What it takes to create a Data Conference: How I built Fabric Symposium

Introduction

2024 saw the birth of . A community driven Microsoft Fabric focused data conference, based on an idea that had been living rent-free in my head for much of 2023, until I finally put in the effort to make it a reality in 2024.

I thought the turn of the year, with our inaugural conference successfully completed just 6 weeks ago, would be the perfect time to reflect on the process, and in the spirit of community and transparency, share how the event was created, and how it went.

This week, the story of Fabric Symposium, which I hope may inspire others to ignite their own ideas, as well as the numbers behind the first Fabric Symposium, some of the feedback received post-event, and some thoughts about the future of Fabric Symposium.

The Idea

I truly believe that we are all born entrepreneurs. Along the way, some of us just stop acting on our ideas, only allowing them to exist in our heads, and never to manifest.

I too had an idea.

In the wake of the Public Preview of Microsoft Fabric mid-2023, I found myself overwhelmed with the amount of new tech to learn and adopt. I also found that while there was already heaps of awesome learning material being put out by talented community members and Microsoft themselves, there was very little guidance on best practices and actual solution experience (well, for good reason of course. The product had barely been released).

In addition data conferences, at least in the Microsoft data-sphere, have a tendency to favour technology-driven sessions. Those are sessions which are business-generic, focusing on features and functionality of the technology in question, hoping that the audience will be able to apply said features in their own organizations.

On the flipside, conferences see very few business-driven sessions, where the starting point is a case story from the presenting organization.

The idea of Fabric Symposium slowly took shape in my head:

What if we got early adopters of Microsoft Fabric to stand up and share their honest reflections and thoughts about Fabric. Share their case stories and what decisions they have made along the way, why they made those decisions, as well as the outcome.

Initially, the Idea was a very informal event, in which speakers were not necessarily selected beforehand, but rather an open mic type of event. However I quickly realized two major issues:

1. This is a risky approach. Would attendees be willing to spontaneously tell their stories?
2. Said stories might not be very well prepared, and the experience for the audience might not be so great…

Instead, I settled on a pitch for a slightly less innovative format:

• A one-day conference of actual Fabric Users sharing their war stories. No salespeople on stage. No features & functions sessions.

Finding a location and refining the concept

I brought this pitch with me into 2024, and set up a meeting with two good friends from Microsoft Denmark, Lars Andersen and Christian Ømand. I knew from previous User Groups and other events, that Microsoft was often keen on letting the community borrow their facilities. I also thought that making the event free would be necessary to be allowed to use the Microsoft Denmark offices, and that we would therefore need to find some other money (e.g. from sponsors) to make things work.

The pitch was therefore expanded:

• A one-day conference of actual Fabric Users sharing their war stories. No salespeople on stage. No features & functions sessions.
• Attendance should be free (if possible), to attract as many users for the audience as possible, and avoid any commercial complexities.
• Sponsors should be able to get some recognition at the conference in exchange for paying for the necessary amenities and keeping the event free for attendees.

Fortunately, Lars and Christian liked the idea from the very beginning, and borrowing the Microsoft location was no problem, given that the day in question was available, and that food and drinks were purchased through the Canteen on-site. A couple of other central decisions were made with their great advice:

• Attendance should not be free, to avoid no-shows and increase commitment. Let’s instead have a very modest ticket price.
• No sponsors to dilute the spirit of the event. Let the attendees spend the breaks between sessions networking and talking about their ideas — Now we will have some revenue from tickets to pay for amenities as well.
• Let’s ask around in the Danish MVP community to find a good timeslot for the event, and ensure no clashes with other existing (or other new) events.

Lars and Christian also offered to help with the execution of the event, as well as help finding suitable speakers for the event.

Standing on the shoulders of giants

With the advice from Lars and Christian, In February 2024 I reached out to Microsoft Community MVPs Just Blindbæk and Asgeir Gunnarson, whom I had the fortune of meeting when I presented a session at Power BI Next Step 2023 in Copenhagen. Just and Asgeir have spent years hosting Microsoft Data Conferences and User Groups, and I believed they would be the perfect people to ask, with regards to judging if the concept was viable, and for advice about making it happen.

