Following a period of research, SQLBits are excited to be introducing a new 100 minute session format for Wednesday 20th March, replacing the full day training sessions.
What you told us
Every year after SQLBits, the committee carries out in-depth research, including
- Delegate, speaker, and sponsor feedback (we read every single comment, and a huge thank you to everyone who took the time to send this feedback!)
- Feedback from previous SQLBits attendees who didn’t join this time around (we want to understand why!)
- Panel surveys to assess industry needs
- Our own retrospective assessments of the event, incorporating everything from the catering to the communications.
Once this is done, we can continue to improve the delivery of a world-class learning experience (as well as just a darned enjoyable event) and ensure that it continues to meet the needs of data professionals across the industry.
One of the key pieces of feedback we received after this year’s event was around the format of training days. Whilst there is still plenty of demand for a full day of training to start the week, we overwhelmingly heard from our delegates that they would prefer a slightly different format on day two; one that mitigates the risk of ‘correctly’ choosing a second full day session; and a format that offers them more variety within one day whilst still allowing them to explore a topic in greater depth than a general sessions day. This was also felt to be more beneficial for managers looking to enable their team to cover a wide range of learning topics.
We also are aware and have taken part in the greater debate about the “best” session length. There is no consensus of opinion about this and we (and the delegates and speakers) agree that 20 minute and 50 minute sessions are valuable and we will continue to have them on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday.
Many speakers, however, have expressed their wish to be able to spend longer either explaining broad topics or delving deep into the abyss searching for that elusive black box.
What we decided to do
As a result of that feedback from both delegates and speakers, we’re excited to introduce a new 100 minute session format. Under this new format, sessions will all be 100 minutes long, enabling a range of content. We are expecting introductory and overview sessions and deep mind-melting, extremely specific sessions and are looking forward to the submissions that we will receive.
Speakers are also able to use the 100 minute format to submit multiple complementary sessions that together, create a half or full day of learning on a subject, delivered in sections.
We know that sitting in one place for 100 minutes is not conducive to learning, so we will be featuring a customary SQLBits comfort break halfway through. All passengers will be able to attend any session that they wish during the day.
These sessions will provide a range of introductions, implementations, deep dives, and ‘how-to’s . Which will give you access to a whopping 56 sessions from which to build your own unique day of training aligned with your current needs.
Rob Sewell who leads on content at SQLBits, had this to say: “It will be awesome to see how this addition to the SQL range of sessions lengths will enable our amazing speakers to provide even more content in different formats. I am also looking forward to the feedback from the attendees and their budget holders and hope that they will see the benefit of having four available sessions in one day to attend.“
We’re really excited to trial this for 2024, and if you tell us it was a success afterwards, we will implement permanently going forward. Have any pressing thoughts? Please head over to LinkedIn to tell us what you think on our social posts or drop us a line on contactus@sqlbits.com.