SQLDay is the largest data conference in Central and Eastern Europe, running since 2009 under Data Community Poland. Every May it brings the region’s database engineers, BI developers, data architects, and analytics leads to Wrocław for a few days of deep technical content and the hallway conversations that come with it. This year it ran at Centennial Hall from May 11 to 13, with workshops on the first day and the main conference across the next two, onsite and online.
C&F joined as an official Gold Sponsor. Our team was on the agenda, helped organize the event, and our stand stayed busy from the first coffee break to the last.
Inside the program
The agenda was built around five tracks: Next-Gen Data Engineering and Modern BI, AI-Powered Analytics, Timeless Foundations, SQL in Action, and Data Architecture and Governance. AI threaded through most of it, from LLMs in analytics to agent building, while the fundamentals held their place: SQL performance, data modeling, governance, and the work of turning all of it into something a business can read.
The pre-conference day belonged to the workshops, and the lineup was serious. Marco Russo took advanced DAX past the basics, Erik Darling spent a day on fixing bad T-SQL, and Grant Fritchey helped SQL Server people get comfortable with PostgreSQL. The tradition held in the evenings too: the silent disco came back and gave everyone a way to wind down after a long day of sessions.
C&F on stage
Four C&F speakers presented this year, and the rooms stayed full.
Martyna Sikorska walked attendees through building scalable solutions in Databricks, from notebooks to packages, the step every team has to make as projects mature.
Adam Marczak took on the foundations, with a session on building data platforms on Azure.
Mariusz Wójcik ran a live-hacking session, “SQL Injection 2026: The Attack That Keeps Coming Back,” a reminder that some vulnerabilities never quite die.
And Piotr Tybulewicz made the case for processing only what has changed, a technology-agnostic pattern that saves time and compute wherever it lands.
For Martyna, the response stayed with her:
Thank you to everyone who attended my session and for all the positive feedback. Your support and kind words are incredibly motivating.
She gave special credit to her mentor, Piotr Tybulewicz, for the support while she prepared.
What it takes to put on SQLDay
Mariusz Wójcik had a different vantage point than most speakers. He was on stage for C&F and, at the same time, helping run the whole conference. His own account of what that involves is the part most attendees never see:
For me, SQLDay starts already in October, and the three conference days definitely do not mean the end of it. Work on the event continues throughout the entire year, although for many of you it remains invisible.
He described this edition as the most intense he has worked on, with plenty of late nights to get the details right. What he keeps from it, though, is the people:
SQLDay is something more than just a conference for me. It’s about people, relationships, shared passion, and months of work that ultimately turn into those few intense days.
At the booth
Our stand was one of the busiest corners of the expo. Our team spent three days in conversation with attendees about projects, tech stacks, and what working at C&F is actually like.
There was a reason people lingered. The Kubik Challenge had puzzle solvers competing for a drone, and the arcade machines, loaded with games, kept a crowd around between sessions with gadgets to win. Underneath the games, the booth did its real job: time with our engineers and a straight look at the work we take on and the roles we are hiring for.
Why we keep coming back
SQLDay works because of the community it gathers, the people who show up to learn and to push each other forward. For C&F, that is the reason the event is worth the trip every year. We are already looking ahead to the next edition.
Thanks to everyone who built the booth, presented on stage, and put their energy into the connections that keep this community going. See you at the next one.