Two Events, Two Worlds: A Week in the Life of a Technologist

Last week, I had the chance to speak at two very different events, and the contrast between them really stuck with me.

The first was all a traditional vendor conference-  enterprise-level, built around a well-established product with over 40 years of vendor-driven development. Think polished sponsor tables, polished shoes, and more than a few suits in the crowd. The second was a grassroots community event born from open-source tools and innovation driven almost entirely by the user base. Casual dress code, casual vibe, and deeper command line engagement vs. services and low-code solutions.

Both events charged about the same for admission, but that’s where most of the similarities ended.

You could see the difference the moment you walked into the keynote sessions, (which full admission – I was one of the keynotes and I feel my topic wouldn’t have gone over well at the grassroots event).  At the enterprise event, attendees wore jackets and skirts, chatting politely over breakfast while exchanging business cards and LinkedIn profiles. The community event? Hoodies, jeans, t-shirts, and the occasional sticker-covered laptop. Networking happened over WhatsApp and Bluesky, not business cards.

The Shift

At the first event, I didn’t attend any sessions beyond my own. Most of the content focused on services and marketing focused products and features—great if you’re an executive, but not much for someone craving deep technical knowledge. The community event, on the other hand, packed in five highly technical sessions in one day (not counting the one I gave). Each session felt like a mini hackathon—practical, inspiring, and immediately useful.  Although my keynote was considered riveting for the event and well-received by the students who had attended, I hope the subsequent day keynotes balanced out from my “rebellious” view of AI to promote vendor products.

And that’s the difference. The enterprise event was clearly built for the people who sign the checks. Nothing wrong with that—sales teams love these environments, and I get it. If you're not pitching to the person with the budget authority, you're not making a sale. But for me, the community event was where I wanted to be. I learned something new. I left inspired. I regretted not attending the whole second event.

It's All About the Level

Here’s the thing: many organizations are leaning harder than ever into attracting that C-level audience. It makes sense. Demos get polished, messaging gets fine-tuned, and events become showcases more than learning spaces. But for those of us on the ground, actually doing the work, what we crave is connection—peer collaboration, shared insights, real technical depth.

I get bored easily – I’ve never shied away from my AuDHD self, recognizing the capabilities, as well as the shortcomings the mindset brings. Most enterprise events only hold my attention because of the people I meet, not the content. What keeps me coming back are the conversations, the hallway chats where we dig into what’s actually working, what’s not, and how we’re solving real-world problems.

When everything becomes about the sell, and I’ve been told many a time that WE’RE ALL IN SALES, we lose a big piece of what makes tech so exciting. That’s why community events, local meetups, and grassroots conferences matter so much. They're often the only spaces where deeply technical folks get to truly engage, especially since we’re usually last in line for training budgets and time off.

We're a Challenge

The truth is, most vendors don’t want us kicking the tires too hard. It’s safer to impress a VP with a shiny demo than to let a technologist dig in and ask the tough questions. But that’s what we do. We tinker. We test. We explore. That’s how we gain the confidence that a tool or service will actually make our jobs easier.  I’ve never been one to be able to stand behind a feature or product I didn’t truly find value in or value.

And that’s what I love about grassroots events—they still make space for that kind of curiosity. They remind me why I got into tech in the first place.  I will always be part of both types of events, but I have to recognize my excitement, my renewed energy and investment when attending a deep technical conference.

Have a great week,

DBAKevlar out.

dbakevlar

Join the debate, and respond to the editorial on the forums

This article explains how a Flyway migration-first approach, backed by consistent versioning and testing, helps teams bring structure and repeatability to even the most complex release processes. Coupled with techniques such as branch-based development, Flyway can help turn large, fragile deployments into smaller, more frequent, and more reliable operations.

Change Reports show how many objects are added, modified, and deleted at a glance by comparing the desired state of the objects to a target database. You can also drill into each object and see the exact changes in a side-by-side difference view.

In this series of blog posts, I aim to share some...

Agents are the talk of the AI industry...

Copilot beta update is rolling out to Windows...

Why Does My Trigger Have Multiple Plans In SQL Server...

Introduction These are my SQL Server Diagnostic In...

On March 13, 2025, Microsoft released SQL Server 2022 Cumulative Update 18...

There is a SET command in SQL Server that changes ...

Deadlocks used to scare me. I’d get the alert...

The Weird World Of SQL Server API Cursors #tsql2sd...

Jess Pomfret looks for old tables: There are many reasons why you might end up with tables named something_old in your database. Perhaps this is part of…

SQL Server Books I Recommend Head on over to the books page! Going Further If this is the kind of SQL Server stuff you love learning about, you’ll love...

SQL Server backups are database insurance – you don’t really appreciate them until disaster strikes. But here’s the kicker: having backups doesn’t mean your data is safe. If you’re...

Anil Kumar Moka loads some data: Loading data into...

Richard Swinbank deals with a totally-not-deprecated...

As a part of the Book of Redgate, we have a series...

T-SQL Tuesday is a monthly blog party hosted by ...

Error handling is a critical aspect of writing Powershell error handling...

If you’re going to work with databases, you probably ought to know something about data. In particular, we don’t put data directly into a database; we have to encode it and represent it in a format which a machine can handle.

GitHub Actions is a powerful CI/CD platform that can be used to automate code integration and deployment. This article series will teach you what you need to know to take advantage of GitHub Actions, especially for deploying database code.

I’ve worked on many different types of systems...

When using time intelligence functions, the automation...

Miquella de Boer gives us an update: Microsoft Fabric...

I recently had a new pipeline fail. It was actually...

Now that Fabric Data Agents...

Kevin Chant keeps us up to date: Microsoft Fabric ...

Brendan Tierney theoretically makes my life easier...

Throughout this series, I’ve provided a number of examples of how to run commands in MongoDB Shell (mongosh). However, the examples were limited to the version of mongosh...

The biggest lesson I’ve learned from helping fol...

SQL Server Performance Office Hours Episode 7 ...

Equality, Sort, Range Indexing In SQL Server – When It Works Going Further If this is the kind of SQL Server stuff you love learning about, you’ll love my...

To honor the name of the site (boringSQL)...

Relational databases are at the heart of countless...

Django and its admin interface and pghistory...

Back in November, I met with Claire Giordano...

On February 25, 2025 Christoph Berg committed the ...

When dealing with AI, one of the key things...

Federico Campoli deals with a lot of RAM: Nowadays...

Umair Shahid preps for an update...

A few weeks ago I wrote about the introduction of pgNow, a free, cross-platform desktop application from Redgate that is designed to assist users who might lack extensive Postgres...

Have you ever wanted to match two tables together ...

It is great to see the advancements in Power BI wi...

Handling NULL values can be a challenge and may le...

This is a submission for the Pulumi Deploy and Doc...

While low-code/no-code platforms offer built-in se...