Today was the Portland SQL Saturday and Code Camp at the University of Portland and

it was a great experience.  I didn't hear what the final attendee count was but

many of the session rooms were full… 700-800 maybe?  The caliber of the sessions

and learning opportunities were top-notch.  Logistics (Signs, schedules, session

rooms, directions, entertainment) - all good.  Food was great.  Networking

opportunities up the yin yang.

I presented two sessions; in the morning: "Cooking with Reporting Services", based

on material from our report recipe book.  The room was full and I think it went

quite well.  I had a lot of interest, questions and interaction with attendees. 

I felt pretty good about this session.  In the afternoon, I presented "Reporting

on MDX and SSAS".  My cadence was off a little and didn't have quite the same

energy as the morning.  Although things worked and I presented the material I

intended, some of my demos were a little bumpy.  In all, not a bad session, I

think.  Thanks to Gang Fong and Steve Reynolds from the Portland Hitachi Consulting

office for helping during my sessions.  We gave away several books - mine and

others - and a bunch of the coveted Hitachi Sumo Wrestler squishy dolls.  Compared

to last year, there seems to be significantly more traction for businesses using SQL

Server BI - especially Reporting Services.

Buck Woody's session on new features in SQL Server 2008 R2 was very good.  Buck's

a riot.  He's a Technology Specialist with Microsoft and a frequent presenter. 

Don't ever walk walk into his session room late unless you're ready for a boat load

lot of grief.  Much of the new R2 feature set included BI enhancements for Reporting

Services, SharePoint and Office integration.  Overall, he demonstrated that SQL

Server has become a very solid platform with excellent tools for enterprise and large-scale

solution administration.

I enjoyed Greg Larsen's session on T-SQL best practices.  He put a lot of effort

into preparing demos comparing the resource usage of various query techniques and

alternatives.  All really good stuff.  

Kudos to Arnie Rowland of Westwood Consulting and the Oregon SQL Developers Assn.

for connecting all the dots (many many dots) to make this come together.  There

were a lot of well-organized and dedicated volunteers.  I was absolutely impressed

with how smooth the logistics for this event were managed.  The only real (and

kinda funny) glitch I knew about (this is for levity and not at all critical) was

that the 1,000-some preprinted color name badges were not in any particular order. 

As the volunteers rifled through every name card to find the one for each database

or programming expert attendee, they were gracious to tolerate the repeated comments

about using a sorting, indexing or grouping routine to fix the problem.

Portland Mayor, Sam Adams, spoke in the auditorium during lunchtime to a packed house,

along with other Portland technology leaders.  He talked about the economy and

the local technology industry.  Although IT is seeing some gradual rebound from

the economic recession, the general city and state economy is still suffering. 

The city recently had more layoffs and budget cuts as they channelled money into business

development investments, rather than staff & maintenance.  He talked about

how the city has worked hard to offer tax incentives to small businesses and startups

despite their budget challenges.  He predicted that Oregon will continue to attract

smaller, innovative businesses and they expect significant growth in the small-to-mid-sized

business sector over the next two years as the economy rebounds.  The Portland

Development Commission is focused on supporting small business and they don't expect

to attract larger companies relocating or expanding to Oregon any time soon.

Several of the vendors were recruiting staff - including Smarsh, Idera and SetFocus

Training.  There were also staffing companies exhibiting who had positions to

fill.  Some of the attendees I knew from SAIF Insurance were holding up a hand-written

sign that read "BI Architect / Developer Needed".  This was encouraging.

My last impression was the most significant.  This was a free conference held

in the little town of Portland but great speakers came from all over.  They weren't

paid and they travelled on their own dime at the simple request of an associate or

fellow MVP.  Buck Woody, Greg Larsen, Bill Vaughn and several others came from

Seattle.  Denny Cherry flew up from L.A.  As I was getting ready to leave,

Tiberiu Covaci, one of the Code Camp speakers, asked if he could catch a ride to his

hotel near the airport on my way home.  Sure, I said… no problem.  I got

to know Tibi, who is a delightful young man with a Romanian accent.  I asked

where he was flying to.  "Home", he said.  "Where's that?" …"Stockholm,"

he said.  "Arnie asked if I'd come speak and so I did."  It took me 20 minutes

to get home to Vancouver in congested freeway traffic.  I'm not complaining.

Weblog by Paul Turley and SQL Server BI Blog.