(Be sure to checkout the FREE SQLpassion Performance Tuning Training Plan – you get a weekly email packed with all the essential knowledge you need to know about performance tuning on SQL Server.)

Over the next weeks and months I have an incredible speaking schedule around the whole world. You have plenty of opportunities to meet me in person, and discuss performance related topics in SQL Server.

My first stop is this week in Telford/UK for the SQLBits conference. I have been speaking at SQLBits for ages – I think my first conference participation was around 2009. On Friday I speak about “Latches, Spinlocks & Latch Free Data Structures” in SQL Server. If you have followed my blog postings over the last weeks, you can already see what to expect in this session. I will also show you a concrete example of Spinlock Contention in SQL Server, how you can troubleshoot, and finally solve it. On Saturday I have an additional session where I talk about “The Dangerous Beauty of Bookmark Lookups”. Bookmark Lookups are very powerful in SQL Server, but have a huge amount of side-effects. In this session we will concentrate on these side effects, and I will show you how you can overcome the various problems.

At the beginning of September I’m traveling for the first time in my life to the other hemisphere of the Earth – my trip brings me to Cape Town in South Africa, where I’m speaking at the SQLSaturday #301. On Friday, September 5 I give a whole day-long precon about “Practical SQL Server Performance Troubleshooting“, the precon that I have delivered in 2012 at the SQLPASS Summit in Seattle. In this precon we will work with a typical OLTP workload (based on the TPC-E benchmark), and work throughout the whole day to identify performance bottlenecks in SQL Server, and finally solve them – completely transparent to the workload itself. Be sure to register for my precon.

Two weeks after Cape Town, I’m flying to Dublin and delivering a precon and a regular session at the SQLSaturday #310 (September 19 – 20). My precon is about “Performance enhancements in SQL Server 2014“. Large parts are about the new cardinality estimator, and of course I will also talk about In-Memory OLTP and “Clustered” Column-Store Indexes. Dublin is always fun, and the recovery process afterwards is always very long – there is no fast recovery available

For the first time in my life I have also the honor to be a speaker at the SQL Server Days in Belgium (September 30 – October 1). I have already heard a lot of good things about this conference, so I’m really looking forward to be part of it, and delivering a session. My session will be about “Latches, Spinlocks and Latch Free Data Structures” – the same that I deliver this week in Telford/UK. If you miss SQLBits, there is still a chance to see this session once again in Europe.

The week after Belgium I will present at the SQLdays Conference in Munich/Germany (October 7 – 9), where I will deliver on Tuesday the same precon as in Cape Town – “Practical SQL Server Performance Troubleshooting“. I’m already looking forward to this conference, because I have known the owners for ages, and it’s a very nice conference in Germany.

At the beginning of November I travel to the west and flying to Seattle for the SQLPASS Summit, where I will also deliver my Latches, Spinlocks, and Latch Free Data Structures session. For me it’s the 7th participation as a speaker (I delivered my 1st session in 2006), so I’m already feeling like an old-timer. Maybe it is a coincidence that I’m losing hairs, and turning grey… The SQLPASS Summit is always an amazing experience, because it’s the largest SQL Server conference in the universe (assuming that only we on earth use SQL Server). I’m already looking forward to meeting all my friends and Twitter followers again in person.

As you can see I have an amazing and very time consuming speaking schedule over the next weeks and months. But that’s not all. In addition to my conference participations I also deliver 5 SQLpassion workshops in the autumn. I’m very proud to deliver my brand new SQL Server Query Tuning Workshop 4 times across Europe. This workshop covers the query tuning aspect of SQL Server, without going into DBA related topics. The main audience for the workshop is a SQL Server developer. I talk for 4 days about execution plans, execution plans, and execution plans. If you want to know the nasty details about SQL Server, I have my more in-depth SQL Server Performance Tuning & Troubleshooting Workshop, which covers all aspects of how to tune your complete SQL Server installation. It’s a more DBA centric course. Here are the dates and locations for my SQLpassion workshops:

• SQL Server Query Tuning Workshops
  • October 13 – 16 in Zurich/Switzerland
  • October 20 – 23 in London/UK
  • October 27 – 30 in Vienna/Austria
  • November 17 – 20 in Utrecht/Netherlands

• SQL Server Performance Tuning & Troubleshooting Workshop
  • November 24 – 28 in Antwerpen/Belgium

Besides that I’m using the quiet summer time for the various session preparations, and of course for preparing my new SQL Server Query Tuning Workshop. But my life doesn’t consist only of SQL Server. Besides my SQL Server business I run my Boeing 737-800 flight simulator, and I do a huge amount of DSLR photo/video shooting. I just ordered some books about Astrophotography and Time Lapsing. Imagine what you can expect when you combine both things together. Do you have ever seen stars during the day?

And because I’m crazy I have started to run about a month ago. I already make a very good progress, and I’m hopefully able to complete my first 5k run in a few weeks!

Thanks for reading!

-Klaus