My nine days that never happened

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In this post I want to discuss my nine days that never happened over the last couple of weeks. In addition, I will cover an idea that I was encouraged to think more about instead.

What never happened in those nine days

As some of you are aware, last week I was due to speak at SQL Saturday Iceland. In fact, I was due to present a double session of Azure DevOps Duet with Sander Stad.

I was looking forward to sharing the flight from Schiphol airport in Amsterdam with some good friends. From there I was going to enjoy Reykjavik again because I had not been there for a couple of years.

After the SQL Saturday was finished I was due to fly back to Amsterdam in the early hours of Sunday morning. Once I got back to the Netherlands I was going to pack to get ready to go to SQLBits.

On the Monday I was due to go to London by train. It was the first time ever I was going to travel there by train from the Netherlands. Which I have to admit I was really excited about.

Once there I was going to enjoy the sights with my wife for a while. Afterwards I was going to attend two SQLBits training days there.

If the schedule was the same as it is now I would have presented with Sander Stad on the Thursday. We would have presented one of the sessions I talked about in a previous post here.

Which would have meant for the second time in a week we would have been speaking at the same time as a well-known American speaker.

You can see the current schedule for the Thursday at SQLBits in detail here.

Once I had presented I had every intention of catching up with everybody for some networking. However, I will be honest here and admit I was hoping to find a window of opportunity to attend a premier of a well-known movie franchise.

With all this in mind, it’s a shame this became my nine days that never happened.

Idea

However, as some of you may have seen I did have an idea form just before I was due to fly to Iceland.

I wondered if it was worth getting all the organisers from cancelled or postponed SQL Server and Data Platform events in Europe together. In order to organise an online event.

Because I really feel sorry for everybody who put the hard work into these events. Having been involved with an event in the past I know how much work others

In addition, I thought it would be good for multiple organisers and volunteers to work on the same event. For multiple reasons.

In fact, whilst thinking about this I also wondered if people in other continents could do the same. Since the Microsoft Data Platform community is so large worldwide.

It was only a small idea. However, Gethyn Ellis has encouraged me to think about it a lot more. In fact, we discussed the possibility of reaching out to others over the week.

Which is why over the weekend I posted for people to contact myself or Gethyn if interested in putting something together.

I’m aware other online events are being planned for during the weekdays. In fact, I encourage you to attend them if possible.

However, I am also aware that a lot of people like myself still do a lot work during the weekdays. With this in mind, I thought this online event would be better over a weekend.

Final word

I hope you enjoyed reading about my nine days that never happened, as well as my idea.

You can contact myself or Gethyn Ellis (@gethyn_ellis) if you are an organiser or volunteer of one of these events and you think this is a good idea.

If there is enough interest in this idea I will carry on with it. Otherwise, it will stay just an idea.