Today was interesting. I headed for breakfast and after a few stops to chat with friends, wound up sitting with some guys from South Korea, one of whom is actually the chapter leader. We talked a little about the challenges of trying to be a PASS chapter outside of the US and it being that much harder since the native language obviously isn't English. It was their first time at PASS, said it was a 10 hr flight, a lot worse than the 3.5 hr flight up from Orlando. They said they were having a great time and hoped to come again. Can't ask for better than that. I also got to meet - and I dont the card in hand to remind me of the name - the leader of the Louisville group. Good start to the day!

I also had a chance to catch up with Ulysses from the Orlando Chapter. PASS allows each Chapter President to attend the conference at no cost (they do not pay travel) and since I was getting in free as a speaker, we worked it out that another group member could leverage the offer. Ulysses attendeded the volunteer day on Tues and even volunteered at the PASS booth. When we get back he'll be writing up his impressions for posting on www.opass.org and he'll be talking to the group at our upcoming Oct meeting about his impressions. He said he was having a great time and hoped to attend again next year.

I saw very few glitches at the conference this year. Bravo to the PASS volunteers and the team at CCEvents for making it seem effortless. Not that I don't have a complaint or two! Would be nice to have some different stuff for breakfast, every day it was the same fresh fruit/bagels/muffins, and why the heck was the coffee so far away from the food? Coffee was pretty good though. I also wish (and I know it costs) that they could always have coffee and water available instead of just certain breaks.

I skipped the keynote to do one last run through on my replication session. Spotlight sessions run 1.5 hours and wanted to make sure my "extra" material was good in case the presentation went faster than expected. Headed up early to set up and had a chance to talk with a MS guy (Im not so good at names sometimes) and we discussed database mirroring. I was expecting that they were doing something similar to the logreader that transactional replication uses, but it turns out they move pages rather than commands. Can't say it matters, but was interesting to discuss. I was surprised to have almost a full room, probably 50 people, and possibly the best bunch I've had, must have had 50+ questions. Dennis Tight from MS replication attended and caught up with me afterward. Found out that Bren Newman has left MS (big repl guy) and also that I answered one question wrong, it IS possible to do partial subscriptions but with some restrictions. I need to look into it since I both got it wrong and I don't really see a good reason for it! Also got to chat for just a min with Jeff Aven - the Imceda/litespeed guy, and it looks like he is back in the game. Great guy and I'm looking forward to checking out their product in the next month or so.

After wrapping up there I spent a few minutes talking to Steve, he was still on a bit about the bad presentation yesterday. I get frustrated by bad sessions too, but I also know that somedays it just doesn't go well and try to remember what its like to be on the other side. Im headed back to Orlando as I write this and tomorrow back to the office to catch up on things.