Hey everyone,

I recently attended the Gartner Data & Analytics Summit held at the Disney Dolphin and Swan hotels in Orlando, FL, and I wanted to share my experience, especially since I run a solo data and analytics boutique focusing on data management, data strategy, data engineering, and data modeling.

The summit was an excellent opportunity for networking with professionals in the field. It offered a variety of sessions, including roundtables (intimate discussions capped at around 30 participants), vendor sessions (focused on sales pitches for their data governance, mesh, or AI tools), and, most importantly for me, sessions led by Gartner analysts.

Most of the sessions I attended dived into data governance and data product development within organizations, offering high-level frameworks and insights into the organizational change needed for these initiatives. They were incredibly informative, and great for me staying up to date on the latest trends and providing actionable takeaways. I definitely have some more reading to do on my part.

One of the highlights was chatting with other attendees. One highlight for me, was meeting a seasoned professional who shared his journey from the early days of loading data into tables with COBOL to attending one of Kimball's first seminars on dimensional modeling—I thought this was interesting because I learned dimensional modeling through Kimball's work.

While the summit was broadly beneficial, offering insights into industry practices for managing and deriving value from data, it was also an invaluable networking event. However, I wish I could have gotten into one of the roundtable discussions. They can be particularly valuable because they are deep dive sessions into one area that is facilitated by Gartner analysts alongside industry leaders.

This year’s focus was on Generative AI, almost to the point of overshadowing other discussions. Despite this, I'm excited to attend next year's summit to stay updated on the latest trends and best practices.

If you have any questions or need more details about the conference, feel free to ask. I'd be happy to share more about my experience.