Last week was a great week all around.  It started with Canada's first SQL Saturday in Vancouver - packed with over 300 attendees watching five tracks of local speakers and MVP designated imports.  I had the privilege of hosting one of those rooms and watching Donabel Santos (blog|twitter) elucidate on SSRS, John Welch (blog|twitter) go 2-for-2 on exposing SSIS internals, and Bill Pearson (blog) delivering an introduction to MDX in his fine southern accent.  I suggest you download their code and slides from the SQL Saturday session list, or their blogs.  I've just uploaded my slide deck and demo package for the talk I did on Data Warehouse ETL with SSIS - thanks again for all those that attended that last session of the day!
MVP Summit 2011
Of course, SQL Saturday #65 was scheduled on February 26th very deliberately - in order to benefit from proximity to the Microsoft MVP Summit being held the following week in Bellevue/Redmond.  A fantastic experience (again), and definitely one I hope to repeat many more times.  Not only was it an amazing opportunity to connect with the development crew of SQL Server Integration Services directly - it's also a spectacular opportunity to interact with the best of the best, the other MVPs.  After last week, I have a list as long as my arm of things to investigate - it's almost depressing to have a real job!
The Contest Results
But the real action last week was, of course - my contest to find a new name for the better-than-decent Slowly Changing Dimension component I've been hosting on CodePlex for the last few years.  I was absolutely blown away by the response - you could see the comments on the original post, but there was also quite a few submissions via twitter and email.  A huge thank-you has to go out to Steve Jones and the SQLServerCentral crew that highlighted the contest on their weekly newsletter to their million-plus membership.  There was a massive response from that exposure - nothing like I could have ever expected.
Down to brass tacks!  The title of this post told you the new name of the component: the "Dimension Merge SCD" - so congratulations go out to Merrill Aldritch (blog), a fellow SQL blogger.  There were some other names that I was really attracted to - it wasn't an easy call!  In the end, Merrill's was the most descriptive and fit in with what I was looking for.  So congratulations to Merrill - I'll be sending off a Windows 7 Pro to him, even though I promised an Ultimate.  Purchasing limits and prior commitments conspired against me on that - so I've also included a little something extra to make up for it.
More To Come
Obviously, there's more in store for the Dimension Merge SCD - I have to release v1.6 into the wild, and those of you with a finger on the pulse of the community may have an inside track on another bit of news I'll be shouting from the rooftops in short order.  Stay tuned...