I’m flying out Sunday morning on my usual direct flight from Orlando to Seattle. I like getting there a day early so I can have a “slow day” and start to sync to local time and it gives me a good buffer in case the flight is delayed or cancelled. Sunday will be lunch, an afternoon meeting, and then dinner with a few friends old and new. Still a couple seats open, if you’d like to join me drop me a note on Twitter.

Monday morning – early – you’ll find me at Top Pot for breakfast. Coffee is good, food is good, and they have these great windows, a good place for quiet reflection. Some rain always helps. What are the odds?

Monday night I’ll be at Yard House with Steve Jones hosting our annual networking party and I hope you’ll join us. No sponsors, no contests, no prizes, just people. Not good at meeting people? That’s ok! We’ll introduce you to some people to get you started.

Tuesday I’ll be at the SQLSaturday Roundtable and talking for 15 minutes about marketing these events. I’m still agonizing over what is the best use of the time – everyone in the room will have marketed an event at least once – what can I say that will get them to look at it a different way? Got an idea or two! I’ll probably drop in at the Chapter Leader meeting too.

I plan to be at both keynotes this year, but I won’t be at the blogger table. That is based solely on me feeling like it wasn’t working for me. It felt like I was transcribing (perhaps the nature of live blogging) and I’d rather listen and reflect, taking the odd note to expand later. I’ll be near the back of the room this year because I want to watch the audience reaction, in part to see what clicks and in part to think about whether I expect too much/the wrong thing from the day one keynote. I’ll write some during the week but haven’t decided yet if I’ll publish daily or just do an after event “notes” post as I do for most events I attend.

I’ll be at the Board Q&A on Thursday (starts at 3:30 pm) and I’ll be there in observer mode. Not that I don’t have questions – I always do – but much like the keynote I’ll be thinking about the people and the questions that do get asked. Plenty of time during the week for me to ask other questions and have longer conversations. Note that while I’m not planning to ask questions I consider this to be an important part of the Board leading the community, it’s one of a couple times each year when we can talk to the Board all at once.

On Friday I’m hosting a table at the Birds of a Feather Luncheon, one on DBA topics and one on Professional Development. Consider those general guidelines, join me and we’ll find something to get everyone at the table talking. I’m flying home Friday night, arriving way too early on Saturday morning to make sure I have time to get into full Halloween mode with my children.

Goals for the week are to balance networking and learning, both are important. I’m particularly interested in sessions/discussions related to security and general documentation. As always I’m going to try to balance spending time with people I know with meeting new people, it’s easy to fall into just hanging out with old friends. There are some people I hope to talk into running for the Board next year. I’ll also be enjoying a relatively quiet week to think about what I want to do next year.