Well last night I presented my Policy Based Management presentation for the Orlando SQL User Group aka OPASS. The meeting was held at the (now called ) offices which is a nice facility ran by Andy Warren ( | ). The meeting started off with a short bit of networking where Andy has everyone introduce themselves to their neighbors and get some discussion going. I thought this was a nice little touch and lets people work on their networking skills.
First up for the night was a mini presentation on Backup Basics with Todd Holmes (), a DBA for Channel Intelligence in Celebration. The mini presentation is a 15-minute presentation slot that Andy came up with to encourage new speakers to cut their teeth on public speaking and technical presentations. Todd did a great job with such a broad topic and even went the extra mile in showing examples via T-SQL code. Todd will also be doing this mini presentation at the in Orlando.
After Todd鈥檚 presentation there was a short dinner break and I got setup for my PBM presentation. Andy said he was curious to see an hour-long presentation went on Policy Based Management since he thought it was a topic that could be covered rather quickly. Funnily enough my presentation ran just a tad over an hour and I could have kept going! There were some hiccups here and there with my VM taking a little longer than I would have liked to open certain things but demos didn鈥檛 blow up like they did at the last SQL Saturday. I also got a chance to show the audience (sort of). I showed the script run that used PowerShell to apply existing policies and dump results into a database repository. The example failed because I tried to open Reporting Services page on VM which had the hardened IE settings enabled that didn鈥檛 allow scripts to run so I wound up just showing a screenshot of the dashboard view. Hopefully this demo helps people take SQL 2008 and PBM back to their jobs and look like rock stars for virtually no money (except for cost of SQL 2008 Standard license after they see how awesome this is).
After the meeting I stuck around and talked shop with Andy, Jack Corbett ( | ) and Kendal Van Dyke ( | ) which was pretty awesome as we talked about all things SQL. Always a good time when you get quality geek time in. Overall it was a great time and a big thank you to the group for having me out there. If you鈥檙e in the Orlando area make sure to !
It’s going to be a fun month! Next week I’ll be speaking at the on Policy Based Management 101. I also got confirmation that not only was my PBM presentation accepted for on October 17th but I’ll also be doing a MINI session on !
I’m REALLY psyched about SQL Saturday as there are going to be some awesome presenters there such as Andy Leonard ( | ), Ken Simmons ( | ), Joe Webb ( | ), Brian Knight ( | ), Kevin Kline ( | ), Andy Warren ( | ), Buck Woody ( | ), Kendal Van Dyke ( | ), Chad Miller ( | )听补苍诲 many more! The speaker lineup looks like a veritable East Coast edition. If you can’t make it to the Summit this year (and I highly encourage you to do so if you can) then definitely try to make it to SQL Saturday #21!
And as if the lineup of talks at the SQL Saturday event wasn’t enough to blow your mind, the week leading up to it there is a week of! Again, this looks like a rock star line up featuring Andy Warren, Brian Knight, Kevin Kline, Andy Leonard and Buck Woody. Each session is $150 and WELL worth the investment.
Are you going to the ? Would you like to save some money on hotel by finding someone to split a room with? Want to share insider information on local spots you can dine at on the cheap? Well I hinted on Twitter recently that I was working on something for PASS with Jeremiah Peschka ( | ) and thankfully we finally have it done:
This forum has been setup so attendees can share information on lodging arrangements using the (and room blocks) for PASS Summit. Of note is that I said the official room blocks and hotels because a lot of people have done a lot of hard work to get the best rates possible for room blocks. We are looking to fill these blocks as much as possible so that in the future these hotels not only welcome us back with open arms but we can negotiate a better rate in the future (win-win y’all!).
In addition to having a single place to coordinate lodging you can also coordinate things like rides to/from the airport. You might be able to save some nice change by getting a limo van to pick up a group of folks at a hotel rather than everyone scurrying one by one. Also you can coordinate things like photowalk tours and much more! So make sure you !
So the inaugural event for has come and gone. In its wake its left hundreds of eager minds reeling from absolutely amazing content overload, bleary and blood-shot eyes around the globe and one .
First off the staff at PASS and all of the presenters deserve a standing ovation for the amazing job they did putting this event together. From marketing the event across multiple platforms (i.e. Twitter, Facebook, Summit site) as well as adding a fun bonus add-on with having Tom LaRock (), aka the , do a full 24 hour co-broadcast via Ustream. While I wasn’t able to have the insanity fortitude of Tom and brave all 24 hours (did anyone else actually accomplish this insane feat?) I did manage to catch most of the ones that were of most interest to me. I’ll recap in order of sessions attended.
Hour 1 (8:00 PM EST) – 10 Big Ideas in Database Design by Louis Davidson (|) and Paul Nielsen (| )
I won’t lie, I pretty much missed the entirety of this session trying to get my desktop working so I could bring up the Live Meeting. The only thing I had working was the laptop running Tom’s and chat. Luckily this setup allowed me to listen to the session so I was in and out as far as paying attention while I tried to troubleshoot my desktop woes. It’s Dr. SQL and Paul Nielsen, can’t go wrong with these guys and from what I caught there was a lot of good information that people should pay attention to when developing. When this session becomes available on demand I’ll definitely be watching it.