Luckily, Just and Asgeir were also big fans of the idea from the start, and likewise offered to help out with planning and execution of the event (I almost couldn’t believe how everybody just wanted to help!). With their invaluable input, we made several key decisions for the Fabric Symposium:

• They allowed me to host the event under the umbrella of their registered company ‘Power Events Aps’, which removed a huge planning burden from my shoulders, in terms of registering a new company, dealing with tax and accounting and all kinds of bureaucratic exercises.
• We agreed on the November 28th 2024 date for the event, which would not clash with neither Power BI Next Step, Data Platform Next Step, Data Saturday Denmark & FabCon in Stockholm, and would be nicely placed just a week after Microsoft Ignite.
• While I was keen on sourcing sessions with a Call for Speakers through a platform like Sessionize, Just and Asgeir argued that for this type of event, we would be better off personally contacting interesting organizations and individuals, which would also save on expenses (Sessionize is only free for free events).
• We also decided to have monthly check-ins, and to have Just assist on some of the technical setup behind the scenes (copying much of the infrastructure used for the Next Step conferences), and Asgeir assist on other parts of the planning.

Below are the things off the top of my head that we discussed and solved between the three of us in the months between February and June:

• Setup website on Wordpress
• Acquire a domain for website + email
• Procure a logo and basic visual identity for the event
• Create budget for event
• Booking the conference auditorium at the Microsoft Denmark offices
• Setup payment flow on website
• Create LinkedIn page for event
• Find speakers for the event through network and Microsoft
• Create communication plan, including content and graphics for social media marketing.

With so much of the heavy event infrastructure work taken care of by Microsoft, Just & Asgeir, allowing me to build on the work that they have done previously, it was time to deal with the biggest of the planning challenges: The speaker/session lineup for the event.

Putting together the speaker line-up

Throughout my conversations with Lars, Christian, Just and Asgeir, hidden beneath all the optimism, was also a slight general fear if we would actually be able to find enough cases / organisations which:

1. Were interesting enough to be presented
2. Were varied enough to attract a wide audience
3. Had a speaker who were willing to present the case at the event

Our approach for sourcing the sessions for the event, were also quite different from how most conferences are done these days. Rather than a Call for Speakers, where speakers pitch their ideas to the conference, we opted for going the other way: Reaching out to organizations in search of interesting cases.

From the beginning, two important priorities were laid out for the speaker line up:

1. It was essential to me that we needed sessions that covered a wide range of the topics present in a platform like Microsoft Fabric. It did not make sense to me to have six sessions all focusing on Architecture and Lakehouses, alienating all the Business Decision Makers, Data Analysts and Platform Administrators.
2. The line up should be as diverse as possible.

Our approach of reaching out to potential speakers directly also meant that they likely did not have the session prepared beforehand. This allowed us to help shape the direction of each session, to better fit within the overall agenda of the Symposium.

Through a mix of references from Microsoft, Just, Asgeir and some of their MVP contacts, using my personal network, and from reaching out to people who had already shown their faces as some of the early adopters of Microsoft Fabric through local user groups, a very satisfying line-up took shape:

• Jacob Rønnow of AP Pension would present on their experience with Architecture and Data Engineering in Fabric
• Sarah Arndt of NIRAS would present a session on how to get a Platform like Fabric approved, and navigating the complex stakeholder landscape surrounding such an implementation.
• Jakob Libak of Novo Nordisk was willing to share their story of Fabric/Power BI Adoption and Governance
• Andrea Tusa and Jolanta Garlacz of Pandora had perspectives to share as Power BI Administrators who suddenly, and involuntarily, became Fabric Adminsitrators.
• Bernat Agullo of Esbrina would share a practical session showing just how small you can go with Fabric, and making the most of small capacities.
• Jan Boldt of Brødrene Hartmann turned out to be one of the few people in Denmark with practical experience using Real-Time Intelligence in Fabric, and he was luckily willing to share their solution with the Symposium.

To round off the Agenda, I wanted to bring both a little bit of wow-factor, as well as some community interaction. Hence, it was decided early on to try and get a Microsoft Keynote as the opening session for the Symposium, and in addition, a closing Q&A Panel at the tail end of the Symposium.

For the opening keynote, we were lucky to convince ever passionate Benni de Jagere of the Microsoft CAT team to come share his experiences of working with some of the biggest Fabric customers out there. And for the panel, Benni, Lars and Niels Grønning from Microsoft all agreed to join forces with Jacob, Jakob and Bernat for an awesome panel.

Overall, I was quite pleased with the line up. I could have wished for greater gender equality, especially for the panel debate, but none of our female speakers wanted to join, despite being asked. This will see even more focus next year. Also, I think we struck a very good balance content-wise, with many areas of Fabric represented.

Firing up the engines

With the Speaker Line-Up finalized, it was possible to create all the marketing material, finish up the website building, and promote the event.

Asgeir and I debated the prices and number of tickets at length. Venue capacity was 247 people, but with Speakers, Volunteers, Microsoft Employees in mind, and not necessarily a wish to overstuff the room, we eventually settled on capping ticket sales at 200 tickets.

