The wait is finally over! This year’s PASS Data Community Summit sessions are now live and available to view in the Catalog Preview!

We were absolutely blown away, and humbled, by the almost 900 submissions by over 350 speakers that we received in the call for speakers earlier this year. The breadth and quality of sessions were outstanding and made the selection process one of the most difficult to date.

This year’s program consists of 170 technical sessions over three days (Nov 15-17). We’ll see a comprehensive collection of sessions by both community experts and industry engineers. This release of sessions comes from our community call for speakers, so you can expect more sessions to appear over the coming months from our top-tier partners.

Alongside our release of community Summit sessions, we are pleased to announce two additional Pre-Cons from Microsoft:

1. 1. Azure SQL and SQL Server: All Things Developers, presented by Brian Spendolini and Anagha Todalbagi – Monday, November 13
   2. The Cloud Workshop for the DBA, presented by Bob Ward – Tuesday, November 14

Join us in congratulating this year’s speakers on Twitter using the hashtag #PASSDataSummit, and thank them for sharing their knowledge and expertise. Check out this sampling of sessions that will be presented across five tracks, before heading over to the Catalog Preview to discover what else we have in store:

Analytics

• Tales from the Trenches: Lessons from Big Power BI Projects, Paul Turley
• Power BI – How to Fix an Inherited Report, Kristyna Hughes
• Designing an Execution Framework for Azure Data Factory, Andy Leonard

Architecture

• Accelerated Database Recovery – A Deep Dive Behind the Magic, John Morehouse
• Using SQL Server 2022’s New Storage Features, Anthony Nocentino
• Easy Enterprise Integration with Azure PaaS Services, Anupama Natarajan

Database Management

• 3 Reasons To Love Managed Instance and 1 Reason Not To, Heidi Hasting
• Analysing and Resolving Deadlocks, Erland Sommarskog
• Mastering Query Store: Best Practices for Performance Tuning, Deepthi Goguri

Development

• Incremental Data Loading with Azure Databricks, Dustin Vannoy
• Automating Database Deployments using Azure DevOps, Grant Fritchey
• Azure Data Factory for Beginners: Let’s Make some Data, Leslie Andrews

Professional Development

• DevOps is about Growing People rather than using Cool Tools, Hamish Watson
• Magnetic Leadership: Pulling the Best out of Everyone, Elena Marquetti
• Using Atomic Habits to Achieve Your Goals, Tracy Boggiano

Again, this is just a sample of what has been released, in addition to sessions that support our efforts in expanding the program to satisfy a growing appetite for other platforms and technologies.

Progress and Growth

It’s no secret that businesses and organizations are now using multiple databases to manage the changing volume, nature, and location of data. We’re learning that more data professionals are increasingly using multiple databases from project to project and, while traditionally focused on the Microsoft stack, our long-term goal with PASS Data Community Summit is to broaden and diversify the sessions so our community and attendees are supported to navigate this shift.

With this in mind, we’re taking small steps and focusing on slowly adding other technologies and platforms, beginning with an emphasis on PostgreSQL sessions, such as:

• What’s New in PostgreSQL 16, Mark Wong
• How to get Involved with Postgres without being a PG Expert, Claire Giordano
• PostgreSQL: Extensions Shape the Future, Ryan Lambert

Not unlike our own community, PostgreSQL has a large and active global population of engineers and users who contribute to its development and also provide support to others. The inclusion of other technologies and platforms only widens our network allowing us to further connect, share, and learn.

Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging (DEIB)

In a continued effort to make Summit a diverse, accessible, and inclusive conference, we are actively working with a community-driven DEIB steering group, to help us steadfastly improve on our review and selection process year over year.

Diversity represents more than the inclusion of women, people of varying ethnicities, those with disabilities, members of the LGBTQ+ community, neurodivergent individuals, citizens of non-western countries, those with invisible differences, and more. It’s about creating an event where everyone can show up as their authentic self and where people with different identities feel welcomed, valued, and safe.

To make sure we deliver on our commitment, we aim to realize a 40% goal of diversity amongst our final speakers, based on our voluntary diversity questions across geographical location, gender, pronouns, marginalized groups, and disability. We’re still gathering this voluntary data but the team are feeling confident about meeting this goal, and we’ll share an update in due course. In the meantime, we’re interested to know what makes an inclusive event for you, so please feel free to reach out to us with your thoughts at speakers@passsummit.com.

Find out more about our approach to DEIB. 

We can’t wait for you to experience Summit live, and in-person, at the Seattle Convention Center this November 13-17. Register now before prices increase on July 27^th!

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