A few days ago I returned from PASS Summit 2015 (and a vacation I took afterwards). Here’s my recap: I opened the week with a FreeCon Brent Ozar and Kendra Little hosted. The day focused on personal branding and the learning and sharing paths that are derived from it. In a nutshell: You have to think about what people will think about when they hear your name, and then go out and make it happen (I’m terribly simplifying things here). For more info, go read Brent’s post about personal branding. The message I decided to take out from the day (based on the 3 personal branding words I chose) is that I’m the guy for special-operations, that I’m skilled, and that I’m productive. In other words: If you have a SQL Server problem, I’ll come in and fix it quickly. On Thursday, we had a podcasters panel, with participation of:

• Carlos L Chacon from the SQL Data Partners podcast
• Chris Bell from the WOxPod podcast
• Richie Rump from the Away From the Keyboard podcast
• Guy Glantser and myself, the SQL Server Radio guys

We had a great conversation about mentorship: Who were our mentors, the qualities of a good mentor, how to find a mentor, and much more. Lots of wisdom was thrown into the air. The recording will be out soon.

  After the panel, I attended Guy’s session, How to Use Parameters like a Pro and Boost Performance. Guy wanted to do something special in his session, so we prepared a short movie:

And this is how the session started:

And..This is how it looked during the session:

  On Friday, I delivered my own session, The Data Loading Performance Presentation. I also wanted to start my session in a different way, and to prove that not many people read Whitepapers. This is how it looked:

The session itself went great. I felt in a good rhythm, demos went well, and things I had added before the session proved to be helping.

  In the rest of the conference, I attended sessions that are currently relevant for me: The Azure data stack, SQL Server 2016, SQL Server performance and public speaking. The big takeaways for me (I actually knew them before, but the summit embraced them) were that Microsoft is really getting their ducks in a row with the cloud. It takes time to learn all the new technologies and understand when to use which, but it’s important, because the world is not SQL Server anymore. There are lots of other ways to store, analyze and visualize data today, and it’s important to be there. Also, SQL Server 2016 Is going to be an awesome version. With new features like Polybase, R integration and Query Store, closing open edges with In-Memory OLTP and Columnstore, and other great stuff, this will be a version we will love. As for the public speaking part, I attended the speaker idol sessions. That’s because I really like the format. Each speaker delivers a 5-minute technical session. It’s very hard, because you have to be concise and right to the point. No time for bla bla. I also wanted to hear the judges’ opinion about the sessions, in order to get better as a speaker myself. Each and every one of the speaker crushed it. In just 5 minutes they showed humor, professionalism, and taught something new about SQL Server. I truly believe all of them deserve a speaker slot in PASS Summit 2016. Other than that, there were lots of parties, karaoke, sightseeing, and many great conversations with old a new friends from the SQL Server community. See you next year!  

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