The price of the tickets was calculated based on the catering prices for the event, as they made up the majority of our expected costs (the only other real expense being a small speaker present and costs for webhosting). For food, drinks and snacks throughout the day, this totalled about 380 DKK / ~50 EUR.

I also wanted to incentivise early buyers, by offering an Early Bird price on the first tickets. In the end, we settled on offering 25% of the available tickets at a very modest Early Bird price of 300 DKK / ~45 EUR, and selling the remainder at 450 DKK / 60 EUR

We decided to kick-off Ticket Sales for the event on August 15th 2024. This fit nicely, as many Danes would’ve ended their summer vacations the week prior, and would’ve had time to return to work and get over the worst post-holiday email-hump. Also, it was the middle of August, and a week day. A good time to make some SoMe noise.

Luckily, with the help of some resharing from the people involved in the planning process, the launch was quite successful with a good 26% (52 tickets) of tickets sold within the first two weeks after launch.

Our LinkedIn page likewise got a small following (only ~60 people in the first two weeks, but still), and I paid future Jon the favor of scheduling all of the session announcements in advance, minimizing the amount of weekly work associated with marketing.

Over the course of the next months, while announcements were routinely published every week on LinkedIn and on our website, we in addition sourced participants by promoting the event through a number of other channels:

• People in the planning group used personal network and work connections to promote the event to likely attendees.
• Microsoft helped spread the word to customers, within the realms of what they were allowed to.
• Just and Asgeir were kind to advertise the event at the Power BI Next Step conference, the Danish based MSBiP user group, and the newsletter with 1000+ recipients associated with the latter.

All in all, this led to a steady ticket sales trend, which although much slower than at launch, resulted in about 130 tickets sold 1 week prior to the event. And with speakers, volunteers etc. included, we were looking at 150 people for the event. Pretty good!

Last minute hiccups: Budget problems, atmosphere and incomplete guest lists

In the week leading up to the event, a few major deadlines took place:

• Catering had to be ordered one week in advance
• The final list of attendees had to be provided 48 hours in advance for registration purposes.

With an event that was not sold out, this presented a delicate challenge. How much food should we order, and how long could we keep ticket sales open?

It was also at this time that I realized a major mistake of mine. Recalculating the catering expenses, I found that I had been counting revenue from Tickets WITH VAT included, against costs for catering WITHOUT VAT. This meant that with 130 tickets sold, 50 of them as Early Bird tickets, we were looking at a small bottom line deficit when factoring in the costs for the 20 attendees who were not buying a ticket, but obviously needed food and drinks anyway.

This factored heavily in the decision to keep ticket sales open as long as possible, and then making educated guesses for the catering which had to be ordered NOW!

We did not believe we would sell out the event at this point, so there was no point in planning for that. In addition, we knew that not all attendees would eat breakfast and afternoon cake. As a result, drinks were ordered for 175 people, while breakfast and cake only for 100 people, making the budget work out in the end without having to cut the small speaker presents. This ended up working out, as we over the course of the final 5 days of ticket sales sold another 30 tickets, landing us at ~180 attendees.

Two days before Fabric Symposium was coincidentally also the day of the Novo Nordisk Fabric Summit. Another Fabric focused event held in the same location as Fabric Symposium, but for Novo Nordisk employees only.

I was however lucky enough to have stricken a deal with Jakob, the planner of the event, and Product Owner of Fabric at Novo Nordisk, to come present a session at the event, in exchange for him coming to present at the Symposium two days later.

Attending an event so similar in character, right before your own event, really makes you look at all the details for stuff you missed and forgot. In my case, a few things stood out from the Novo Nordisk event:

• Novo Nordisk had invited a bunch of sponsors/partners to populate the foyer of the conference space with booths, raffles and merch. On the one side, this gives a lot of energy to the event, and on the other, gives less incentive for attendees to speak with each other. At the very least, it made me question our complete lack of “entertainment” in between the sessions at the Symposium.
• The event had a bunch of small, round standing tables scattered around the foyer, allowing a place for people to congregate, chat, eat, drink. How could I have forgotten something like that? I made a mental note to talk to the Microsoft Event team about it…
• Signage. I forgot about signage too. The Novo Nordisk event leveraged a huge widescreen in the foyer to cycle through a presentation of practical information, agenda and a QR code link to a feedback form. Genius. In addition there was a bunch of roll-ups and paper signs around the event, guiding the attendees. I had planned for none of this.

After coming home from the event, I scrambled together a mail to the Microsoft Event team with a few final details:

• A list of the final 180 attendees (or so I thought… more about that below)
• A small 3 slide presentation inspired by the Novo Nordisk event, including a Welcome Screen with the Symposium logo, a Schedule and a Feedback Form link.
• A plea for the event team to put up the same table setup as was used for the Fabric Symposium event.

