This is Day 2 of the Summit proper. But for me, this is the fifth day of the Summit and my sixth in Seattle. Sunday was the opening of registration and it was like a high school reunion with people that you really love. Registration itself only takes about three minutes, but I was there for almost two hours talking to people, friends from previous PASS Summits, SQL Saturday’s, SQL Cruise, and SQL In The City.

Monday I put on a pre-conference seminar with Gail Shaw. We had 120 attendees. Despite our worries and multiple contingency plans, we had more than enough material for the time (you try coordinating 7 hours of material with someone from South Africa who has less band width than my phone). It went off wonderfully. Gail and I had a blast.

Tuesday I did some learning of  my own and then attended the new First Timer’s session at the conference. It was fantastic. Much better than last year. If you were part of the First Timer’s program this year, I’ll bet you felt the love. Everyone involved with putting this on, from the Big Sisters/Brothers to the PASS Staff, well done. Don Gabor’s lightening networking was amazing to see. The Quiz Bowl was wonderful, thanks Tim Ford & Louis Davidson. After the reception it was time to go down to the SQL Server Central Party that’s put on every year by Steve Jones and Red Gate Software. It was a little different to work the party instead of attend it.

Wednesday I live-blogged and tweeted the keynote sitting next to one of my favorite people Jen McCown, 1/2 of the Midnight DBA team, and another of my favorite people, Denny Cherry. We heard the official name for Denali will be SQL Server 2012 and we heard a bunch of marketing talk (except for a very short demo from Denny Lee of Microsoft that was interesting).

The big moment for me came at 10:05AM Seattle time when Red Gate Software announced the contest to actually, literally, send a DBA (or data professional) on a rocket, into space. Go to DBAInSpace.com to check it out.

Then I got my learn on. I went to Buck Woody’s cloud session and got some good insights from Buck (and a couple of laughs). Next, I went to see another of my favorite people, Jes Borland, present for the first time ever at the Pass Summit. She absolutely rocked. Then it was my turn to present to 120 people on Dynamic Management Objects. I thought it went well, including dropping in a joke slide for Paul Randal, 55 Ways to Safely Shrink Your Database, which will be on the final recording (lordy I hope they let me talk again at the Summit).

It’s been a great Summit so far.