Today is the opening day for the PASS conference here in Denver and it's kind of exciting. As many of you read this, I've hopefully gotten Simon Galbraith, owner of Red Gate software, and my boss, out here at the ranch shoveling manure. He's anxious to get on the ATV for a ride, so maybe I can work out a deal to reduce my workload 🙂

This is the 8th PASS Summit, my 6th, and I consider myself very lucky to have been able to attend them. Over the years it's become an annual event for me, sometimes for fun, sometimes work, but it's always enjoyable to see many friends from the SQL Server community. I've met so many people over the years at these events and it's always been fun to say hi or have a drink with them at this event.

I've had some great memories at these events, like taking my (nearly) one year old son to the last baseball game of the season at Comisky Park in Chicago on Friday night after the inaugural summit in 1999. Or my first trip to Seattle in 2002 for that year's Summit and the mad rush of people to get a tan, SQLServerCentral.com Oxford shirt. I ended up trading a few shirts for cocktails, which made for a fun evening for me.

There was the almost cancelled Summit in Orlando in 2004 where I anxiously watched the weather that weekend before, watching my flight get cancelled and flying from Denver to Milwaukee to Orlando. That one was actually pretty fun with a few of my friends from PASS living up in that area of country. We ran into each other at the airport.

I'll probably never forget our first party in Orlando in 2003. We decided on an XBOX party, planning on giving away the consoles after the event. We ended up going to Circuit City that Tuesday to buy TVs for $250 apiece rather than pay the $225 rental to the hotel. Anyway, we had this great idea that we'd give out stickers with numbers on them as people came in and those with matching numbers would win a prize. So we figured people would walk around and get to know other people and check numbers.

Wrong!

When Brian Knight announced that we were looking for the first people to come see him with matching numbers, there was a mad rush, with people jumping chairs, to get to him. We decided on a more manageable approach since then and not a competition.

So I'm looking forward to tonight's SQLServerCentral.com party, with over 60 prizes to give out randomly to people attending and 3 main prizes for those of you that are looking for serious gambling.

Either way, if you're attending the Summit, stop me and say "hi". I'll probably be wearing one of the SQLServerCentral.com Hawaiian shirts all week.