There will be something new at the PASS Summit this year (2019) – a concept that is named The Learning Pathways.
This is a great concept and also it is not new in the education, it is rather new for the major conferences and it is brand new for the PASS Summit.
The idea behind is simple and ingenious – to provide a path for learning some particular technology right from the basics into the wild open of the unlimited and unbounded knowledge.
For the AI for Everyone Learning Pathway there are great speakers such as Leila Etaati, Melody Zacharias, Anna Thomas & Anupama Natarajan to teach you the understanding of the basics for each one of the major types of the Data Professionals – Developers, DBA’s, BI & Analysts. One thing that brings joy to me on this path is that all of the speakers are women, pushing that hopefully this area of expertise shall be lead by the many wonderful women we have as our peers.
For the Cloud Migration my special note will go for Tobias Ternstrom who after many years of working as a PM at Microsoft for Data Platform moved to Google and will be presenting on the migration to Google Cloud. That session will be definitely worth the admission prize – if you have ever seen Tobias presentation – you know, this is a totally epic technical stuff.
The learning path SQL Performance for Developers has 3 great names – Erin Stellato, Bert Wagner & Jonathan Kehayias. While I love reading both Erin’s & Jonathan materials, Bert has been incredibly funny and educational with his Youtube videos.
At the technical leadership we have the heavy weights, such as Denise McInerney & Kellyn Pot’Vin-Gorman. I have to have a great admiration for Denise for many years, which I consider to be a great technical leader and while I am not necessary agreeing with everything that she says (well, I do not agree with most of the things that one of my best friends Mark Broadbent is saying, but still love him so much!) and Kellyn has been a kind of a chameleon who’s works I have been following for many years silently since my Oracle days.
Chris Yates & Adam Jorgensen need no introduction to the global PASS Community – I am very interested in listening to what they shall say on the matter that interests so many of us.
Becoming an Azure Data Engineer Learning Pathway has some great well-known names such as Jes Borland, Simon Whiteley & Ike Ellis and Dustin Vannoy is a new name to me, but his topic seems to be very much on the spot of what is needed for those who wants to learn Azure Storage Options for Analytics.
Data Security Learning Pathway has Brian Kelley whom I consider to be one of the “fathers” of the topic and Ed Leighton-Dick with Kenneth Fisher are making an incredibly great addition to the topics that will progressively become more important as more and more workloads are moving to the public cloud.
Modernizing with SQL Server 2019 Learning Pathway has a luxurious roll of presenters with the likes of Bob Ward, Anna Thomas, Pam Lahoud and Pedro Lopes – all directly from Microsoft and in my books none of them needs an introduction.
Communication & Collaboration Learning Pathway has Kevin Kline (ha! Obvious & marvellous choice for one of the kindest, communicative and collaborative person in the business in the last 20+ years), Denise McInerney and the ever-great Edwin Sarmiento.
Linux for SQL Server Professionals Learning Pathway has 3 great session with Hamish Watson, Kellyn Pot’Vin Gorman & Randolph West with topics ranging from Fundamentals to Linux Scripting and monitoring of the Sql Server on Linux. Absolutely unmissable if you are looking to start working with Sql Server on Linux (and if you are looking at the Containers & Kubernetes, those are the fundamentals that you will absolutely need to dominate).
The last but not least Data Visualization & Storytelling Learning Pathway has Prathy Kamasani & James McGillivray who will guide you through An Introduction to Data Visualization and Design Best Practices up to Design Strategies and Advanced Data Visualization: The Ingredients for a Delicious Data Story.
There are 10 incredible Learning Pathways and I am sure that every attendee can chose a couple of session to learn a new hot topic or two, making this PASS Summit the best ever :)
I am planning on following at least one of the Pathways and my only hopes are that the alternative content won’t change my mind and that my own sessions won’t interfere with my plans.
The choice is very rich – Cloud Migration, SQL Performance for Developers, Technical Leadership, Becoming an Azure Data Engineer, Data Security, Modernizing with SQL Server 2019, Communication & Collaboration, Linux for SQL Server Professionals & Data Visualization & Storytelling and even though I definitely would love to see some other topics, such as more of the Contaienrs, Azure Infrastructure & Azure Pass services, it is an incredible start and one can only hope that in 2020 the diversity of the Learning Pathways will only increase.
In any case – see you at the PASS Summit 2019!