SQL community initiatives were started in 2004 by Amit Bansal. He travelled the length and breadth of India delivering free sessions on SQL Server. The organic growth led to the formation of SQLServerGeeks (SSG) in 2010 which gave a professional shape and structure to the community work. Under SSG, SQL Server Day events were most popular and saw a huge fan following.
In 2015, SSG organized Asia’s First SQL Conference. 50+ speakers delivered 70+ sessions in 5 tracks across 3 days for 600+ attendees. SQLServerGeeks Annual Summit 2015.
Continuing the success, SQLServerGeeks Annual Summit 2016 (SSGAS 2016) witnessed a bigger and better conference. 3 days, 5 tracks, 70+ speakers, 130+ sessions, 800+ attendees – the learning event was a grand success and embarked its position as a signature tech event of India.
While SQLServerGeeks (SSG) continued its focus on the SQL Community, Amit & his Team carved out a new community called DataPlatformGeeks (DPG), covering 30+ technologies in Microsoft Data Stack including Azure Data Services, ML, Cloud AI & Open Source Stack. And in parallel to SQL Server Day events, a new event was born under DataPlatformGeeks, titled Data Platform Day.
The third edition of Asia’s largest SQL conference was renamed to Data Platform Summit (DPS) where DataPlatformGeeks & SQLServerGeeks community was brought in together on single platform. DPS 2017 was Asia’s largest Data & Analytics Conference executed in Bangalore in the month of August 2017.
3 Days, 7 Tracks, 80+ Speakers, 200 Sessions, 300 Participating Companies, and 900 unique attendees.
The fourth year, we broke many barriers. DPS was shifted to a five-star property with world-class infrastructure, more Pre-Cons were added and summit sessions were highly curated. DPS 2018 set new standards for the industry to follow by making the conference sponsor-free. 0% Marketing, 100% Learning. The best from the industry & Microsoft joined us, and it was mind-blowing. Five days of non-stop learning and our delegates wanted more. DPS 2018 was majestically executed and feedbacks from delegates were overwhelming. Rohan Kumar, Corporate Vice President, Azure Data Group, from Redmond along with his team delivered a marvelous keynote, much-awaited by the industry.
And then happened Data Platform Summit 2019. More than 1000 delegates joined representing 300+ companies from 20+ countries. For the first time, DPS had participation from 20 countries confirming our global reach. Gayle Sheppard (CVP, Microsoft Azure Data) and her team joined us this time.
How DPS started? A casual read.
In recent times, DataPlatformGeeks webinars and virtual symposiums are seeing participation from 91+ countries. That is a huge win for us. One global community.
DataPlatformGeeks continues the journey of imparting free education around Data & Analytics in more than one ways. Data Platform Day events & webinars are more popular than ever before. With 295000+ subscribers, www.DataPlatformGeeks.com offers many free learning resources for the community.
SQLServerGeeks continues the journey of imparting free education around SQL Server. DataPlatformGeeks.com and SQLServerGeeks.com are community initiatives by Amit Bansal, supported by Microsoft & eDominer.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is DataPlatformGeeks an NGO?
No. We are not an NGO and we never claimed to be one.
So, is DataPlatformGeeks a profit making organization?
Any entity that is not an NGO, does not necessarily become a profit-making organization. The whole concept of community is so misunderstood by a few people. Community does not mean “everything free”. Community means “free stuff, some paid stuff yet very reasonably priced and easily accessible”. DataPlatformGeeks runs massive infrastructure to serve its members and to grow the community. Not limited to, but including full-time staff salaries, real estate expenses, website and mailing expenses, event expenses, authoring expenses, modest emoluments & flight/accommodation reimbursements to speakers and authors, constant operational expenses – DPG is a full-fledged organization and anyone who has ever run an organization would know costs are incurred in today’s modern times to run and maintain an IT infrastructure. DataPaltformGeeks aims to be self-sustaining. It is a community meant to serve the community. Except Data Platform Summit international event, all our learning resources and events & webinars are free for everyone.
How does DataPlatformGeeks sustain itself?
We are supported by our Knowledge Partners. Learn more.
More questions?
Drop us an email at admin@DataPlatformGeeks.com.
DPG Core Team
Ahmad Osama works for Pitney Bowes India as a Technical Architect and is a former Data Platform MVP. In his day job, he works on developing and maintaining high-performant on-premise and cloud SQL Server OLTP environments as well as deployment and automating tasks using PowerShell.
Ahmad has authored two books, Professional Azure SQL Database administration and Professional SQL Server High Availability and Disaster Recovery.
When not working, Ahmad blogs at dataplatformlabs.com and can be found glued to his xbox.