Fairly easy day, up at 5 am for an 8:15 am flight to Seattle via Detroit, arrived about 2:30 pm to surprisingly pleasant weather, maybe 60 degrees and sunny. Took a town car into downtown Seattle (nice to rent a car, but parking runs $25/day here) and got settled in, then down to the convention center to check in for the conference. Conference bag this year is on the cheap side, reminds me of one of those bags you get at the grocery store to be 'green'. Not sure it matters as I usually give the bags to nieces and nephews, but a number of people commented that they just looked cheap. I suspect this is sponsors realizing that investing $30 (or more) per bag didn't net a great ROI.
It's the same set up as always in Seattle, so I know where most everything is located. Met up with Steve for coffee (along with his boss), then went to catch up with Brian who was finishing up an all day SSIS seminar (around 140 attended, very nice). Back down to the coffee shop to talk some more, finally got to meet Buck Woody and talk about SQLSaturday Olympia and his thoughts on the almost purchase of Yahoo by MS. We split up for various meetings, for me it was dinner with a friend in the business to talk about how we were each were doing and ideas we were exploring. After dinner I headed over to the Garage, a local bowling alley where the PASS volunteer event was held and caught up with some old friends for a while and even got some nice feedback on my blog. Then a relaxing walk back to the hotel where it's now 12:30 Eastern, a little past my usual bed time.
Tomorrow is mostly a volunteer info/training day, I'll be sitting in to hear what PASS has done over the past year and then hopefully to a chapter break out after lunch where we can trade some lessons learned.
