new post: Reflections on HYTRADBOI
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permalink: "/{{ year }}/{{ month }}/{{ day }}/hytradboi"
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title: "Reflections on HYTRADBOI"
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published_date: "2022-04-30 15:26:00 +0200"
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layout: post.liquid
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route: blog
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---
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Yesterday the [HYTRADBOI][hytradboi] conference happend.
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> Have you tried rubbing a database on it?
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First of: a big thanks to the organizer [Jamie Brandon][jamie] and a huge shoutout to all speakers for putting in the time and effort to fill this conference with amazing content.
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[jamie]: https://www.scattered-thoughts.net/
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[hytradboi]: https://www.hytradboi.com/
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All talks are now freely available on [the website][hytradboi].
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I didn't see ALL the talks, so what follows is a list of those I can recommend to watch:
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### [Why Airtable is easy to learn and hard to outgrow](https://www.hytradboi.com/2022/why-airtable-is-easy-to-learn-and-hard-to-outgrow)
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by Mary Rose Cook.
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I peaked at Airtable a couple of times, but never found a good use case for which I needed Airtable.
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I get why people use it though and Mary gives an excellent rundown of its capabilities and functionality.
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### [Working with virtual time in SQL](https://www.hytradboi.com/2022/working-with-virtual-time-in-sql)
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by Frank McSherry.
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Showcasing Materialize and how it streams incremental views over data.
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I need to re-watch this, it flew by too fast.
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Side note: I researched streaming systems and incremental SQL queries in 2017 or so and nearly ended up with a Master thesis topic around this.
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### [Building data-centric apps with a reactive relational database](https://www.hytradboi.com/2022/building-data-centric-apps-with-a-reactive-relational-database)
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by Nicholas Schiefer.
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The [Building data-centric apps with a reactive relational database](https://riffle.systems/essays/prelude/) essay as a 10 minute talk.
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Shows the MyTunes app in action, so worth a look even if you read the essay already.
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### [How to query (almost) everything](https://www.hytradboi.com/2022/how-to-query-almost-everything)
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by Predrag Gruevski.
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Easily the talk I recommend the most.
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I ended up in the talk's room afterwards, discussing with the speaker and others about it more.
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Predrag the [trustfall] query engine, which can be connected to basically any datasource, be that an existing database, an API, a filesystem or anything else you can think of, with a bit of more code.
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Queries are written in GraphQL.
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And yes, it's written in Rust, which of course is another advantage. I plan to take a closer look at this.
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[trustfall]: https://github.com/obi1kenobi/trustfall/
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### [Debugging by querying a database of all program state](https://www.hytradboi.com/2022/debugging-by-querying-a-database-of-all-program-state)
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by Kyle Huey.
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Demo-ing [Pernosco](https://pernos.co/) and going into the details how the data system behind it works.
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I've used Pernosco a handful of times for Firefox debugging. It is extremely powerful.
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I didn't realize how complex collecting and storing data for a debug run really is.
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### [Simple Graph: SQLite as (probably) the only graph database you'll ever need](https://www.hytradboi.com/2022/simple-graph-sqlite-as-probably-the-only-graph-database-youll-ever-need)
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by Denis Papathanasiou.
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Did you know you can use SQLite as a graph database?
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Sure, it's not as optimized as a dedicated graph database, but maybe it's enough for your application.
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Code is at [github.com/dpapathanasiou/simple-graph](https://github.com/dpapathanasiou/simple-graph)
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[The database schema](https://github.com/dpapathanasiou/simple-graph/blob/main/sql/schema.sql) fits into two tweets.
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### [Datasette: a big bag of tricks for solving interesting problems using SQLite](https://www.hytradboi.com/2022/datasette-a-big-bag-of-tricks-for-solving-interesting-problems-using-sqlite)
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by Simon Willison.
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Another talk from Simon showcasing [Datasette] and [sqlite-utils].
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Solid talk. Go watch it if you don't know Datasette yet.
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[datasette]: https://datasette.io/
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[sqlite-utils]: https://datasette.io/
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---
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## The conference
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I was [kinda excited](https://twitter.com/badboy_/status/1514580543144448006) for this conference from the get go.
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Over the past 6 months or so my interest in all things data grew beyond my job (as a sort-of data engineer that is),
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but I was also looking forward to see yet another approach on running an online conference.
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I know how hard it is to put together events. Jamie did this one all on his own. Kudos to that!
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The conference came with its own chat: a private [Matrix] server containing an Announcement room, a Hallway room and two additional rooms, one per track.
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The server went online 2 weeks ago already, but was mostly quiet for that time.
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Unfortunately by the time the conference started (yesterday 18:00 Berlin time) the server faced major availability issues.
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Scaling up a Matrix server for 550 users requires some work and it took some time for [Jamie to figure out the issue](https://twitter.com/sc13ts/status/1520114317026160640).
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That bumpy start dampened the conference experience a little bit. I administrate a Matrix server myself and I don't think I would have figured this out beforehand.
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So once again kudos to Jamie!
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With 550 people attending the chat got quite busy and it became hard to follow individual discussions.
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Luckily speakers and attendees naturally gravitated towards breaking out into individual talk rooms.
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For RustFest in 2020 we went with one room per talk from the start and I would recommend that for other events of that size as well.
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The talks where all <= 10 minutes.
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I'm a huge fan of lightning talks of that length.
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In my opinion it is the absolute best way to cover a large amount of topics in a short amount of time.
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If a talk is not of interest to you you don't have to wait long for the next topic.
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10 minute talks also make it more likely that you actually watch them after the conference again.
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The talks were separated into 2 tracks with 3 talks back-to-back.
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But because all talks were pre-recorded they were instantly accessible in whatever order or at whatever time one wanted.
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This was actually a problem for me initially:
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I wanted to cook dinner while listening to talks, but because they were individual videos I had to interrupt cooking to switch videos.
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I would have preferred a way for talks to automatically run back-to-back in a single stream this time.
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This format of delivery also made the chat harder to follow.
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Not everyone starts the talks at the same time or in the same order necessarily.
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That's where individual rooms per talk could come in handy again.
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As my evening progressed I did choose my own order and speed to watch the talks.
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Given it was my Friday evening after work, this "choose your own track" way of watching the talks played in my favor.
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I think some middleground of this format is worthwhile:
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The ability to watch in sync with others to steer the discussion,
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but also the possibility to rewatch talks at a time convenient for me.
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Of course this requires a bit more setup and infrastructure.
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Before I left the conference (and well before it officially ended) I did ask whether the Matrix server would stay on for a bit longer.
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Others asked the same and it seems it will now be available for another week or so, making it possible to scroll back through the discussions.
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That's one of the reasons why I dislike individual, private and time-limited chat platforms for conferences:
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The discussions there are often highly valuable and it's worth coming back to read them,
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but if everything is its own thing it will be lost much quicker.
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Sure, most active conversations probably drop off 24 hours after the conference, but some might be going or have some information valuable to others later.
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All in all I think this was a pretty good online conference.
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The few talks I saw were all worth watching and I have some more on my list to watch now.
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I had good conversations with some people and new projects to look into now.
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None of the issues mentioned were a real dealbreaker for me and can be easily addressed next time.
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I hope for another edition next year!
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[Matrix]: https://matrix.org/
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