I’m sitting in the Tampa airport waiting for a flight back home from SQL Saturday 10 in Tampa.  There was a good turnout at the event; the last news I heard was that over 300 had registered initially, and that there were close to 200 that actually showed up.  I got to visit again with several people I worked with at the last SQL Saturday event, and met several people (Devin Knight and Jonathan Kehayias among them) who I “knew” from Twitter and blogs but hadn’t actually met before.  I had the opportunity to hang out with Andy Warren and Chris Rock again, and had drinks with Rodney Landrum, Karla Remail and others at the after party.  For this event I presented a session on using the SSIS script component to read and write unconventional data files.  I was pleasantly surprised with the turnout; I had the first timeslot of the day, and Brian Knight was presenting at the same time, so I expected at best a moderately sized audience.  As it turns out, by the end of the presentation there were people standing in the aisle, and there were lots of great questions and some good discussion at the end.

I spent most of the rest of the day dropping in on various sessions and taking pictures of presenters and attendees.  Since SQL Saturday didn’t yet have a presence on Facebook, I created a new group and posted pictures of the event and after party; you can find the pictures posted here, and if you have any pics to add (of this event or any previous SQL Saturday), please add yourself to the group and feel free to add your images.

There were a couple of minor logistical issues at the beginning, but everything worked out well and we ended up with a successful event.  The sessions I was able to listen in on were well done, and it appeared that most of the attendees stayed for the entire day.  All told, another successful SQL Saturday event.  I’m now even more excited about the possibility of bringing this to the Dallas area.