Data Saturday Chicago 2026

Magnus Ahlkvist

• An introduction to SQL Server database projects
• Get Started with tSQLt
• Everything you need to know about Temporal Tables

Andreas Wolter

• Practical Insights on SQL Server Consolidation and Migration
• De-mystifying SQL Security: Open Discussion and Real-World Insights

Joel Gagnon

• Enhancing Power BI UX to Unlock a Smarter Copilot
• Maximizing the impact of Power BI applications through improved user experience

Andrew Pruski

• The Burrito Bot
• AI-Powered Search in SQL Server 2025
• New features in SQL Server 2025

Courtney Woolum

• Reworking Indexes to Support an Evolving Application
• Modern Integration, Classic Toolset: A Practical Look at SSIS

Kev Chant

• Spreading your SQL Server wings with Microsoft Fabric
• Microsoft Fabric and GitHub - The story so far

Syed Usman Ahmad

• The 3 data sources for your DBA, SRE and CX teams
• Leveling up your SQL Skills

Dan Mallott

• The Field Guide For the Accidental Manager
• Secure SQL Server Database Design: Tactics and Technology
• Let's Get Scary and Continuously Deploy Database Changes!
• Unit Testing Your Transactional Database
• High Concurrency Table Hijinks

Ben Miller

• Enhanced Maintenance Techniques for Workload Stabilization
• SQL Server Configuration Best Practices
• The Ultimate Guide to Ola Hallengren's Maintenance Solution
• Exploring Contained Availability Groups in SQL Server 2022: A Deep Dive with Demos
• dbatools PowerShell Module Deep Dive

Frank Henninger

• Controlling the Source: Methods and Tools

Joey Dantoni

• Why SQL Server is Worth It
• PaaS vs. IaaS: Navigating Trade-offs for Smarter IT Decisions
• How to Manage Your Azure Infrastructure Like an Expert: Top Best Practices
• Building The Fabric Well-Architected Framework

Hasan Savran

• Hold my beer; I know how to fix this with AI!
• SQL Server vs Azure Cosmos DB
• How much SQL do you need to know as a developer?

Ben Johnston

• SQL Performance Tips for Development Teams
• Unmasking SQL Server - Side Channel Attacks

Christian Stegh

• Copilot Prompt-a-thon!

Prem Chandrasekaran

• Your problem isn’t the monolith. It’s the data.

Tim Rayburn

• Tools in your AI's Toolbox : An introduction to MCP Servers
• Help Your Teams Avoid Burnout And Apathy
• The Terminal is the New IDE: Rise of the Agentic CLI

Michael Wall

• Becoming a Master by Giving it all Away
• Azure Storage: You want to put what where?
• Peanut Butter and Jelly, Bacon and Banana, ADX and Polybase?

Mou Rakshit

• Oracle↔Lakehouse: Real-Time CDC to Databricks, Served Back to Oracle
• Real-Time Intelligence: Turning Streaming Data into Smart Decisions
• Orchestrating Multi-Agent AI with Fabric RTI: From Alert to Action

John Sly

• Building a Productive and Happy Team: From Clear Communication to Consistent Action

Dan Rochon

• Teach to Sell: Why the Top Salespeople Never Sell — And What They Do Instead

Sarah Peters

• Load Balancing Parenthood and a Tech Career (Or Trying To, Anyway)
• Lessons from a University Web Developer That Every Engineer Should Know
• From Concert Hall to Code Review, Symphony to Software

Erik Darling

• A Fistful of Parameters: Take Care and Control of Unstable Plans

Sammie Walker Herrera

• Strengthen Your Speaking Skills

Kevin Feasel

• The Curated Data Platform
• APPLY Yourself
• Applying Forensic Accounting Techniques using SQL and Python
• Getting Started with DuckDB

Deborah Melkin

• Optimized Locking: Improving SQL Server Transaction Concurrency
• Women in Tech (WIT) Panel

Alvaro Costa-Neto

• Seamless Transition: Migrating from Commercial to Open Source Databases
• Mastering PostgreSQL: Advanced Techniques for SQL Server DBAs
• SQL Server Hosting on AWS: Options and Considerations

Jared Kuehn

• T-SQL in Fabric: When to Use Notebooks vs. Stored Procedures
• Unlocking T-SQL Surface Area in Microsoft Fabric: Where It Works, Where It Doesn’t and Why
• Intro to PySpark in Microsoft Fabric
• Microsoft Fabric: Lessons from Year 2
• SSMS Copilot - A New Tool for your Database

Sourabh Kulkarni

• Artificial Intelligence (AI) and automation two critical pillars of delivery: Project Management and

Karthik Jaganathan

• Next-Gen Data Platforms with Microsoft Fabric: Metadata-Driven Frameworks for Smarter Insights

Bhaskar Bharat Sawant

• From Raw Logs to Real Insights: Building AI-Powered Observability with the Microsoft Data Platform
• Cloud Databases & Azure SQL: Modernizing Your Data Platform for Scale and Performance

Bishal Dasgupta

• Building Agentic AI Systems: A Practical Framework for Scalable Implementation and Architecture

Harini Rajagopal

• Tried and Tested Monitoring and Alerting for Ingestion Data Pipelines
• Data Engineering Roadmaps - Why is it hard to create roadmaps for data engineering teams

Peter Shore

• Infrastructure for Data Professionals: An Introduction
• Hello My Friends Welcome to CosmosDB
• Wait Wait Do Tell Me: A Look At SQL Server Wait Stats
• SQL Triage: Where to Start When the Proverbial Excrement Hits the Rotating Oscillator

Chetan Prakash Ratnawat

• AI-Driven Risk Scorecards: Transforming Cyber Insurance with Data

Naresh Reddy Regalla

• Mastering PostgreSQL Range Partitioning: A Strategic Approach to High-Volume Transaction Management

Carles Arnal

• From Edge to Cloud, Creating Data Pipelines Using Open-Source Technologies
• From data stream to prediction: Deploying real-time ML pipelines on Kubernetes

Jonathan Stewart

• An introduction to data modeling in Power BI
• Data Storytelling: Turning Analytics into Business Action
• Building Scalable Data Warehouses with Microsoft Fabric
• From Legacy to Modern: Your Data Platform Migration Strategy Guide

Serhii Savin

• Advanced Data Science Techniques Using Geospatial SQL
• A/B Testing at Scale: Best Practices, Pitfalls, and Automation

Santosh Durgam

• Synthetic Data for Data privacy
• Data as Product

Raghunadha Dornala

• Ensemble Load Balancing for Cloud Banking: Boosting Performance and Scalability

Gethyn Ellis

• Moneyball – Build a killer Fantasy Football Team with Power BI
• Bridging the Gap: Transforming Tech Friction into Startup Success
• Data-Driven Storytelling with Power BI
• A Step-by-Step Guide to Building a Data-Driven Culture

John Deardurff

• SQL Server 2025: an enterprise AI-ready database platform
• Business Continuity in Azure SQL Databases

Fabiano Amorim

• Your Ultimate SQL Server Statistics Best Practices Review
• 13 optimizer statistic problems you didn’t know you had
• The Injection Game: Exposing SQL Injection Vulnerabilities with ScriptDom
• Hacking MSSQL on Cloud. All of them. How I became sysadmin on Azure, AWS, GCP and Alibaba.

Hugo Kornelis

• T-SQL User-Defined Functions, or: How to kill performance in one, easy step
• Performance and execution plan improvements in SQL Server 2025
• Now Where Did THAT Estimate Come From?
• Normalization beyond Third Normal Form
• Improve your Database Performance in Seven Simple Steps
• Five stages of grief - internals of a hash spill
• Approximate functions: How do they work?
• Here’s the execution plan … now what?
• Execution plans ... where do I start?

