Snowflake Data World Tour

November 23rd, 2023 (11 months ago) • 4 minutes

Snowflake breakout room talk

Snowflake breakout room talk

I woke up at 8 a.m., took a warm bath, and got ready to go to the Hilton Hotel, where the event was being held this year. Since traveling by train would take an hour, I opted to drive instead; I hadn't expected the morning rush hour to be so bad - it took me about 45 minutes to reach.

Upon arriving at the hotel, I was greeted by the staff, and they printed a name tag for me on the spot. The name tag had five spots for stamps, and I was told that I could get a stamp for each booth I visited. Once I collected them all, I could go to the reception and get a merchandise bag.

I walked around and visited each booth. There were six booths set up - notable ones that I remember are Snowflake (duh), Snowplow, and Braze.

At 10:30 a.m., the event started with an opening keynote by Sanjay Deshmukh, SVP of Snowflake. He talked about the scale of Snowflake, the main pillars for data and new LLM use cases. CelcomDigi then presented their business and how data powers it.

A nice ceiling display I took when I was bored

A nice ceiling display I took when I was bored

At 12 p.m., it was break for lunch. The lunch was great, with hotel-quality, delicious food. I met a few old colleagues, and we talked about the event and our current work over food. I managed to snag a Snowflake t-shirt, a stool, some stickers through the lottery ball machine (there's a smart way to maximize getting the right ball 🥴).

Snowflake swags (Pillow courtesy of SF's sales engineer)

Snowflake swags (Pillow courtesy of SF's sales engineer)

After lunch, the event split into multiple tracks, depending on whether attendees wanted more hands-on experience or preferred listening to talks.

I opted for the latter but ended up spending of my time speaking with Snowflake engineers and asking them questions about the product. I learned a lot about the features they are about to roll out, some of which might be useful for our current work. We briefly discussed about streaming use cases, lakehouse approach, enterprise versus standard, and more.

Jack, Sales Director from SF, came over and joined in the discussion. We talked about holiday plans and I mentioned about possibly visiting Da Nang. He recommended dropping by Hoi An and visiting the Golden Bridge at night. I also learned about shops that sell tailored made suits within 24 hours.

Networking with people at the event was great, and I managed to get a few contacts for the future.

I also talked to Geoff, the current MD of Snowflake ASEAN. He was very friendly, and we discussed the upcoming Snowflake Summit in San Francisco, the Prism and Sterra brands, the turnout of the event, and more.

At the end of the event, there was a lucky draw, and one of our colleagues won a Samsung monitor, which was the grand prize. I didn't win anything, but I was happy for him.

I went back home by train and arrived at 6 p.m.

Overall, it was a great event, and I'm looking forward to the next one. Snowflake people are friendly and approachable. Not a lot of booths offered swags this year, but I'm happy with the t-shirt and pillow I got.

One thing I hope could be better is more Snowflake customers sharing their use cases through their booths instead of vendors.

Personally, I think I should also expand my reach and talk to other people at the event, not just people I know within my circle.