I wrote this early in June, but lost it in my blog pile again and just found it…

First and foremost, I would like to thank each and every person who submitted a speaker evaluation at SQL Rally back in May. Getting up and presenting isn’t as easy as some make it look and I am no exception. It has gotten easier for me over the years, but just like an elite athlete, you have days where you are on top of your game and days that you are slightly off. And although my results are an average of 4.5 over 51 submissions (just below the top 5), I like to think that I could have done better. As just minutes before the session, I was 10 miles away in a town that I was unfamiliar with. When I arrived at the front door, I had someone park my car and Karla Landrum was sweet enough to run me to the room that I was to present in. So, instantly I was a bit on the nervous and frazzled side, but that is no excuse. I was prepared and ready with a minute to spare. J

At any rate, with these evaluations, I am going to go back to my slide deck and see what I can modify and/or cut out completely.

Being that my session was a Reporting Services Boot Camp, which was meant as a beginning to end, get up and running kind of session. There were other sessions that went deeper into Report Development and who needs three sessions on heavy report development in a two day event? So, some people suggested trimming or cutting out some of the architecture of SSRS. As such, I am going to cut this section down to a maximum of about 3 minutes. I went a little deeper this time because I was asked if I could make it a 90 minute session rather than the usual 60. I may have added a little bit too much information here.

Also, people mentioned about the squeaking of the floor where the podium sat. I would love to apologize for that one, but really? I couldn’t really control that one (well, I guess I could drop a couple pounds J). As such, I spent as much of my time down on the floor as I could. Also, some really great advice was given to work on the timing a bit more. I thought it would be tough going for 90 minutes, but then again, I did cover a ton of material. I will slow down a bit the next time around and cover less material. Some even suggested even more demo’s which I thought I showed quite a bit to include a quick one on how to create templates. Not one that I planned on doing.

Ha… This one makes me giggle. It was suggested that I “learn that it’s U.R.L not ‘earl’”. J I guess I deserved that one after picking fun at Scott Gleason for saying BIDN is “bidden”. I just wonder how this individual would say “SQL” as in SQL Server. Sometimes one may say things slightly different than the one next to us might. None-the-less, whomever gave me this tidbit of advice, I know what a Uniform Resource Locator is and I will work harder in the future say URL rather than “earl”.

Others said that they loved the session and even though they have been using SSRS for quite a while, they had something new to take back with them. Another one stated that they do training for their company and that they were “impressed with the knowledge”. I’ll put that one in my back pocket for easy retrieval. Thanks.

Again, I want to say thank you to everyone who submitted feedback. I value all the positives and negatives alike and I will work even harder to make sure that I provide as much desired content by the community. It is this community feedback that is needed to get each presenter to the next level and give you exactly what you want. Sure, not all attendees will be completely satisfied with a session and the comments from those are ones that make me want to work harder.

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