This past weekend I made the relatively short (about 3 hours) trip to the Oklahoma City area to attend and speak at the third annual SQL Saturday event there.  I’ve been invited to speak at each of their three events, and I’ve been impressed with each one of them so far.  The folks in the OKC and surrounding groups have an excellent community, and the leadership team did a great job again of putting on a well-organized event.

This weekend was a first for me in that I brought along my oldest son Ryan to the event.  At age 9, he’s already showing highly analytical tendencies, and I’m trying to expose him to more technology-related happenings.  He was very excited to attend the event – I was out of town with a client all week, and when I called him each night last week, the upcoming trip was always one of the first things he wanted to talk about.  During the event he did get bored frequently, but that’s to be expected when deeply technical content and a short attention span intersect.  He still enjoyed the event, but it was more about doing something different and getting to see a bit of what I do for a living (he sat on the front row during my presentation) that made it fun for him.  I think it was a great experience for him, and I’m hoping to bring him along to some more events in the future.

For my part in the event, I presented “Handling Errors and Data Anomalies in SSIS”.  Had a moderate sized group, maybe 35-40 folks, with some good discussion during and after the presentation.  For those who attended and are interested in the presentation materials, you can download them here.

Thanks again to the OKC-area folks who organized this event.  I look forward to coming back again next year.