The most amazing journey that I have done in the past years was definitely SQLcruise (see http://www.sqlcruise.com) – a SQL Server event organized and running by Brent Ozar (Blog | Twitter). Without the speakers, and the sponsors we were 14 cruisers that were flying to Seattle across the world for attending SQLcruise. Our journey took us from Seattle to Juneau, to Skagway, to Glacier Bay, to Ketchikan, to Victoria, and finally back to Seattle.

Our home for the 7 days long cruise was the Norwegian Pear, one of the biggest cruise ships I have ever seen in my life:

We left Seattle at Sunday (May 29) at 04:00pm. Here are some impressions cruising out of Seattle and enjoying its skyline.

During the first days on sea we had a session from Buck Woody (Blog | Twitter) about career, where we have seen that Buck is a really good story teller. Tim Ford (Blog | Twitter) had a session about DMVs/DMFs in SQL Server and how you can organize them through a periodic table – very interesting concept . Brent also gave a session about SANs and how you can test and improve their performance. After cruising the whole Monday and the half of Tuesday we arrived around 02:00pm on Tuesday in Juneau, where I did an excursion to the Mendenhall glacier. Here are some impressions:

After leaving Juneau Kendra Little (Blog | Twitter) did a really great presentation on Isolation Levels and Locking inside SQL Server. As you might know from her weblog NOLOCK is also acquiring some locks .  Wednesday morning we arrived at Skagway were I took a train and went up to the White Pass Summit to the border of Canada. It was really awesome when you finally see all the snow and you know you started at an elevation of 0…

After leaving Skagway we went to Glacier Bay, the most interesting part of the whole cruise. Glacier Bay consists of a lot of different fjords, where you can see a lot of different glaciers and a lot of wild life.

After we left Glacier Bay, Buck did a presentation on Communication, where we learned a lot about how to communicate and which different variations of communication exists, even when you are writing weblog posts like this. On Friday morning we arrived in Ketchikan, where I did a kart tour adventure. Also very interesting and I had a lot of fun!

With those karts we drove around 15 miles on very uneven forest streets “somewhere” around Ketchikan. Those karts were able to speed up to 30 mph!

After leaving Ketchikan Brent did a presentation on Defensive Indexing which was also very good and impressive. Brent also talked a lot of benchmarking and about his famous Excel sheet, where he collects PerfMon counters. On Saturday evening we arrived in Victoria, where I decided to stay on board and have the last night some fun at the various bars on the ship with some other cruisers.

On Sunday morning we arrived back in Seattle, where I left the Norwegian Pearl around 08:30am and stayed the whole day in Seattle. My flight back to Vienna was leaving on Monday morning at 07:30am ;-(

I have also to mention the sessions that Grant Fritchey (Blog | Twitter) from Redgate, and Aaron Bertrand (Blog | Twitter) from SQL Sentry gave! Without those sponsors SQLcruise would not be possible!!!

Thanks

-Klaus