I remember being invited to speak on a panel at Coalesce 2021, with Barr Moses of Monte Carlo, Stef Olafsdottir of Avo and Caitlin Moorman of Locally Optimistic (moderated by Jillian Corkin - thanks for everything you’ve done in the data community and for me personally, Jillian! 💜). It was a great experience, with very interesting discussion.
It was on Zoom, due to Covid restrictions preventing an in-person conference, which made it a bit less daunting! This was around the time that my workplace had a Christmas party, on the evening that the UK government announced that, from the next day, multi-household gatherings would no longer be allowed. (It turned out that our work Christmas party ended up being a super-spreader event 🦠🚀).
Being on the panel was a real confidence booster for me - I had avoided public speaking for a long time, as an introverted person. As I mentioned last year, in my post about speaking at Coalesce 2022 - this time in person and in front of 200 to 300 people - I wouldn’t have submitted a talk, had I not been on the panel the previous year.
Even though getting ready to speak to the largest group of people since my wedding was somewhat nerve-wracking, once I started to deliver my talk I started to enjoy it. It was really well received and I can’t count the number of people who came up to me afterwards and said they thought it was good or helpful, much to my surprise - I’m a modest person.
So, of course, this year it felt natural to do it again. My series on the Semantic Layer earlier this year felt like perfect material - with the focus of Coalesce 2023 on the new semantic layer, after the Transform acquisition.
Whilst I wasn’t surprised to be rejected - I knew there would be many other great talks submitted, with limited slots available - I was surprised that almost everyone I knew who had submitted had been rejected. I’m still optimistic that the quality of the content at Coalesce 2023 will be stellar, and hopefully introducing some new faces to the data community. However, I still felt it wasn’t right to waste the potential energy from the talks that were rejected. Knowing some of these folks, I know for sure that there would be a whole bunch of great talks lost, if there was no outlet for them.
So, what started as a bit of a funny idea - a ‘Coalesce rejects’ conference - started to meander around Twitter and some Slack connect channels… and turn into something real! It seems unreal, given the time from idea to conference! The design is awesome, too 😎.
Sharing your ideas - whether through a blog like this, speaking at conferences, being a guest on podcasts… can lay roads to destinations you never expected! I don’t know where converting the potential energy from all the speakers below will take us in the future… but I’m not missing out on the ride!
Today is Day 3 of MDS Fest and I’m giving my talk later today! It’s closely followed by Artyom of Cube’s talk, which is a very natural talk to watch after mine. It’s at 4:30pm BST / 11:30am ET / 8:30am PT.
Sign up to watch the upcoming talks and get access to recordings at MDSFest.com
I hope to see some of you there, and that you take advantage of this great, free to attend conference. I’m looking forward to watching many of the talks, myself!
I’m also happy to announce the full line-up for London Analytics Meetup #5. Funding Circle are our gracious hosts.
Talks:
Maiara Reinaldo - DE @ Funding Circle - "Self-serve data with dbt & DataHub"
George Apps - Staff BI Developer @ TravelPerk - "To Manage or not to Manage?"
Adam Timlett - Analytics Manager @ PPL - "How to Image Your Organisation's Dragon"
Awesome! Will be tuning in :-)