AnandKumar Vedantham

• DataOps in Practice: Automating Secure Pipelines with Azure DevOps & Bicep
• Security-First Data Architectures: Embedding Zero-Trust into Microsoft Fabric and Azure

Sai Tejaswi Bellapukonda

• "Reskilling for the AI Era: From Analyst to Agent Manager"

Eric Riz

• The Ultimate Microsoft Copilot Workshop: Harnessing AI for Productivity and Innovation
• From Chaos to Clarity: Architecting a Data Strategy for Responsible AI
• Digital Debt: Unlocking Productivity in the Modern Workplace

Michael McKinley

• Modern Power BI Training: From Data Rookie to Dashboard-Ready In One Day

Kristyna Ferris

• Mastering the Content Snowball - Turning Tiny Efforts into Big Opportunities
• The Fellowship of the Star Schema: Transforming OLTP Data for Power BI
• Power BI Admin Level-Up: Leveraging Fabric to Manage Your Tenant
• Decoding Fabric Licensing

Ashutosh Jha

• Evolving Firewall Architectures for High-Bandwidth Data Centers

David Giard

• You and Your Technical Community
• Own Your Own Career – Advice from a Veteran Software Engineer
• Diving Deep into Data with Azure Data Explorer and Kusto Query Language
• Effective Data Visualization

Andrew Boerger

• Trust, but Verify: Data Quality in Microsoft Fabric

Ankur Bansal

• Unlock the power of AI to elevate your customer service!

Pratik Sheth

• Automating Data Trust: Building a Resilient Data Quality Framework

Randy Knight

• The Lost Art of Debugging SQL Server Stored Procedures
• Always On Availability Groups: Real-World Lessons from the Trenches
• AI for DBAs: Copilot, ChatGPT, and the Future of Database Work

John Martin

• Modernizing workloads from SQL Server to PostgreSQL with Flexible Server for PostgreSQL
• Database Development For non-Developers
• Of course I want to let Azure SQL manage my indexes, why wouldn't I?
• Automation for the people!
• Database Security is not the DBAs responsibility, change my mind.

Frank Geisler

• Data Wranglng the PowerShell way
• Releasing the Potential of Microsoft Real-Time Intelligence through AI Agents
• From Xbox to Insights: Real-Time Data in Action

Udaya Veeramreddygari

• API Development using AI Agents

Niyati P

• Data-Centric Agentic Computer Vision

Dippu Kumar Singh

• AI-Powered Transformation: The Future of Energy & Utilities Now

Jinal Mehta

• Key Considerations for Designing & Implementing a Big Data Pipeline
• Data Pipeline Security: Building Trusted Architecture in a Zero-Trust World

Endika Pascual

• Microsoft Fabric and Data Vault 2.0: A Scalable, Governed Data Architecture

Rajesh Vayyala

• Data Modeling for AI-Driven Enterprises: Best Practices for Scalability and Compliance
• Modern Data Made Simple: A Practical Walkthrough of the Medallion Architecture
• Architecting a Lakehouse on Azure: Combining Data Lakes and Warehouses
• AI-Native Data Architectures: Building for Speed, Scale, and Smartness

Philip Seamark

• Transforming the Power BI Modeling Experience with MCP
• Power BI Storage Modes: The Ultimate Showdown
• Load Testing Semantic Models with Fabric Notebooks
• Analytics at the speed of Direct Lake

Rob Volk

• Revenge: The SQL!
• Log Shipping for SQL Server

Kyle Mueller

• Semantic Model Optimization 101, and Why it Matters
• Where to Start With a Messy Model: A Practical Approach

Lee Markum

• Buttons, Levers, and Dials: What to Do With Key SQL Server Settings!
• Leveraging Query Store for Improved Performance

Siddhesh Pore

• Databricks Genie - No-Code AI Apps for empowering BI users to be self sufficient

Thomas LeBlanc

• Effective Visualizations with Power BI
• Enhancing Power BI with Copilot
• Making Power BI Run Faster!!!

Minesh Chande

• Modernize your SQL Server workloads to Babelfish for Aurora PostgreSQL
• Customize your managed SQL Server database on AWS Cloud
• HA/DR options on Amazon RDS and RDS Custom for SQL Server

Abraham Pabbathi

• Business Intelligence with AI on Azure Databricks

Tony Wilhelm

• Intro to PowerShell with dbatools for the DBA
• My Brain Has Blue Screened - Let’s Laugh

Joseph Fleming

• Transactional Replication - From Expletives to Excellence

Joshua Higginbotham

• Unlocking Real-Time Intelligence with Microsoft Fabric: From Purpose to Practical Use
• Unlocking the Power of Data Agents and Copilot in Microsoft Fabric