SQL Saturday 50 (#sqlsat50) – A Tale

This past weekend I went to SQL Saturday 50 – this is a day long SQL training event that is put together by community volunteers.  I was fortunate enough that I was selected to present at this event.  Since others have already shared their experiences at the event I figured I should as well.  Some of those others are:

• Ted Krueger (blog | twitter | #sqlsat50)
• Jes Borland (blog | twitter | #sqlsat50)
• Arie Jones  (blog| Twitter | #sqlsat50),
• Kathi Kellenberger (blog | twitter | #sqlsat50)
• Sarah Sjolander (blog | twitter | #sqlsat50) not a SQL person – but she wrote about the WIT Luncheon

Congrats to the organizers for a great event – Michelle Ufford (blog | twitter), Chris Leonard (blog | Twitter), Jeff Belina (twitter), and Ed Leighton-Dick  (twitter).  Besides those already mentioned – I also had a chance to bump into Kendra_Little (blog | twitter), Louis Davidson (blog | twitter), Wendy Pastrick (blog | Twitter), Trenton Ivey (blog | Twitter), and Bob Pusateri (blog | Twitter)

If you missing any of the action – check out the twitter feed.  If I missed anyone, my apologies.  Leave a comment and I’ll add you to the list above.

WIT Luncheon

Often there is just a lot of eating during lunch at the SQL Saturday events.  It makes sense, most of the world engages in that practice over lunch.  For SQL Saturday 50, they did things a little different.  Not only did we have lunch but a Jes Borland, Wendy Pastrick, and Kathi Kellenburger with Michelle Ufford as moderator got together for a Women In Technology luncheon.

It was a great discussion and Sarah, my traveling partner, was very glad that she came to the lunch.  The lunch gave her a lot to think about as a parent and an educator.  Kudos to those that participated.

Strate Presentations

This year I had three presentations at the event.  I enjoyed that I got a chance to talk about querying the procedure cache and the finer point of using DMVs to check out your indexes.

The sessions went pretty well from what I could tell.  There were some bumps with them that were related to some laptop issues I had and tried to resolve.  Poorly.

If you are looking for the sessions materials, you can download from the links below:

• Are You Following Your Own Best Practices?
• Using XML to Query Execution Plans
• Getting To Know Your Indexes

If you have questions or comments on any of the presentations, feel free to e-mail me or contact me through twitter.

The After Party

One of the things I enjoy most about SQL Saturday’s are the after parties.  These are the get together’s after the SQL Saturday event has finished that usually includes some food and drink.  But the food there and the occasional drink aren’t their most important aspects of the after party.

The gem of these events is the opportunity to continue networking with peers in the community in a casual setting.  The speakers from the SQL Saturday usually attend the after parties as a chance to unwind from the day.  And it is often a chance to turn a conversation about indexes into a friendship with someone that may have some of the same interests as you.

One thing that you might learn when attending an after party is that the presenters are just like anyone else at the event.  The only difference between presenters and attendees is that they decided to talk about something they learned about for about an hour.  That’s all there is!

While you may think that presenters are the type A outgoing types.  More often we just had something to say one day and took a chance.  Some of us, me in particular, are fairly introverted.  Heck, there’ve been a few times I seriously considered taking off running at the beginning of a talk just due to sheer nervousness.

So I say, make sure you attend the after party – it just might inspire you to talk about what you know some day.  Or it might just be a good time.

Going Home

Are you a Star Trek fan?  Did you know that James T. Kirk’s birthplace is just 15 miles south of Iowa City?  Yeah, I was fortunate enough to find that out from Sarah so on Sunday, before heading home, we took a detour.

Down in Riverside, IA there is a small museum to Star Trek, an Enterprise float, and a marker for the site he was born.  Though it looks a lot like a tombstone.

It was a great side trek before heading home.

Things Not To Do Before Presenting

A few weeks ago, I found out that part of the Policy Based Management had gotten fudged up on my SQL Server 2008 instance.  Some other things on my laptop had been being funky and I wanted to get this all fixed.

Thursday night, before presenting on Saturday, I decided to fix this issue.  That entailed reinstalling everything from OS and up.  This was probably the worst decision I made last week.  I ended up needing to re-install the OS four times and SQL Server a few more times.  It was a disaster that led to a night without much (any) sleep.

If you have important deadlines, I don’t recommend doing this.