As a content creator and someone deeply engaged in the data community, there’s one piece of advice I give to anyone looking to grow—attend community conferences and user groups. These events are goldmines of opportunity. Attending and organizing these events has fundamentally changed my career for the better, and it can change yours too.

1. Networking

Community conferences and user groups bring together a rich diversity of professionals—developers, architects, tech leads, recruiters, program managers, hiring managers, and industry legends. This creates the perfect environment to connect and discover opportunities. When you go to a community event, try to meet different people, find out what they do, and learn about their challenges. A casual conference conversation could often lead to lasting collaborations or career-changing intros.

1.1 Hiring and Getting Hired

I wouldn’t have worked with Tabular Editor today if I hadn’t met Daniel Otykier, who made Tabular Editor, in a Manchester user group last June. I’d known of him and admired his work for years, but he didn’t meet me until a year ago. You don’t want to wait for all the stars to align to get yourself out there. You never know who you will meet and what doors it will open for you.

1.2 Building Meaningful Friendships

I have been friends with Advancing Analytics cofounders Simon Whitely and Terry McCann for years. I met them separately for the first time at SQLBits and Microsoft Build. I remember meeting Simon at Bits for the first time and being a fangirl. Fast-forward many years, and when I wanted to start the London Databricks meetup, they were the first ones I went to for collaboration.

Over the years, we have attended many community events together, attended each other’s boardgame evenings, and built a strong friendship that I value and cherish even though I am halfway around the world now. These community events are full of people who do the same work as you and have similar challenges. You, too, can build meaningful friendships outside your organization by attending community events.

1.3 Finding Mentors

I have had great mentors and sponsors throughout my career. They invested their own valuable time in me, believed me and cheered me on. I had the pleasure to meet industry legends like Buck Woody at SQLBits a few years ago, and since then he’s given me life and career advice that would benefit me for the rest of my life. I would haven’t had the opportunity to meet someone at Buck’s calibre in my day job, even at Microsoft.  Yet, attending conferences like SQLBIts had given me the opportunities to do so.

1.4 Expand your Professional Network

I have met different people in my professional network that I wouldn’t have met if I didn’t meet them at community events. Over the years, I had job offers, invitation to speak at events, opportunities to collaborate on projects/customers because of this professional network that I built out of attending community events. Data is a small world, everyone knows everyone. Make sure you are known.

2. Broaden and Deepen Your Knowledge

The data world is vast and moves fast. Conferences are user groups are one of the great ways to keep up. You get access to great talks, amazing demos and product updates delivered by people actively solving problems in the field. By attending good conferences and user groups, you’ll gain insights you simply don’t get from blogs or documentation alone. Moreover, you can ask questions directly to the speakers typically during and after the talks, which makes it an interactive learning experience compared to watching videos or reading blogs.

3. Share and Showcase Your Knowledge

I get asked all the time by friends, coworkers, Linkedin followers about how to start public speaking. My advice is always just start. Many community conferences/user groups do a public call for speaker. If there is a topic you are passionate about, try to submit one and share your knowledge with the rest of the community.

By giving a talk, running workshops, participating in panels, you begin to build you’re your brand in the community. People start to associate your name with a particular topic, and over time, this can lead to more opportunities—speaking gigs, job offers, or mentorship roles.

4. Be Part of Something Bigger

This didn’t come to me until I relocated halfway around the world and started working remotely. Conference events gave you access to people who do the same job as you, have the same challenges as you, and are learning the same technology as you. It makes me inspired and energized engaging with the community. If you are like me, working remotely, conferences and user groups gave you a great opportunity to fulfil your social needs.

Conclusion

By now attending community conferences and user groups is a must-have for me. Each time I am attending new events, I meet new friends, learn something new, and gain future opportunities. I try to create the same opportunities for people by organizing community events. I just started the Power BI & Fabric User Group in Singapore, the launch event is happening on 24th July virtually:
6pm Singapore time
7pm Tokyo time
8pm Sydney time
11am UK time
12 at noon Central European time

Free feel to join us, ask questions, learn and network.

https://www.meetup.com/singapore-power-bi-fabric-user-group/events/308664715