Here is a flyer produced by someone on the team - he says it all very well:

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Friday, April 5, 2013
Get Warmed Up For SQL Saturday By Attending The Preconference!  
Three Great Speakers, Three Great Topics!

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Scaling SQL Server 2012 (Glenn Berry - @GlennAlanBerry)

How can you scale SQL Server 2012? Scaling up is relatively easy (but can be expensive), while scaling out requires significant engineering time and effort. If you suggest hardware upgrades you may be accused of simply “throwing hardware at the problem”, and if you try to scale out, you may be thwarted by a lack of development resources or 3rd party software restrictions. As your database server nears its load capacity, what can you do? This session gives you concrete, practical advice on how to deal with this situation. Starting with your present workload, configuration and hardware, we will explore how to find and alleviate bottlenecks, whether they are workload related, configuration related, or hardware related. Next, we will cover how you can decide whether you should scale up or scale out your data tier. Once that decision is made, you will learn how to scale up properly, with nearly zero down-time. If you decide to scale out, you will learn about practical, production-ready techniques such as vertical partitioning, horizontal partitioning, and data dependent routing. We will also cover how to use middle-tier caching and other application techniques to increase your overall scalability.


Practical Self-Service BI with PowerPivot 2012 for Excel (Bill Pearson - @Bill_Pearson)

SQL Server MVP and Business Intelligence Architect Bill Pearson leads this full-day, hands-on introduction to using PowerPivot 2012 for Excel to deliver self-service business intelligence.  The focus of the course is to help those new to PowerPivot to become familiar with the assembly of data from diverse sources into models that deliver business intelligence upon demand.  Participants will gain exposure to accessing and relating data, and to employing the Data Analysis Expressions (DAX) language, to construct and share PowerPivot applications that support analysis and reporting throughout the enterprise.  The intended audience is information workers (business- or IT-based) involved in analysis and reporting of data,  intermediate - to - advanced Excel users,  practitioners that want to gain familiarity with PowerPivot to build compelling analysis and reporting applications to deliver self-service BI.

 

Prof. PowerShell: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love PowerShell (Jeff Hicks - @JeffHicks)

Windows PowerShell has a special talent for simultaneously exciting and terrifying IT Pros. Many see it as just another scripting language or passing fad. Other's see it as an essential technology for managing today's Windows-based environments. Some IT Pros feel overwhelmed and don't know where to start and others dive right into the deep end, sometimes with mixed results. In this one day session, PowerShell MVP, author and Prof. PowerShell will dispel fears, myths and misconceptions surrounding this must-know management tool. If you've been dabbling in PowerShell, wondering what all the fuss is about, or simply want to get a jump start, this is the session for you. After this crash course on PowerShell 3.0 you'll realize you had nothing to worry about begin to feel the PowerShell love.
This isn't a formal training course, but bring your laptop with PowerShell 3.0 and feel free to follow along.

Get Tickets Now: http://SQLSaturdayOmahaPrecon.eventbrite.com/

Pricing:
Early Bird Special = $100
After March 22nd = $115

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Register now!