The next day, meaning the day before the Symposium, I ran through the event email to catch any last minute communication. A few attendees had written wanting to swap names on their tickets — No biggie I thought. We’d be able to fix that at the entrance of the event, despite their names missing from the Attendee List sent to Microsoft the day prior. However, for some reason it also made me cross-check the Attendee List. Something I should have done the day before, but I was too exhausted to do properly. Turns out… The Attendee List that I sent only had 160 names. Not 180.

Crap. That’s a few too many to my liking. What had happened, was that in my rush, I had exported the list of all the paid tickets, and hand-copied the names of the volunteers/speakers into the list. Except during this copying, I had simply overwritten 20 of the existing names, removing them from the list.

The Event Team at Microsoft was luckily quite accommodating, and I managed to amend the list last minute, and they were also happy to assist with the tables and slideshow.

Yes! We’re finally all set for the big day!

Time flies (when you’re having fun)

Fabric Symposium opened its doors at 08:00, and despite the early start, most attendees made it in time for the opening Keynote at 08:30.

Things mostly went smoothly for the opening, with an excellent breakfast, my last minute slideshow on the big screen, and the volunteers well at work handing out nametags. Unfortunately, the Attendee List from the day before never was amended in the end, and as a result we had quite a few people who needed special help from the Reception getting a tag printed, as they were not on the list… Not ideal, but the Microsoft people really handled it well, and helped smooth things out. I wish I would’ve had that better under control.

From 08:30 to 17:15 it was more or less all smooth sailing, with sessions running nicely, all speakers showing up on time, and the audience really having an amazing energy. Especially in the breaks, where you could clearly see how the Danish Microsoft industry is a tightly knit community. Friends and old-colleagues were meeting and re-meeting everywhere, and time went past really fast. A few sessions ended maybe slightly too soon, making the breaks slightly too long, but overall it was happy faces all around.

Towards the end of the event, it did however show that perhaps I had been a bit ambitious on the Agenda. Trying to squeeze in as much content as possible in a single day had made for both an early start and a late end. Consequently, a few of those coming from afar (something I hadn’t even thought about as a possibility when I had the original idea), started to leave the event right after the strategically placed Novo Nordisk session from 15:30–16:30, which had otherwise kept more or less everybody around!

But who can blame them. They had been there for 8 hours already!

It did mean though, that the Panel Debate only saw about half the attendees (~80 ish people) in the room. Still plenty of people for a good debate. In hindsight, there are things I would do different about the debate:

• Better Microphone setup: The speakers were passing around microports which are meant to be fixated on a single person, meaning the sound was not great.
• More strict moderation: Some discussions ended up becoming a little too detailed back and forth between individuals in the audience and panel members. Perhaps questions could be gathered beforehand, and maybe even voted on by the audience, for a more streamlined session? Stuff to think about…

And regarding the overall design of the event schedule, a few reflections here post-event:

• The keynote should have started slightly later at 09:00, and the Panel should have ended at 16:30, cutting out a session somewhere in the middle. This would’ve been way more manageable for the attendees traveling far.
• In addition, sessions should’ve been 45 mins instead of 60 minutes. 60 minutes is a long time to stay fully focused as an audience, and frankly, many speakers prefer speaking for 40–45 mins anyway.
• While the sessions covered a wide range of topics, it also meant that some attendees found some of the less relevant. Potentially the event could benefit from a second session track, allowing for the audience to choose the session best fitting their interests.

Feedback and Conclusion

Overall, the feedback received from the event has been overwhelmingly positive.

Microsoft were extremely happy to see 180 Fabric enthusiasts in their building (might also have helped that some 40–50 companies who are not currently Fabric customers were represented).

The speakers had an amazing time speaking in front of what was for many of them, the biggest audience of their speaking career (I get it! — I haven’t even had the chance myself to speak in front of more than 100 people live yet! Well except welcoming people to the Symposium…).

And the audience that I talked to, praised the event for its insightful sessions and great execution. That’s about as good as it can get for a first event, I think!

The constructive anonymous feedback received (of which there was luckily some — sample shown below), mostly centred around the same things already touched upon. The one thing that stood out to me, was the comment about better female representation. While I think we did okay this time, for what we had to work with, we need to do even better next time!

Next time… Right. That is probably the right note to end on here. I think in all humbleness that Fabric Symposium 2024 was a smashing success. And will there be a next time? Yes. Definitely yes. I think it would be a huge shame not to repeat such a day.