22-25 April 2026

Data & Community: An Amazing Network Of Peers Supporting Innovation & Growth

Proposed session for SQLBits 2026

TL; DR

I’ll share my journey as a Microsoft Data Platform MVP and CTO, and how an amazing network of peers fuelled innovation, collaboration, and growth. Discover how community can transform your career and inspire breakthroughs.

Session Details

When I look back on my career in data, one thing stands out above all else: the incredible network of peers who have inspired, challenged, and collaborated with me along the way. In this autobiographical session, I’ll share my story as a Microsoft Data Platform MVP and CTO of Cloud Formations. Talking about how curiosity led me into the world of data, and how the technology community became the catalyst for every major milestone in my career. From late-night problem-solving with fellow experts to building solutions that push boundaries, sharing knowledge, building open-source code projects and more I’ll explore how community relationships have driven innovation and my personal growth. If you’ve ever wondered how community can transform your career, this is a conversation you won’t want to miss. Sharing my passion and thanks for the community we have created together.

3 things you'll get out of this session

• Show how building strong peer networks can accelerate innovation and career growth in the data industry. • Share personal experiences and lessons learned from collaborating with the technology community. • Inspire attendees to engage with community as a catalyst for learning, sharing, and creating impactful solutions.

Speakers

Paul Andrew

mrpaulandrew.com

Paul Andrew's previous sessions

An Evolution of Data Architectures - Lambda, Kappa, Delta, Mesh & Fabric
How has advancements in highly scalable cloud technology influenced the design principals we apply when building data platform solutions?
 
Building an Azure Data Analytics Platform End-to-End
Based on real world experience let’s think about just how far the breadth of our knowledge now needs to reach when starting from nothing and building a complete Microsoft Azure Data Analytics solution.
 
Creating a Metadata Driven Orchestration Framework Using Azure Data Integration Pipelines
We'll explore delivering this framework within an enterprise and consider an architect’s perspective on a wider platform of ingestion/transformation workloads with multiple batches and execution stages.
 
ETL in Azure Made Easy with Data Factory Data Flows
What happens when you combine a cloud orchestration service with a Spark cluster?! The answer is a feature rich, graphical, scalable data flow environment to rival any ETL tech we’ve previously had available in Azure.
 
Using Azure DevOps for Azure Data Factory
DevOps as a concept does not always translate to the technology when implemented. In this session we'll explore that problem when working with Azure Data Factory and what the different cloud only CI/CD options are.
 
Complex Azure Orchestration w Dynamic Data Factory Pipelines
If you have already mastered the basics of Azure Data Factory (ADF) and are now looking to advance your knowledge of the tool this is the session for you.
 
Building an End to End IoT Solution Using Pi Sensors & Azure
Demonstrating an end to end IoT solution providing real-time sensor data from a Raspberry Pi into an Azure IoT Hub, through Stream Analytics, then with outputs to Power BI and SQL DB. Learn how to build this simplified IoT solution from scratch.