Hour 2 (9:00 PM EST) – Using PowerShell to Get the Most Out of SQL Server by Allen White ()
Powershell sessions always leave me feeling like less of a man for not knowing and using Powershell yet. TMI? Anywho, Allen did a great job showing some cool tips and tricks in showing how you can access and control different aspects of SQL Server via Powershell.
Hour 3 (10:00 PM EST) – Team Management Fundamentals by Kevin Kline ( | )
This was one of my favorite sessions that I attended. Kevin’s topic was about how to effectively manage an IT team. Some of the stuff he mentioned is pretty universal but there are caveats when dealing with tech folks that he covered and covered well. Grab his slide deck and check it out, excellent presenter on a great topic. It’s funny because today Brent Ozar ( | ) wrote up an article as well.
At this point I bowed out for the evening so I could grab some shut eye and get up early for Gail Shaw’s ( ) Effective Indexing presentation at 6 am. Alas, I missed that one but got to the office early to catch the next one. I WILL be watching Gail’s presentation on demand when its available as effective indexing is something every DBA and developer needs to take the time and fully understand.
Hour 12 (7:00 am EST) – Reporting Services Inside and Out: The Things You Should Know by Simon Sabin (|)
Reporting Services is one of those pieces of SQL Server that you look at it and think “damn I could do soooo many cool things with it”. You attend the webcasts, read the books, and if you’re anything like me you end up too busy to get to that awesome idea you had. Simon did a bang up job walking through SSRS and showing some cool tips and tricks with it. I especially liked the part where he created a report that dynamically changed pictures of either a check mark or an X depending on the result of the query on the column. I’ll definitely be re-watching that later on to try that out. Funny part of this session came when Simon had to excuse himself to take a call as he and his wife are expecting their baby to be born any day now. God speed Simon and hope your bundle of joy comes soon and healthy!
Hour 13 (8:00 am EST) – Query Performance Tuning 101 by Grant Fritchey (|)
This was one of the most heavily attended sessions (about 450 people!) and for good reason, Grant is a fantastic presenter and his knowledge on the subject of performance tuning is second to none. I attended a session of Grant鈥檚 a couple of weeks ago and I got something new out of that. Same thing happened with this session. Grant鈥檚 book, , is on my list of must-buy books and if you have any interest in development or performance tuning it should be on yours as well. If you ever get a chance to attend any session by Grant I HIGHLY encourage you to do so. After that hour you鈥檒l come away feeling like you want to re-write every bit of code within your grasp (and in some shops that probably wouldn鈥檛 be a bad idea!).
<insert a few hours of me doing my actual job here>
Hour 17 (12:00 pm EST) 鈥� Building a Better Blow by Steve Jones (|)
Maybe its because I absolutely love Steve as a presenter (make sure to catch his weekly podcast, ), maybe its because I鈥檝e taken up blogging in the last few months, whatever it was I have to say this one of my favorite sessions overall. Steve basically went over reasons why starting and maintaining a blog can be beneficial for you both personally and professionally. He also covered a topic of great importance in this realm which was basically DO NOT STEAL OTHER PEOPLE鈥橲 CONTENT!!! Seriously, it happens more than you think and if you get caught you just look really, really bad. Other highlights of this presentation were magically seeing my own profile come up in his slide deck as an example of a basic profile (thanks again Steve!) as well as watching Tom make Steve laugh on the air since apparently Steve had Tom鈥檚 broadcast up on another monitor.
<Insert a few more hours of meetings and doing work. Yeah, I know, you鈥檙e shocked>
Hour 24 (7:00 pm EST) 鈥� Embed Reporting Services into Your Applications by Jessica Moss (|)
As I mentioned before Reporting Services is one of the those really cool features I wish I took more advantage of. Jessica is the SQL community鈥檚 resident expert on the topic and she does a great job of walking through the product and clearly explaining everything. This was a pretty cool session in which she showed the differences between the types of Reporting Services reports you can use and create. For instance did you know that in addition to .rdl files there are .rdlc files that are client side reports? Well up until last week I didn鈥檛 know that!
Overall Thoughts
Overall I thought this was a fantastic event and I can鈥檛 thank and the enough. There were some glitches in the links for the Live Meeting links but thanks to the awesome community that problem was quickly handled via Twitter, chat rooms and blog posts. These events are mind-blowingly awesome in that you ALWAYS walk away with some new piece of knowledge and best of all鈥T WAS FREE! The other thing about an event like this is that this is just a taste of what the annual can offer you. At the not only do you get all of this mind-blowing content but you get to interact with presenters, you鈥檙e surrounded by the , and you get to expand your social network thanks to all skills you got from the AT the conference. So what are you waiting for? Print out your , present it to your boss and get your rear to the PASS Summit. Make sure to by September 15th to take advantage of the discounted pricing. After the 15th the price goes up $400.