I want to talk about my first ever 11PM session in this post. Because this week was the first ever time I had presented that late.
LightUp recap
In a previous post I mentioned that I was speaking at the LightUp virtual conference. Which was a virtual conference about Microsoft technologies for charity. You can read that post in detail here.
In addition, you can still donate by following the link for the event here.
Preparations
Like I said before, this was my first time presenting at 11PM. Because even though it was scheduled for 5PM Eastern Daylight Time (EDT), for me it was 11PM at night in the Netherlands.
I know other members of the community have presented late at night before. However, even though I have been speaking for nearly a decade this was all new for me. In reality, I had attended events late at night before but had never presented so late.
With this in mind I made sure that I rehearsed the session multiple times.
Of course, I got up early in the morning to do my day job as well. I am currently a Product Owner of just under 2000 SQL Server instances. So, these days I am very busy.
After the day was done I had to test everything was ready for my session. In addition, I had to do final tests in Microsoft Teams with my co-presenter, Sander Stad.
I will admit that I did have three fairly strong espressos before our session. Without going into too much detail I use to drink instant coffee often when I lived in the UK and now I have a coffee machine which was imported from another country. Which probably gives you an idea of how strong the espressos were.
Anyway, soon 11PM was upon us and we had to present. If I’m honest I think it was one of the smoothest runs of our Azure DevOps Duet session. Because everything fell into place nicely.
Mixed feelings
I am very proud of the fact that we were selected for this conference and were able to do our bit for charity. Even more so since just after speaking I was contacted about us two presenting our session again elsewhere in the future.
I can’t mention where yet because it’s not official. However, I do mention an event below that I can talk about.
However, I have to admit that I still feel guilty about not contributing to T-SQL Tuesday this month. During the last week I have had to help friends out, surprise my wife and plan for this session. Therefore, I just did not have the time to do it.
Even before then I had already contributed to a fair few T-SQL Tuesdays and done a fair few other things for the community this year. For example, speaking elsewhere and organizing DataWeekender.
Yet, even though I did all of the above I still feel bad about not contributing this month.
Does anybody else feel as bad when they do not contribute? Curious to know your thoughts about this. So, feel free to let me know below with a comment.
SQL Saturday Oslo
In case you missed the announcement, the schedule for SQL Saturday Oslo 202 is now live. I’m pleased to announce that myself and Sander Stad will be presenting our ‘Azure DevOps Duet’ session at 3PM Central European Summer Time (CEST).
In reality, each time we present our session about using Azure DevOps with SQL Server the session is unique. However, for this particular event we will be doing something special at the request of one of the organizers. To find out what it is you will have to attend our session.
You can view the schedule for SQL Saturday Oslo here.
Final word
I hope you enjoyed reading about my first ever 11PM session in this post. It was a fun experience and the fact it was for charity makes it even better. I would gladly do it again in a heartbeat.
Like I said earlier in this post, if you have ever felt guilty about not doing something even though you have been busy with other things please let me know with a comment below. Because really want to know if others have experienced this.
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