I have also been selected to present a session at the Power BI World tour taking place in Bellevue from 29 to 30 October 2018. I will be speaking about Data flows in power BI which at the moment is still in private preview but will likely be made public by then. This is a two-day event dedicated to Power BI and will also take place in the building where most of the Power BI team work out of so it is sure to be a great event.

SQL Saturday Oregon

I will also be attending SQL Saturday Oregon for the second time. I will also be attending with James and JP and we look forward to getting in some hiking while we are there and SQL Saturday Oregon would not be the same without #SQLTrain, without a doubt the best way to travel to PASS Summit that starts the next day.

October and November are going to be great, and I Hope that I will see you all there.