What what you have been doing as a response to COVID-19?

Introduction

I want to tell you a little bit about what we at gethynellis.com have been doing in response to COVID-19. We have been open for businesses helping our customers and clients with their data platform needs, but outside of work time, we have been trying to help others as best as we have been able.

This post is also my contribution to TSQLTuessday. TSQLTuesday, is a monthly community blog event where people from the SQL Community each write a post on a given subject. All the posts that are written and published are summarised and fed back in a roundup post by the host. The roundup post is usually an exciting read, reading other opinions on the same subject. Glenn Berry (B|T) hosts this month’s edition.  Glenn is asking the question “What have you been doing as a response to COVID-19?”

Have you been affected by COVID-19?

Before I move on, I need to state that I do have a tremendous amount of sympathy for everyone who may be struggling. It is not an easy time. If you have tried to get through the COVID-19 pandemic as best you can while trying to keep your family safe well done, that is the right thing to do, and you can’t do any more. So when you see tweets like this, I have to disagree

I think this tweet probably sums my thoughts on the above tweet, excuse the language; they are not my words:

I have also seen a poem on social media “We are not in the same boat”, this poem resonated with me, and this is an extract from it.

“I heard that we are all in the same boat, but it’s not like that.

We are in the same storm, but not in the same boat.

Your ship could be shipwrecked, and mine might not be.”

People will be in different positions to be able to do different things during the lockdown. Please don’t read what people have written in the posts this month and compare yourself to them. Everybody is in a different position and a different boat. Trying to keep your boat afloat and come out of the storm being safe and well is the only thing that really matters.

Impact of COVID-19 on my family and me

I’ve been fortunate, at least for the time being, in that my family and friends haven’t suffered directly because of COVID-19. While we have suffered a couple of personal losses during this time, they are not directly linked to COVID-19, although the lockdown has made it more difficult for us to deal with them. At the time of writing, all my family are safe and well (knock on wood, and I hope that continues).

So what have we been doing? Well, we have been pretty busy.

NHS Volunteers

First, I have to mention my wife. Sabrina works in our business as Director of Operations and Wellbeing. Due to schools closing, she decided to change her workdays so she could home school the children during the week. While juggling any work that couldn’t wait to the weekend, she now works Saturday and Sunday. Sabrina also volunteered as an NHS Volunteer Responder. She provides a free “check-in and chat” service which involves her receiving alerts on her phone (it sounds like an air raid siren) which notify her that a member of the local community requires her help. Sabrina will then call them up to check on their physical and mental well being. Sabrina has also volunteered with another organisation called Genius Within to provide free one to one wellbeing sessions for key workers in crisis.

She has done a pretty good job too – so much so she has been interviewed by several national newspapers on her volunteering effort and the contribution she has made. Last Friday as part of the VE day celebrations she was interviewed in a live broadcast by the Royal British Legion. You can watch that interview here. Her interview starts after 33 minutes, the Earl and Countess of Sussex are on just before her https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YDUZ95dneF4&t=2008s

What I have done pales somewhat into insignificance, but I have been doing some things too.

SKYPE DARTS

Just after the announcement of the lockdown, my friend, Mark Hawkins, had to self isolate, his son had symptoms. His son has made a full recovery, but Mark had time on his hands, as did some of my other friends who could no longer go to the pub or venture too far from home. We decided to try and play darts online, and SKYPE DARTS was born. Skype Darts is simple; it involves a webcam/mic/skype account, dartboard and some darts and your mates and you play darts over skype.
Check out my YouTube video that explains what it is all about https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gaaxcgooK00&t=15s

Remote Working Webinar

As lockdown started, it was evident from social media posts that lots of people and businesses were finding the transition to remote working difficult. The difficulty transitioning was further highlighted after speaking to my friend Ross Borman who works as Business Development Manager at Havant and East Hants Mind. Ross and his charity were trying to move as many events as possible online quickly.

Ross asked me if I could advise on suitable platforms and technology for them to run online events. I did an hour or so session with Ross and his team to show them around, Zoom and a few other tools that they could use.

My session with Ross got me thinking about other organisations that might benefit from a little help in getting set up online. So I ran a webinar that I put together quite quickly called “Useful tools for people working remotely”. Having worked from home and delivered events online for many years, I wanted to help people and businesses that may have been struggling get to grips with a new way of working and quickly. I mentioned the tools that I like, Zoom, Teams Slack, Trello, to name a few tools that I enjoy using and can be friendly on price too. This event was attended by twenty people mainly from smaller businesses. Judging by the feedback, the session was appreciated by all who came along.

DATAWEEKENDER

Can you organise and deliver a virtual data conference in 30 Days?
Yes, you can #DataWeekender.

#DataWeekender is a new online conference that had it’s inaugural running on Saturday 2nd May 2020.

We created #DataWeekender to act as a substitute for the many data community events cancelled or postponed due to the Covid-19 pandemic. We wanted to put on an online data platform conference for the community to fill that void left by the cancelling of the in-person events on a day that hopefully, most people can attend.

How did #DataWeekender come about?

On Thursday, 27th March my friend Kevin Chant posted a tweet saying that he wondered how long it would be before someone set up a free virtual community conference to replace all the cancelled in March, April and May. As a result of COVID-19. I had been thinking about a similar idea and replied to the tweet saying we should explore the possibility.

We concluded, after a bit of toing and froing on twitter, that we thought we could put an event together. We had our first virtual meeting on Saturday 4th April to discuss what would be involved. Within a week of this meeting, we had a six-person organising committee,
Ageir Gunnarsson (B|T)
Damir Matesic (B|T)
Kevin Chant (B|T)
Magnus Alkhvist (B|T)
Mark Hayes  (B|T)
and Myself

A Call for Speakers and a date (2nd May) and we were off and running. I have written extensively about the process on Linkedin. Too much to include in this post without it turning into a book. Between the 6 of us that started, the speakers who volunteered their time and content and the volunteers who helped pull the whole thing together we managed to pull off, what we think is the largest online community conference to date. Six tracks with seven sessions, that’s 42 sessions with 43 speakers. Over 1000 people signed up over 600 of those turned up on the day. All in under 30 days!

The overall event feedback was 4.84/5.00 from over 150 responders. We could never have imagined feedback as good as this.

#DataWeeknder – What happens next?

On the day of the conference, many people asked when the next #DataWeekender would be? And we genuinely hadn’t thought about another event, as the first event held all our focus. With the feedback we received, I’m now delighted to confirm that there will be another #dataweekender and there may be many more.

Details at the moment are light, but we are having a debrief and planning meeting later this week to discuss the next event and when it might happen. I will share any details with you as they are confirmed but watch the space #DataWeekender will return.

Conclusion

If during this unprecedented global pandemic, you have done your best to survive and remain healthy then well done to you. That is all you can do. It turns out I have had a lot of fun along the way and made new friends and new connections and helped come up with the concept and delivery of an online data conference in #DataWeekender that will no doubt continue beyond the “bump in the road” that is COVID-19.

Keep safe and well, everyone and do reach out to me using the contact page or social media if you need me for anything.

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