Just wanted to take the opportunity to summarize my experience at SQLSaturday#69 in Philadelphia, this past Saturday. Another city, another amazing event! I haven't been to Philly for quite a while, and was glad I had the opportunity to go and present.
Brought to us by the Philadelphia SQL Server Users Group (PSSUG), Vince Napoli, Sharon Dooley and team #sqlsat69 did a fantastic job of planning, coordinating and organizing the event. It went off without a hitch! The weather could not have been more cooperative! It was a beautiful sunny day in Philly, and on the campus, the doors from the cafeteria were open to the patio outside for some hanging out and dining al fresco! The venue for the event was given to us by DeVry University, Fort Washington Campus. Let me tell you - this was a top notch training facility, perfect for each session's classroom setting. Each room set up already for the projection hookup, screens, laptops, LANS etc. SQLJr was on hand, and he was able to figure out what to do!
There were many great presentations by SQL MVPs and SQL experts alike, and some even gave 2 or 3 throughout the day! It was truly a day for learning, and SQLSaturday#69 offered something for everyone, and on every level of SQL Server expertise. Whether you wanted an intro to these topics, or an innovative deep dive, this was the event to be ait. There were two BI tracks, two DBA tracks, two Development tracks, a Professional Development track, and a few miscellaneous ones thrown in for good measure. I believe that ALL SQLSaturdays should measure up, and offer various tracks like this, since so many eager learners are giving up their Saturday.
Speaking of variety, I loved the spread, and SQLJr helped himself to more than one serving of Popcorn! The cafeteria was the perfect place to lunch and learn about each vendor sponsor's new and existing products and services. Registration and vendors were centrally setup here.
So, I arrived later in the morning, a few hours before my own session. The road was incredibly clear from NY to Philly, and made great time! I checked in and unloaded in the speaker room. First fellow I bump into was Matt Velic,(mvelic on twitter) whom I met previously at SQLSat#59 in NYC, and who's becoming a SQLSaturday staple, and serial sql blogger. He maintains his blog at http://mattvelic.com/.
In the speaker room, I was happy to see Mark Kromer, (aka mssqldude | on twitter), again. Mark is local to the Philadelphia area, and a Data Platform Technology Specialist at Microsoft, and maintains a blog as well, and contributes to SQLMag.com. He did multiple sessions on BI Dashboards, Building you first OLAP Cube, and migrating apps to the cloud. He was busy pounding away on his laptop, to make sure his demos were just right!
Also glad to finally able to shake hands with Randy Knight, (randy_knight | on twitter) who has been racking up the frequent flier miles presenting at almost every SQLSaturday event in the last few months. Randy is a SQL Server expert with 20 years experience and has been doing his talks on Oracle for the SQL DBA, and VS 2010 Database Projects. I think Microsoft ought to be watching him, since he's given a lot of his personal time to present at so many cities for the SQL Community!
Joe Dantoni,(jdanton | on twitter) was just coming in off his presentation on Building your First Cluster! - Lot's of great information crammed into an hour. Was nice to see Joe, another Philly local, again as well.
In the hallway, I bumped into Melissa Demsak, (aka SQLDiva | on twitter), first time I seen her since the successful NYC SQLSaturday#59 event. She leads the NJ User Group and NJ WIT. She later participated in the WIT discussion panel. We both decided to pop-in and watch Michael Coles (aka Sergeant_SQL | on twitter). We planned to give him a hard time, but we went easy on him. Besides, my session was coming up, and you know what they say about payback 🙂 Michael is a SQL MVP, developer, and author of several SQL Server books. Mike gave presentations both on Hight Speed Dimensional Data Loads with SSIS, and also on the Professional Development track, on how to "Sell Yourself". Good job!
Also on hand was Willaim Pearson, Hilary Cotter, Matt Van Horn, Kevin Goff, Muthu Ramanathan, Sebastian Maine, Mihail Mateev, Janis Griffin, Joe Toscano, Raj More, Said Salomon, Alex Grinberg, Bharat Kenjale, Bill Wolff, Patt Pickup, Greg Seidel, Dale Cunningham, and Dennis Lloyd. Whew. There I mentioned everyone (I hope), except for the girl that was setting up the lunch table. I didn't get her name :-). Anyway, I missed saying hello to a few folks, who pretty much were in the early sessions, and out after that. Please check the schedule for their session details.
It was nice to meet and chat with Wayne Sheffield, a Sr. SQL DBA and contributing writer to SQLServerCentral.com. Wayne sat in on my session, and thankful for his kind words and comments on the content of my presentation. Wayne himself gave his neat presentation on "Table Vars and Temp Tables-What you NEED to know!"
Before I forget, my session was on Waits & Queues, and had the room filled to capacity! I appreciate the speaker feedback which was amazing - really! Thanks! The only time I came close to getting booed, when I hinted that I was a Yankee fan. :-O My slide mentioned the Phillies/Mets rivalries, which is posted here.
I noticed that many in the room were taking furious notes, so I guess it was quite informative and useful - which I'm glad! So, I will post some of the scripts later on, but here were a few slides that have the references on the topic for further review.
So, this first one was on all the things that I associate with Philadelphia:
This is my reference slide, for some of the materials I used and other sources of information on Waits & Queues. I added Pinal Dave's recent 28-day-waits-a-day-link:
And, finally, my how-to-contact-me conclusion and audience appreciation slide:
