Just a quick update on the SQL Saturday event we are planning for the Dallas area next year.  Late last week our local event planning committee met to discuss the big stuff (venue, date, and advertising) and came away with a short but critical action list. 

We’ve got a venue that has given soft confirmation to accommodate us, and we’re working to lock that in this week.  For the event date, we had to dodge a number of other events in our January/February timeframe; the remaining Saturdays were January 23 and January 30, and we expect to have a decision between the two in the next week or so.  We’ve got some folks who are contacting potential advertisers, both international and local, to help fund what we expect to be an event with 500 or more professionals in the database, development, and business fields.  [Sidebar: If you are a business principal interested in sponsoring this event, let me know – tdmitch at gmail.]

There are still significant decisions to be made and lots of work to do.  Once the date is set, we’ll publish the event to the SQL Saturday website and open it up to registrations and speaker abstracts. Later, the abstracts will need to be reviewed and the schedule created from the submitted sessions.  I’ll also be contacting several high-profile speakers to see if they can work this event into their schedule.  We need to arrange catering for lunch, along with donuts, snacks, and drinks for the remainder of the day.  We will be seeking a host hotel for out-of-town attendees, and the speaker reception and post-event party will need to be set up.  That’s just the big stuff – there are flyers to print, conference bags to stuff, tables to set up and tear down, and hundreds of other little things that (hopefully) will be planned well in advance.

Fortunately, we’ve got a good group that has expressed a willingness to get involved.  Our combined area user groups (Dallas and Ft. Worth) represent hundreds of technical professionals, and we’ve already had a number of volunteers come forward and offer to help organize the event or present a session.  Several of our group, myself included, have been to SQL Saturday events before and have been witness to what works and what could use improvement.

In the meantime, we’re still gathering a list of volunteers.  If you’re interested in helping plan or execute this event, please let me know and I’ll add you to our volunteer contact list.  We’re also building a list of those interested in presenting, and we’ve already heard from several of you who would like to speak.

I’ll keep the updates coming as things develop.

I received my evaluation summary from the SQL Saturday event in Baton Rouge earlier this month.  This was the first event in which I did more than just one session (and back-to-back sessions at that), and I’d just gotten over the flu as well, so I was a little nervous about how I’d present, but all told it worked out well.  I’d like to see the “Average” column empty with respect to session content, but was glad to see the majority of instructor ratings in the “Excellent” column.  I was fortunate to have Steve Jones in my scripting session, and he’s planning to send me a few notes on things I can do to improve.

 

Session Title: SSIS: Beyond the Basics

	Poor	Average	Good	Excellent
Session overall:
How easy was the Session to understand?		1	7	17
Was the content suited to your requirements?		1	7	17
Were the topics covered in sufficient detail?		1	5	20
Would you recommend this Session to others?		1	7	15
Overall rating of the Session?		1	5	18

 

	Poor	Average	Good	Excellent
Instructor:
Ability to provide real world experience?			4	23
Ability to respond appropriately to questions?			5	20
How well prepared was the instructor?			5	20
Knowledge of subject matter?			3	20
Presentation abilities?		1	3	20
Overall rating of instructor?			4	20

 

Summary Comments

More basic than expected. Excellent “Food for Thought”. Awesome Presentation! Great Session! Strong voice with good diction. Great to listen to in an after lunch session. Tim was an excellent speaker. Brought up useful concepts that we need to try. Finally a really great session!! Great session and Demos.

 

 

Session Title: SSIS Scripting

 

	Poor	Average	Good	Excellent
Session overall:
How easy was the Session to understand?			14
Was the content suited to your requirements?		1	16
Were the topics covered in sufficient detail?			16
Would you recommend this Session to others?			13
Overall rating of the Session?			15

 

	Poor	Average	Good	Excellent
Instructor:
Ability to provide real world experience?			9	15
Ability to respond appropriately to questions?		1	9	13
How well prepared was the instructor?			8	17
Knowledge of subject matter?			8	15
Presentation abilities?			10	14
Overall rating of instructor?			10	14

 

Summary Comments

The presentation is kind of long. I’m definitely a beginner but even I was able to understand his presentation. Very informative. Great information.

After a long weekend of travel and speaking, I’m finally able to put my feet up and get a little time to catch up on things.  This weekend I travelled to LSU in Baton Rouge, Louisiana to speak at SQL Saturday 17, and was pleased with how well everything was run.  Patrick LeBlanc, the organizer of the Baton Rouge SQL Server group, was ringmaster for a good group of volunteers and speakers.  There were around 200 people in attendance, and the word-of-mouth feedback was mostly positive.

This event was held on the campus of LSU.  The facility was great but a few rooms were a bit small, and as a result, several sessions were standing-room only. There was no dedicated speaker room, which should be a staple of any SQL Saturday event.  Signage was good, particularly when you consider the size of the LSU campus.  Lunch was from Subway, which was more than adequate, and there were plenty of drinks available throughout the day.  The closing assembly and raffle was a little chaotic at first: some of the volunteers had written a custom web application to select winning ticket numbers for the drawings, which was running very slowly at first, but things came together quickly and the goodies were distributed quickly.  There were fewer books than I’ve seen at other SQL Saturday events, which made the book giveaway quicker (this is generally a bottleneck at the end of the day).

The speaker and volunteer party on Friday as well as the attendee party tonight were well done, with a large separate space for our group each night.  The food and drinks for both parties were paid for by sponsors, a nice touch to reward participants for their time.  The after party had only 2-3 dozen attendees, not uncommon since about 15% attendance is expected.

This event was the first time I’ve done 2 different presentations in the same day.  I discussed SSIS scripting, a favorite topic of mine and one I’ve delivered several times before, including at 2 previous SQL Saturday events.  I also worked in a new presentation, “SSIS: Beyond the Basics” that covered some often underused (and misused) controls such as the For Each Loop Container, the Lookup Component, and the File System Task.  Both sessions were well attended; this group was much quieter than audiences I’ve had in the past, so it’s difficult to judge the impact or effectiveness.  There were many evals that were turned in for both sessions, and I’m looking forward to receiving the results.  I was able to take in Steve Jones’ talk about the Modern Resume, and Barry Ralston’s discussion about PerformancePoint and Excel Services, both of which were well done.

Joining me in this trip was Trevor Barkhouse, a fellow member of the North Texas SQL Server User Group.  He did his own session about deadlock detection, resolution, and prevention, which was very informative. Trevor and I, along with several other members of our Dallas group, are planning to host our own SQL Saturday event in the Dallas area next January or February, so we spent the weekend making a lot of mental notes about this event.

One of my favorite things about these events is the opportunity to spend time with other technical professionals.  I had met Patrick LeBlanc briefly in Pensacola in June, but this weekend I spent several hours chatting with him.  I got to catch up with Steve Jones, who is always enjoyable to visit with, and got to spend a little time with Barry Ralston as well.  I visited with Jamie and Jeff, a couple of attendees whom I’d met in Pensacola in June, and was happy to see these “repeat customers” again.

Thanks to Patrick and crew for a great event! Hopefully we’ll see some of you in Dallas next year.

I received my evaluation summary from Karla Remail for this weekend's SQL Saturday event.  The results are as follows:

Expectations:  0 Did not Meet, 2 met, 7 Exceeded. 
 
Overall quality:  Zero 1's, Zero 2's, Zero 3's, 2 4's, 7 5's.
 
Comments:
"Great session!"  "Very knowledgable presenter. Kept on his schedule and presented well." "I really haven't used SSIS, so it was hard not to pick up on some new tips and tricks."

All of the evals were on the right (positive) side of the scale, a good sign to be sure.  I solicited some feedback from a few fellow speakers who attended my session, and received some good comments and a few suggestions as well.

The SQL Saturday Pensacola pics are up!  Visit the SQL Saturday Facebook group at http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/group.php?gid=58052797867&ref=ts
and tag or leave your comments.

I’ve just arrived home from a quick trip to Pensacola to speak at SQL Saturday 14 in Pensacola, FL.  I’m quite happy with the event; the planning and organization was handled very well, and I believe the event was a big success in the eyes of the attendees.

I flew into Pensacola on American Eagle, arriving at 3:30pm on Friday.  I usually dread flying American, but this time wasn’t so bad; the flight was on time and the flight attendant (just one – it was a small plane) was polite and attentive.  My rental car company, which shall remain nameless, was less impressive, since I had to deal with the cigarette residue from the previous renter, and I had to return all the way to the ticket counter to report some undocumented damage to the car before leaving.  Nevertheless, I did get one good surprise upon arrival: Thinking that I had crossed into Eastern Time, I subconsciously added an hour to the time, only to realize upon arrival that western Florida is actually on Central Time.  A free hour!

I got settled into my hotel room, which was about 5 miles from the event location.  Note to self: Don’t be cheap, spend the extra $50/night next time and stay nearby.  In a nice hotel.  Andy Warren and I had tentatively planned to meet before the speaker reception, so I called him and we met up at McGuire’s Irish Pub.  It’s a neat little place, and I recommend it if you find yourself near downtown Pensacola.  One word of caution: read the signs on the outside of the restrooms carefully.  By the way, the ladies room at McGuire’s is quite nice.

The speaker’s reception at the Fish House was a big hit.  I don’t know if anyone kept count, but I’m guessing that we had 35-40 people that showed up over the course of several hours.  It got a little loud when the peripheral crowds arrived, but a good time nonetheless.

