Day 2 of Summit 2022 started earlier than usual with the "Breakfast with the Microsoft team: SQL Futures and Strategy" - the food was good and the conversations with the @AzureSQL Team were great, outlining why some features make it into the product faster than others as well as commenting on future directions for the product.
Next was the Day 2 keynote "Doing More with Less: The Challenges Ahead for Every Data Professional" by the event sponsor Redgate (@redgate) - Steve Jones (@way0utwest) gave some nostalgic history of the PASS Summit as well as some history of Redgate, and then a string of Redgate people demonstrated a cool-looking database migration product they acquired called Flyway (@flywaydb), and finally Kathi Kellenberger (@auntkathi) wrapped up with the many ways Redgate supports the community and ways to do so in the future.
My first two sessions of the day were a Denny Cherry and Associates Consulting (@DCACco) doubleheader, with Denny Cherry (@mrdenny) presenting "How to Maintain the Same Level of utilities in Cloud Deployments" where he discussed the "Security, Reliability, and Scalability" of moving to Azure, and then Joey D'Antoni (@jdanton) following him with "Deep Inside Azure SQL High Availability."
It's Thursday, which brings the annual Women in Technology (#passwitnetwork) Luncheon, which is inspiring (and as a straight white male, also sobering) every year. The topic this year was "Women as Tech Leads - Tackling the Challenges" and the panel this year was awesome, made up of Shabnam Watson (@ShbWatson), Jen McCown (@MidnightDBA), Anna Hoffman (@AnalyticAnna), Blythe Morrow (@blythemorrow) and Leslie Andrews (@landrews5807). The conversation was amazing as usual with special emphasis on taking ownership of your own career and paying attention when others need help - a great overall message for everyone.
My afternoon sessions were Kimberly Tripp (@kimberlyltripp) on "VLTs: Very Large Tables - Problems, Options, THE Solution!" and then first-time Summit speaker Josh Handler (@gt1gt1) covering "PowerShell and dbatools Tips and Scripts for the DBA." Kimberly is always an amazing speaker, and the back and forth with her husband Paul (@paulrandal) always adds that little extra touch; Josh did a great job as a first-timer in front of a pretty full room - he kept a good pace through his material, and when he didn't know the answer to a question he didn't stumble but rather told the person he would find out, or probed the other attendees to see if anyone knew an answer - a great first of what I am sure will be many more outings of Josh speaking at Summit.
One of the sad points of this year's in-person Summit are the people who *can't* be here for some reason, and for me personally the most painful is the absence of David Klee (@kleegeek) - David helped me quite a bit to escalate my community involvement during the time we actually worked together, pushing me to speak and write and also going out of his way to introduce me to some of the MVP's who make up a big part of my #sqlfamily now. Klee can't take the COVID vaccine for medical reasons, so he is still quarantining at home with his wife. Fortunately, someone had the idea to bring a #flatklee with them to SQL Saturday Portland last weekend and then to Summit this week, and I finally ran into the person with #flatklee today during my last session of the day - it made me happy to be able to take a picture with #flatklee although it does also remind me that *REAL* Klee isn't physically here.
Thanks to everyone and I need to get some sleep before the final day of Summit 2022 tomorrow!
