Last weekend I went to Baton Rouge (by way of New Orleans) to attend and speak at the second annual SQL Saturday event there.  This event was my third of four scheduled SQL Saturday of the summer.

I flew out of Love Field in Dallas with fellow Dallas SQL Server pros Sean McCown and Tim Costello, and we met up in New Orleans with Trevor Barkhouse.  We rented a car and joined Steve Jones for lunch at Primo’s in the French Quarter of New Orleans.  After our late lunch, we made the 90 minute trek over to Baton Rouge, checked in to the hotel, and arrived fashionably late at the speaker/volunteer party.  I ate dinner with fellow Kevin Boles and a few of the sponsors, and got to spend some time with my friend Patrick LeBlanc (who organized this event) as well as Chris Bahnsen from the Pensacola SQL Server user group and Bryan Smith from Microsoft.

Patrick asked me to present one of the early bird sessions, so I volunteered to deliver a 7:30am session entitled “Building Your First SSIS Package”.  For this trip I shared a car with three other people, and unfortunately I underestimated the effort required to coordinate getting four people on the road by 7:00am.  As a result, we arrived at LSU at exactly 7:30 and my session started about 5 minutes late.  We got moving quickly and had about 25 people in attendance, most of whom got engaged in the Q&A at the end.  I was a little surprised that one of the volunteers handed me the session evaluations at the end; all of the other SQL Saturday events I’ve spoken at have collected these and sent me a summary of the feedback later. 

My second session was centered around using expressions and configurations in SSIS.  I always enjoy this presentation because I’ve encountered a lot of SSIS folks who avoid SSIS expressions, and and even more that don’t use SSIS configurations.  As a result, there are usually a few “A-ha!” moments during the demos, and this one was no exception.  Another good group, and lots of useful discussion during and after the presentation.

This event featured an Ask the Experts table, and I was asked to be a panelist during one of the afternoon sessions.  We didn’t have a lot of participation from attendees, largely because this was offered during the sessions when most attendees were already settled somewhere.  I think this was a good idea, but I’d like to see this offered as an all-day track and published on the event guide.  I’m considering this as an addition to our next big SQL Saturday event in the spring.

The attendee party was fun, even though there weren’t a lot of people in attendance.  Several of us broke out into a discussion around user groups, PASS, and the future of SQL Saturday.  Good times.

Patrick and crew did a great job organizing this year’s event.  I’m looking forward to coming back again next year.

Did you know that PASS has virtual chapters, allowing members to participate in virtual meetings that are geographically agnostic?  One such group is the PASS BI Virtual Chapter which serves those interested in SQL Server business intelligence related topics.  Meetings are held via LiveMeeting, typically on a weekday around midday to allow a virtual lunch-and-learn experience.  I’ve attended several of these sessions and have presented at one of them, and found the experience as both attendee and presenter to be positive and useful.

Starting this week, I will be taking on a larger role with this group.  The chapter leader, Amy Lewis, is taking a few months off for maternity leave, so during her absence I’ll be helping to find speakers, facilitate meetings, and publicize the group.  I’ve also been asked to see if there are others who are interested in volunteering their time to help with this virtual chapter.

So if you’re looking for online opportunities to learn more about SQL Server business intelligence, or if you’re interested in speaking or volunteering with this group, let me know.  You can find more information about this chapter as well as videos, past presentation materials, and a schedule of upcoming events on the virtual chapter website at http://bi.sqlpass.org.

Join me tomorrow at 1:00pm CST as I present "Dynamic SSIS: Using Expressions and Configurations" for the PASS DBA virtual chapter:

In this session, we'll review the use of expressions and configurations that can help make your SSIS packages more dynamic and flexible. We'll cover the basics of the SSIS expression language and will demonstrate some practical uses, and will discuss using package configurations to abstract hard-coded package settings into external resources for maximum flexibility. 

To join the LiveMeeting: https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/usergroups/join?id=75P98G&role=attend

So now that we’re 7 days removed from the end of the SQL PASS summit, I’ve finally managed to arrange my thoughts and put together some notes about an incredible week in Seattle.  This was only my 2nd summit, and the two experiences were vastly different (for my review of the 2005 summit, read “Don’t Be This Guy”).

Just a few highlights I jotted down:

• The keynotes were painfully long.  The 2-hour opening event would have been tolerable if it was the only one, but each morning started with a lengthy series of addresses (and at least one sales pitch from Dell, which has already been appropriately addressed elsewhere).  More thought should be put into the length and content of these opening events, and the 2nd and 3rd days should be shortened considerably – keep those under an hour.
• The Birds of a Feather lunch was a great idea!  Since I haven’t been to the summit in 3 years, I don’t know whether this is a new concept, but it seemed to go over well.
• Ditto that for the chapter leaders’ luncheon.  We got the opportunity to meet 3 people from the Dallas area who were members of our mailing list but do not attend chapter meetings, and another 3 who had no knowledge of the local group at all.  I suspect there are other similar stories, so I count this as a win for the Dallas group and PASS as a whole.
• At first I thought the rental of the GameWorks facility by Microsoft was a bad idea.  After all, if people are playing video games they’re not going to be networking.  But after attending and giving it some thought, this venue probably brought out at least a few people who wouldn’t have otherwise spent any time with peers.  In hindsight, I like this.
• It’s been mentioned elsewhere, but it’s such a good idea that I’ll repeat it here: We need a way to quickly identify first-time summit attendees.  A ribbon on their name badge would probably work best, perhaps coupled with a networking event specifically for newcomers or those attending the summit alone.  Properly welcoming newcomers is a good way to encourage them to return again and again.
• We should have either large printed schedules hung throughout the facility, or big monitors (like those showing the Twitter feeds) strategically placed showing the schedule.  The latter would allow for last-minute updates and room changes.
• Twitter.  PASS organizers did a good job of embracing this phenom by showing the #sqlpass hashtag feed on several monitors, including the large ones in the arena before the opening ceremony.  If you’re attending the summit and aren’t using Twitter, get plugged in even if only for the duration of the conference.
• The forums on the SQL PASS website for finding roommates and ridesharing were great ideas as well.  I think Jorge Segarra was the thinker-upper for this – kudos!
• The PASS board of directors made themselves available for an open Q&A session on Wednesday, which was poorly attended.  There was lots of chatter about things that were wrong with PASS, but not a lot of representation at that meeting.  Where was everyone?  Hats off to the PASS board for opening themselves up for open questioning.  Two suggestions I have for this event (assuming we’ll get the same opportunity next year) is that the session should be better publicized, and it should be schedule when few if any other sessions are occurring – as it turned out, this time slot collided with one of Kimberly Tripp’s sessions, and many people chose the latter over the Q&A.
• Logistics – need more seating in the common areas.  This may be a limitation of the convention center, but I suspect that couches and small tables/chairs could be rented for the event.
• Geography.  There was a lot of discussion around the possibility of moving the summit to different locations, at least every other year. I like the idea, though I understand that we’d lose a lot of the Microsofties by relocating the event to Dallas or Denver or Chicago.  I think moving it to other cities helps to broaden the appeal, bringing along even more first timers.  We capture those new attendees by embracing them (see the 5th bullet above) and they convert into yearly attendees.  PASS grows, and the community is better through that growth.  Win-win.
• SQL Karaoke.  It’s a great social event and the newest summit craze.  PASS should consider embracing this and have a karaoke night.  (I’m only half kidding… if done well it could be a nice addition to the after-hours events)

So back to me and my experience.  As I shared in the aforementioned blog a few weeks ago, I had a mediocre experience four years ago at the summit because I was essentially a wallflower.  Yes, I attended the sessions and dropped in on the parties, but didn’t get engaged with other attendees and ended up going back to the hotel early a couple of times.  I’m happy to report that last week’s experience was a 180 degree turnaround.  Building on the lessons I’ve learned since, I spent all of my non-sleep time with other people, talking shop, discussing careers, and cutting loose a bit.  I lost count of the number of people I met for the first time, and I caught up with many others whom I rarely see or haven’t talked to in a while.  I still need to work on meeting more people at big events – I tend to get caught up in conversations and hang with people for a while, when I should be circulating more.  I’ll put that on the list for next year.

If you didn’t attend the summit this year, I hope you’ll consider it for next year!  The costs are reasonable when amortized over the year, and you can cut your lodging and transportation in half by sharing.  The PASS board and volunteers did a great job with this event, and I for one am looking forward to next year’s summit.  Hope I’ll see you there!

The day started off with the Quest Software breakfast presentation, to which I arrived late to find a standing-room-only crowd.  I left early to find a spot to sit - after yesterday’s interesting but much too long opening ceremony, I elected to catch up on blogging and attend the keynote virtually via Twitter.

I attended Andy Leonard’s session entitled “Applied SSIS Design Patterns” during the first breakout of the day.  I’ve corresponded with Andy several times over the past few months, and after our first face-to-face on Sunday evening, I was especially excited to see this presentation.  He did a great job of explaining how to develop an SSIS package structure to make logging and error handling much easier.  It was one of the highlights of the summit so far.

After lunch, I hit the BI Power Hour presentation, which was intended to give an exciting and fast-paced tour through some upcoming features of SQL Server and related BI components.  Although it was interesting material, it was so high-level and abstracted that it was difficult for me to buy into the excitement.  I did see a few nuggets that interest me, among them the map controls and other new additions to Report Builder 3.0.  I also dropped in on a high-level session describing the Kimball methodology for DW/BI processing.

Next up was the most interesting part of Wednesday.  The entire PASS board of directors attended a moderated Q&A session where PASS members were invited to ask questions in an open forum.  I’d like to say thanks to the board members for opening themselves up to this line of questioning, but frankly I was disappointed at the lack of turnout of the general membership.  There was a great deal of discussion and lots of complaints about the recent BoD election, and in light of the interest sparked by this discussion, I expected more representation.  I don’t subscribe to the theory that “if you don’t participate, you don’t get a say”, but if there really are so many things wrong with PASS, shouldn’t we have more people coming forward to offer up a better way of doing things?  However, despite the minimal representation of the membership, I was pleased with the open discussion that resulted.

Wednesday night was the Microsoft appreciation party at GameWorks across from the Sheraton.  There were a LOT of people who attended, thanks in no small part to the free drinks and unlimited game play.  I spent some time getting to know Blythe Morrow and Jason Strate and discussing all things PASS.  Afterward, we dropped into Vessel, a trendy and ridiculously expensive bar just a few blocks away, and ended the evening back at the tap house playing pool with Tim Ford, Patrick LeBlanc, Jessica Moss, and others.

Tomorrow is the last day of the Summit!  Though I’m looking forward to going home to see my new baby daughter, I’m going to miss being here.  It feels like the central of the SQL Server universe this week.