SQLBits 2023
- Richard Jackson
- Archive
- March 21, 2023
- Updated:
Table of Contents
This year’s data conference took place at the International Convention Centre (ICC) Wales, so Chris and I were delighted to be able to make a short trip down the M4 to attend. While we had the pleasure of a half hour drive, other attendees had flown over from across the world, from Albuquerque to India. This was clearly the place to be for anyone working in a data-driven enterprise.
Events such as SQLBits are invaluable opportunities to learn from tech specialists at the top of their game, and this year’s conference was no exception. We attended two, full-day training sessions which were filled with business-relevant technical solutions and perspectives relevant for our day-to-day operations – notebooks were filled with ideas to take back to our clients.
Sessions attended included:
- “Automate the rollout of a complete Azure based data warehouse solution in a day” with Andre Kamman
- “Boost Your Skills for an Azure Architect” with Heini Ilmarinen
- “Building an end-to-end and open solution to monitor and govern your entire data estate” with Dave Ruijter and friends
- “Improve your skills as a database developer” with Uwe Ricken
Alongside these core sessions were the opportunities for after-hours gaming, socialising, excellent foot and even a 5k run (!) in a “Dungeons and Dragons”-themed environment – what more could you ask for?
I then returned for the Saturday sessions to catch the most colourfully dressed keynote speech ever witnessed, before attending a session by Microsoft Sr CSA Manager and NHQ Chair Steph Locke on the use of Azure Functions within data pipelines.
This event was hugely beneficial for us as a company as the learning taken from these sessions will have immediate advantages for our clients and future projects. It was a joy to see such an important event be hosted in Wales and we hope that more, large conferences make their way across the border.
SQLBits 2023
FAQs
Why does data conferences matter for a manufacturing AI company?
SQLBits is one of the UK’s largest data and analytics conferences, bringing together data professionals from across industries to share knowledge about data engineering, analytics, machine learning, and the Microsoft data platform. For GoSmarter, participation in SQLBits reflects the data engineering foundations that underpin everything the company does.
Manufacturing AI tools are, at their core, data tools. Mill certificate reading is a document intelligence problem. Cutting optimisation is a combinatorial optimisation problem. Inventory management is a data management problem. Compliance documentation is a data governance problem. The data engineering skills required to build these tools well are the same skills celebrated at conferences like SQLBits.
What are the data engineering challenges in manufacturing?
Manufacturing data presents some distinctive engineering challenges. It is often unstructured (PDFs, scanned documents, handwritten records), variable in quality (scans of poor quality, non-standard formats, missing fields), high in volume (thousands of certificates, hundreds of orders), and operationally critical (the certificate that cannot be found is the delivery that cannot go out).
Building systems that handle this kind of data reliably — at the speed and accuracy that production teams need — requires genuine data engineering expertise. GoSmarter’s presence at SQLBits reflects the company’s investment in the data engineering discipline that makes its manufacturing tools work in real production environments.
