Note: I intended to post this last week but life\work\burnout and installing Windows 7 RC got in the way.

Another weekend, another SQL Saturday – this time in Jacksonville, put on by JSSUG, at the University of North Florida campus. This particular SQLSaturday was scaled back from the norm (by design) – one sponsor, no attendee SWAG bags, hand written name tags, etc.. While SWAG is nice, the lack thereof didn't seem to bother people; can you really complain about free breakfast, lunch, and a day of SQL training?

Even though I was scheduled to give 4 presentations – more than enough to keep me busy - I came into the day with the goal of meeting new people. Brian Knight's crew had the same idea and began the day by challenging each attendee to meet 3 new people. I asked in one of my afternoon sessions if everyone had met their 3 people and almost all hands went up; when I asked if they had gotten contact information (e.g. business cards) very few hands stayed raised. I'm not too surprised since people spend most of their day going back and forth between sessions which leaves little time to strike up meaningful conversations. On the other hand, the after-party was a great chance to relax and talk in a more casual atmosphere. I ended up talking (and exchanging business cards) with several people I met earlier, so I'll call success on my goal for the day.

The only hiccup for me on the day was that I had to bail on one of my presentations (IIS security) because my demos weren't working. I ended up giving a 15 minute verbal summary and then gave my presentation on useful T-SQL statements. Otherwise I really enjoyed the opportunity to present, catch up with old friends, and meet some new ones. All in all it was another great SQL Saturday!

Slide decks and demos for my presentations are below:

Download: Disk Performance and Configuration How & Why.pptx
Download: Useful T-SQL statements you may not be aware of.zip
Download: Transactional Replication Deep Dive.pptx
Download: XML Features in SQL2005 - SQLSat 4.zip