By Ty Klayum

Hello! My name is Ty, and I was one of the PASS Summit Futures Scholars at the last PASS Summit this November. Thank you, the data community, for welcoming me with smiles and kindness at the event. You all made it a treat and an experience that I truly will never forget. Thank you also to the Redgate team, and the extensive list of event sponsors, for their hard work in setting up and orchestrating this event and for giving the other Scholars and me a chance to connect with the field uniquely and incredibly.

Due to the time difference between my location in Kansas City, Missouri, and the Redgate team’s time zone in Europe, I woke up on a bright Friday morning to an email informing me that I had won the scholarship to attend the event. This had to be a mistake! Was I heading to Seattle in just under 3 months to go to the biggest gathering of the data community in the world? And they were going to cover my expenses!? A few emails back and forth later, my skepticism subsided, and it turns out it was true! This is wild, I thought. I realized how blessed I was. This was just the beginning.

I arrived in Seattle the day prior to the event start and stepped foot in the Pacific Northwest for the first time ever. And because of diligence from Thy Pham, my contact from Redgate’s Marketing Team, I knew exactly where I needed to be and when. I took a walk in downtown Seattle, headed to a local coffee shop, and then went directly to the first session. It’s worth noting that many attendees throughout the week wore their PASS Lanyard wherever they went, so it generated easy and instant connection and conversation with anyone I could say hi to, even before the event began.

Events like the Welcome Reception were the perfect grounds to walk up to anyone who wasn’t already engaged in the great conversations all around me and strike up a chat with them. What seminars are you going to? Me too! I’m looking forward to learning about (fill in the blank) because of an initiative my company is taking toward so and so. This was direct insight into what a professional in the database industry’s day-to-day looked like and what they loved about it. I asked, “Do you enjoy this kind of work?” or “If you could go back and start over, would you stay in this field or change to something else?”. Many times, the answer I received was that they wish they had switched to this field sooner in their careers! This was perfect. The Community Zone and evening events presented even more opportunities to connect with others.

Attending as many lectures as possible, I packed my notebook with pages of information and circled terms to come back to later. There was a lot here, and these were the easier and introductory sessions! What else, besides drinking from the firehose of data and goodness, was there to do? An entire floor of exhibition tables and giveaways to attend was next on the list. I found myself going back to this floor multiple times to see as much as I could, as I wasn’t able to see it all between sessions, as there was so much.

My favourite moments over the three days of PASS Summit were meeting the Redgate Executives, Graham Miller and Kate Duggan, connecting and grabbing food with those I met between events and sessions, and simply walking around the venue. PASS Summit this year was hosted at the Seattle Convention Center, and it was beautiful. Another standout moment from PASS Summit was a conversation I had with another attendee who was seasoned in the field. He took the time to invest in me, answer my questions, and make sure that I understood what he described. He used analogies to make it simpler to take in the information and said it all in a kind and warm fashion. He gave me pointers and told me about becoming well-rounded in the field before settling and hunkering down into a niche after discovering what you love doing with data. This experience that I had was not unique, however. I consistently found myself reflecting on how welcoming and warm every attendee I had a conversation with was.

A note to all those considering attending future PASS Summits: It’s worth it! Book an extra day before and after the event is over, as Seattle and the locality are too sweet to miss. Potentially bring an extra notebook, but be sure not to overload on sessions because of the availability of video recordings online, post-event. I would also recommend signing up as soon as possible for the space-limited and fun events in the evenings, like Casino Night, Board Game Night, and others, and building your schedule on the app available for the event so you are well-rested and able to enjoy these as much as possible. And I would also be prepared to have conversations with other professionals who enjoy what they do, and who have wisdom available to someone willing to ask them engaging questions and draw it out.

This PASS Summit and the chance the Redgate team blessed me with to attend it changed the way I view the data field, especially the databases sector, paving the way for whatever is planned next for me. I can’t wait. PASS Summit removed the abstraction and uncertainties I had about the field and nudged me to be confident about taking initiative in the database industry. Thank you again, Redgate and event sponsors, this was a treat. Thank you also for the chance to write a small reflection on my experience. This was awesome. Thank you also, database community, for being so welcoming.