Time for a new adventure

A couple of years ago, after attending a couple of BI Community events, I started to think about how I could get more involved with the BI Community. At that point in time I had no clue but what I did know was that I did have huge sympathy for the organizers of all these events.

Back in June 2019, I ran into a friend who was Core Member at dataMinds. After talking to him, I asked if they could use an extra pair of hands on dataMinds Connect 2019 and so my journey started… During that event I started small, just helping as a room monitor.

About 2 months later, I joined the dataMinds crew as a Core member. So I finally found a way to assist the community. Unfortunately then something smashed down the world, what did they call it again? cov…. Corona? Covid? Not sure you’ve heard from it 😉

Even during the pandemic & a full lock down, planning started to host an alternative/virtual edition of dataMinds Connect (2020), I was really exited, I knew that I wouldn’t take a leading role in the event planning but I would be able to help where I could and learn a lot from the experienced core team. After a successful virtual edition the opportunity came to take more responsibility for one of our smaller events, dataMinds Saturday. During this event I could apply everything learned from the previous event, so without hesitation I joined the core team to organise dataMinds Saturday (Virtual Edition).

At the end of the event, I was really proud of what we have done, hosting a proper event with 4 different tracks and 20 sessions throughout the day.

After dataMinds Saturday 2021, planning for dataMinds Connect 2021 could start, at that point in time, nothing was sure, are we going to be able to host an “in-person” event? How will Covid evolve? After discussing with the core team, we just decided to go for it, we were all hoping to host an “in-person” event in October. So planning began.

Now, the event just finished (a couple of days ago), and I can say it really was a hell of a ride. So nice to see everyone again in person, seeing so many people networking, sharing the same interests.

Looking forward to the next event!

A couple of weeks before the event I seriously started to think about presenting & blogging, since I had no clue how to start, I took the liberty to ask questions to experienced speakers during the event. Gladly they we more than willing to share experiences and provide very useful tips. At this moment it’s still unknown when or where my first presentation will happen but I started preparations. (gathering ideas and content)

Keep you posted.