In just over a week, I will be spending eight days in Atlanta at a couple of conferences. I look forward to seeing so many people I haven’t seen in quite a long time, having a little fun, and of course, learning some things too.

Atlanta has never been a favorite city of mine (it could be that I mostly experience it from the driver’s seat of a car while trying to get to the other side to an airport… okay, to Orlando most of the time. I do love a lot of people that live in Atlanta and work with data. And it is just a bit over a 2 hr drive from my house

The sections aren’t in chronological order, because I definitely felt I should start with the conference I am speaking at first!

Speaking at SQL Sat Atlanta AI & BI 2026

On March 21st, I will be in Atlanta for SQL Saturday Atlanta 2026 AI & BI. I have enjoyed this conference every time I have attended, and the venue they have there is very very nice. Damu and team do an awesome job every year.

Here is the abstract:

BI versus Relational Design

In relational database design, the main objective is to mirror the database structure as outlined in the requirements to ensure data integrity. While this approach may sometimes be challenging for users of the database, the difficulty should primarily indicate the complexity of business needs rather than flaws in the design.

Conversely, whereas BI designs must also adhere to the requirements, usability is also especially important in your designs. Small design errors can result in analytic mistakes that have huge business implications, even when the data is technically correct. In this lightning talk, I will highlight a significant mistake I made in my initial large star schema project that haunted me for years.

This is the same session I did last year, but this will be the last time I do this session… by this name.

The problem with the name is that BI (Business Intelligence) design is far larger than the data modeling topic that this session really is. In the future, I will rename it to better suit the actual title. For this year, I will be making some changes this year to clarify that for people in attendance that I will be covering the things you need to know about each to separate them in your database design toolkit. The biggest thing that is hard for me after so many years is to try to not let one design style bleed into the other when you are modeling.

They are different things for a reason.

Attending/Working at FABCON/SQLCON

To start my time off in Atlanta is a week of learning at FABCON/SQLCON. It is the week before SQL Saturday, running from March 16-20.

I have a pretty busy schedule this week:

• Proctoring a Precon
• Attending a Precon
• 3 days of sessions
• Doing the Atlanta SkyWheel

One of my new things I am trying to do is hit the Ferris wheel in any city I go to. I will kick myself until i get back to the London Eye some day. I was right there, and I let my team talk me out of it (the weather was cloudy, so I bagged on doing it alone.

But yes, learning, all about the learning. It isn’t like I worked in any time off!

See you real soon?

Hope to see you all there either at FABCON/SQLCON, or SQL Saturday Atlanta. Of if these conferences are out of your way, there are plenty more around that you can check out.