This week I’m in Barcelona for the Microsoft Fabric Community Conference, and this year I’m attending without a speaking slot.
That gives the trip a different rhythm. I can follow a promising conversation, spend time with the product teams, listen to other speakers, and work out which developments deserve closer attention. I’ll also be creating new content for the podcast Knee-Deep in Tech Topics.
There should be plenty to talk about, on and off mic.
First, though: Barcelona. I’ve never been, and I’m very excited to finally visit. The prospect of exploring a city with that combination of architecture, history, food and Mediterranean coastline is a substantial bonus to an already appealing trip. This tourism guide offers plenty of reasons to look beyond the conference venue.
I want to leave room for walking, looking up at buildings, finding something good to eat and allowing the city to interrupt the schedule. There is something slightly ridiculous about travelling somewhere new and seeing only an airport, a hotel and presentation slides. I’d like to do better than that.
The conference itself runs from September 28 to October 1, with FabCon and SQLCon bringing the wider Microsoft data community together. Microsoft describes it as Europe’s largest Microsoft Fabric and SQL event. That scale matters because of the range of people and expertise it brings into the same place.
To me, FabCon has taken on the mantle of Microsoft TechEd for the data community. A gathering big enough to bring together product direction, technical depth, practitioners and the conversations that connect them. Somewhere to get a sense of where the whole ecosystem is heading.
That ecosystem gives us plenty to keep up with. Fabric, Power BI, SQL Server, Azure SQL and the technologies around them keep moving, with AI appearing across more of the platform. Keeping track of individual announcements is one task. Understanding how they fit together is another substantial piece of work.
The published programme promises updates on Fabric Warehouse performance, OneLake security, intelligent data agents and Azure SQL security - and everything in between. There are also product-team ask-me-anything sessions. The agenda already gives me plenty of reasons to arrive curious, before any announcements made at the event itself.
I’m particularly interested in the questions that follow the demonstrations. What problem does this solve? What assumptions does it make? How does it behave when an organisation has awkward governance requirements, limited capacity or an existing platform it cannot simply replace?
Those are conversations I want to have with the people building the products and the people putting them to work.
They are also the conversations I want to bring into Knee-Deep in Tech Topics. Announcements provide a starting point. I want to explore what they mean, where the interesting tradeoffs sit, and what practitioners should investigate when they get home.
Attending without a session of my own gives me more room to listen. I’m looking forward to catching up with speakers and community members, meeting people I haven’t spoken to before, and following questions that don’t fit neatly into a presentation’s final five minutes.
There is plenty of excitement around what comes next for Fabric. I want to bring home a clearer understanding of which developments matter, useful material for the podcast, and ideas worth exploring further.
If you’re going to be in Barcelona, come and say hello. I’m most likely up in the community area, and I’d love to hear what you’re working on, which announcements you’re watching, and what you think we should discuss on the podcast.
And if you know a good place to eat, I’m listening to that too.
Image by Matthias Hoensch from Pixabay