Have you ever heard about PASSCamp ?
Organized by German PASS, this is a 3 full days hands-on event, organized somewhere near the end of the calendar year (typically in December). This is a quite expensive event, but it has a very attractive all-inclusive option – staying at nice hotel and all food are included.
This year PASSCamp was hosted at the Lufthansa Training & Conference Center in Seeheim (near Darmstadt and greatly accessible from Frankfurt Airport). It is an awesome location, because it was far away from everything (in the woods), but also close to a great number of cities (for those who would wish to explore them). The Lufthansa installations are really great – clean & having enjoyable design, people working there are doing their best to provide an enjoyable experience.
This year I have had an honor of participating in PASSCamp 2013 as a speaker.
Through the event, I have delivered 4 presentations / labs –Â Intro + Advanced Clustered Columnstore, Using Clustered Columnstore in DataWarehousing solutions, NodeXL introduction.
This meant a lot of work by preparing Presentations as well as the Guided Documents for hands-on labs, but it all maid whole lot of fun as well as part of challenge.
So why did I love it ?
- Because of the cozy atmosphere (Not too many people, you can easily find anyone);
- Because of the Content Quality – Upcoming Microsoft Data Platform releases & functionalities, where you would be guided through hands-on;
- Because of the Great speakers – Oliver Engels, Tillmann Eitelberg, Andreas Wolter, Julian Breunung, Kostja Klein, Scott Klein (MS Azure Evangelist), Georg Urban, Frank Geisler, Werner Gauer & others.
- Because of the size of the conference – 3 tracks and under 80 attendees, which made .
- Because of the food quality – see the pictures (important note: coffee was tasting like a coffee).
- Because of possibility to spend quality time with friends & meet new people.
- Because I love nature, and at the Lufthansa Training & Conference Center you really feel surrounded by it.
I have met some good old friends like Andreas, Kostja, Klaus Holtgen, Scott Klein – with whom I have had an incredible amount of fun,
I have met a lot of new awesome people like Lars, Andreas, Rafal, Christian, Volker between others,
AND I have learned a lot of new stuff and had opportunities to exchange ideas and expectations for the future of the Microsoft Data Platform.
The previous blog post about Clustered Columnstore is based on the experience that I have had at PASSCamp, and a lot of new upcoming posts as well :)
Was it enough? Heck no – I am looking for 2014! :)
P.s. it is also to note that this year (2013), PASSCamp happened for the 9th time and it was sold out 2+ months in advance. Without any public agenda. Just think about it.