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Due to the pandemic, most leading 2021 data conferences are online and free to view. You might need to jump through some hoops to register, but do it to get access to hundreds of talks and training sessions. You’ll dive deep into niche areas of a particular product and learn about things you didn’t even know existed.
Each conference is sponsored by a corporate entity. You might think these are just big sales pitches, but that usually isn’t the case. For the companies, it’s more about investing in the community, building credibility, and as a perk, they’ll get your email address.
Many of these conferences are hosted on proprietary platforms, and the talks won’t show up in search engines. You’ll need to look at the schedule/catalog to browse through the sessions. The conferences linked below contain probably 500+ sessions. Browse the catalogs to see what strikes your fancy.
1 - Ignite
Focus: Microsoft/Azure, Sponsored by: Microsoft
Focus: GCP, Sponsored by: Google
3 - Snowflake Summit
Focus: Data Warehouses, Sponsored by: Snowflake
4 - Data Council (No registration needed!)
Focus: Broad Industry
5 - Modern Data Stack Conference
Focus: Analytics, Sponsored by: Fivetran
6 - Coalesce
Focus: Data Modeling, Sponsored by: DBT
7 - Tableau Data
Focus: Data Visualization, Sponsored by: Tableau
8 - DataFest
Focus: Data Virtualization, Sponsored by: Denodo
Watch this presentation to learn some exciting things you didn’t know about, learn what’s possible in the world of data and analytics, and leave feeling optimistic about your role when it comes to data. “When the data sucks, when the platforms don’t talk, when you’re feeling sad, simply engage in this cool webinar, and then you won’t feeeeel so bad.”
Watch the webinar: A Few of Our Favorite Things About Data
Microsoft is heavily investing in their low-code/no-code Power Platform offerings to enable easier development and automation. Some of these new features, like Process Advisor and AI integration, sound interesting, but we need to see them in practice before we can give an opinion on them. Nevertheless, this is news you should know about if you’re a Microsoft shop.
Learn about the new Power Platform capabilities
Not to focus on Microsoft this month, but SQL Server 2022 is coming, and we’re linking to an article and demo here. The SQL Server database is old, but still very widely used. We don’t expect radical changes in each version, but Microsoft’s competition has never been greater, so they must make updates or risk falling behind.
Some are underwhelmed by Microsoft’s announcement, feeling that most of the features are a way to sell more services in Azure. Microsoft is adding blockchain based auditing, a way to demonstrate that your data has not been tampered with. Doing this seems to involve a lot of work to set up and comes with a bunch of caveats, but you can decide for yourself.
See a demo video and read about SQL Server 2022
It’s Hard to Be a Moral Person. Technology is Making it Harder.
Are social media and smartphones making us less ethical? This article was posted last summer, but it’s thought provoking in today’s world where “persuasive technology” is coming under increased scrutiny. Mindfulness is a core belief in many organizations. So what does mindfulness mean in an age where we have dozens of apps fighting tooth and nail for our attention?
Read about the effects of technology on morality
