Session News

It’s after 11 PM, I’m sitting in my hotel room, and this is pretty much the expression I’ve had all afternoon:

PASS Summit Excitement

See, emails about PASS Summit sessions went out this afternoon and I was thrilled to learn that two sessions I submitted have been accepted. Woohoo!! I am very honored and want to thank the speaker and session review committees for all their hard work. I can only imagine how difficult it is to select the sessions for the Summit. And speaking of sessions, the past week was busy on the speaking front for me, so let me back up and discuss (which I’ve been meaning to do).

Last Tuesday night I presented my new session on statistics, “You’re My Density: Making Sense of Statistics”, at our Ohio North user group meeting. It went pretty well, and I have some good ideas for what else I can cover. This session was not chosen for the Summit, but that’s ok, because I really like statistics and plan to continue presenting on the topic. I also received some great feedback (thank you attendees for your comments!). One thing I need to do is slow down. I’ve noticed that the first couple times I give a presentation I tend to speed talk through it. Part of it is that I don’t have my timing sorted out, part of it is that I’m so excited about the topic that I just have to say everything possible. I definitely need to work on this, but again, it was very valuable feedback that I put to use immediately at SQLSaturday 75 in Columbus.

Of course, SQLSaturdays are about more than sessions, they are also about seeing friends and meeting new people. I drove down Friday night after work and caught the end of the speaker dinner, then went back to the hotel to hang out with Jes Borland ( blog | @grrl_geek ) and Brian Davis ( blog | @brian78 ). We stayed up way too late talking, eating Wisconsin cheese and drinking beer. Perfect.

Saturday morning Jes and I got up at 6 and went for a short run. It was just what I needed to start the day. My Baselines session was in the first slot, and I really like presenting at the beginning of the day. Jes and Colleen Morrow ( blog | @ClevelandDBA ) were both in the audience and their support and participation was much appreciated. I felt the session went very well (still waiting to see feedback). I was steady in my pace and used the entire 75 minutes. I had good questions and a couple people came up afterward to get more information. Oh, and this session was selected for the Summit! I am very excited to spend time over the summer making my demos and scripts even better. I still have more ideas for this topic, which is pretty cool.

After my session I listened to Kevin Boles ( @SQLGuru ) talk about partitioning, and then I was a member of the WIT panel over lunch, which Jes blogged about here. After lunch I attended Jes’ reporting session (yes, I realize this post has a lot of Jes in it 🙂 ) and what I Ioved about her session was that even though I know nothing about Reporting Services, I could completely follow what she was talking about, and I was engaged the entire time. Pretty impressive since I don’t even know how to create a dataset.

I then attended Eddie Wuerch’s session ( @EddieW ) on TempDB Performance Troubleshooting and Optimizing, and he inspired a couple internals tests I’ll be blogging about in the future, and finished up with Sarah Barela’s session on the 4-Hour DBA. I was exhausted by the time I got home, but it was worth it. Thanks to the organizers and volunteers for all their efforts!

So back to today…the other session which was accepted was Vendors vs. DBAs which I submitted with Mike Walsh ( blog | @mike_walsh). We presented this session at SQLSaturday in Cleveland in February and I know that Mike and I have both had experiences since then that we can discuss to make this session even better. I see many GoToMeetings in our future as we tweak it, but I’m really looking forward to working with Mike.

And finally, Adam Machanic ( blog | @AdamMachanic ) had submitted a session covering Who Is Active, for which I would have co-presented. I am bummed that it was not selected, but I am hoping that Adam doesn’t give up on that one. Every time I present my Baselines session I bring up Who Is Active, and every time there are people who have never heard of it.

To everyone who was accepted to speak at the Summit, congratulations! I cannot wait for October. Now…time to figure out how to ask about attending some pre-cons…