The event itself went well, in my opinion.  It got off to a slow start since the building was still locked at 7:45, but there were a lot of volunteers to help out with the heavy lifting.  Traffic flow was very good and there were few bottlenecks during registration.  According to the last figures I heard, there were 180 or so registered, and 170+ showed up (this included a number of walk-ups).  I heard of one speaker that didn’t make it, but it was due to a family issue and Karla was able to adjust the schedule beforehand to allow for this.  The book giveaway was done throughout the day rather than at the end, which helped to thin out the end-of-the-day swag bottleneck.  Among the items given away was a pass to go on a deep sea fishing trip the day after (Sunday), which I personally would have loved to do but just couldn’t fit it into my Sunday schedule.

I spoke again on SSIS Scripting, and the session was full and seemed to be well-received.  I neglected to plug in my laptop during setup – and believe me, a warning message stating “Your battery is at 7% – plug into a power source immediately” will throw a kink into the best presentation.  I had an issue with the resolution on the projector which kept me from going full-screen on my VM, and this slowed me down during the demos.  Despite these minor glitches, everything else went well, and we had some excellent questions and good discussion during and after the presentation.  If you’re interested, I’ll be publishing the slide deck and code on my website in just a while.

I talked to several attendees during and after the event, and all of them that I spoke with spoke very highly of this SQL Saturday event.  Those who attended were gracious, attentive, and polite, and I got the sense that they felt their time was well spent.

I did get to meet a number of people whom I’ve “known” for months or years but had never had a face-to-face chat, including Jack Corbett, Steve Jones, Brad McGehee, and Ken Simmons.  I also got to visit with several folks that I had met at previous events, including Rodney Landrum, Karla Remail, Nathan Heaivilin, Pam Shaw, Jessica Moss, Joe Healy, and a number of others.  I also shared a flight home on Sunday with Brad McGehee, so he and I got to visit for a while as we waited to fly back to Dallas.  It’s great to share the company of these smart folks, because it 1) makes for interesting conversation and 2) gives me hope that I’ll collect a few IQ points by osmosis.  For me, this event was also an experiment in personal networking, but that will be covered in another post.

My hat is off to Karla and the volunteers from the Pensacola SQL Server User Group.  This event was well planned, organized, publicized, and executed.  I’m hopeful that we can replicate this event, and its success, in the Dallas area sometime next calendar year.

The event schedule for SQL Saturday Pensacola has been published.  This event will be held on Saturday, June 6 at the Pensacola Junior College.  The schedule shows that among the speakers are Brad McGehee, Brian Knight, Plamen Ratchev, and Andy Warren, just to name a few.  I am honored to be among the speakers for this event, where I'll be discussing scripting in SSIS.

I'm looking forward to this event as I'll be able to meet some people that I've been corresponding with for a while but have never met face to face, among them Steve Jones, Jack Corbett, and Brad McGehee.  If you read this blog and happen to attend SQL Saturday Pensacola, please stop by my session and say hello.

If you’re available and are (or can be) in the Jacksonville FL area the first weekend of next month, check out SQL Saturday on May 2.  This is a great opportunity for some free SQL Server training and networking, along with some swag and door prizes afterward.   If you are interested in speaking at this event, the call for speakers is open until next Monday, so submit your session today!

I got to attend and present at SQL Saturday in Jacksonville last May, but I won’t be able to make it this year.  I will be attending and (hopefully) presenting at SQL Saturday in Pensacola on June 6.  Hope to see you there.

For those who were in my session on SSIS Scripting at SQL Saturday Tampa last weekend, I have posted the examples and slide deck on my website.  Feel free to contact me if you have any questions.

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.

I received word earlier today that I’ll be presenting at the upcoming SQL Saturday event in Tampa, Florida on January 24.  I got to present at one of the first SQL Saturday events last year in Jacksonville and it was quite a well run event.  A good lineup of content along with a significant attendee turnout made for a highly successful event, and I hope the Tampa event will match the success of the previous experience.

As an aside, I’m hoping to use what I learn attending and presenting these two conferences to put together a similar event.  I’ve had some talks with Andy Warren, one of the founders of SQL Saturday, and he’s very excited about the growth of this community event.  I pinged my local SQL Server gang (North Texas SQL Server User Group) about the possibility of bringing SQL Saturday to Dallas, and I got a lot of positive responses.  So if you’re in the Dallas area and would like to be a part of an upcoming SQL Saturday event, please let me know.

Check out the photos from SQL Saturday 3 - Jacksonville:

http://tim-mitchell.spaces.live.com/

I just wrapped up a high-octane day of SQL Server community education at SQL Saturday in Jacksonville, Florida. This event, the third thus far in a series of training opportunities for SQL Server professionals, is loosely based on the Code Camp model and is billed as a community event. I enjoy these kind of events, having attended several Code Camps and other similar training opportunities. They are community-based, meaning that most of the trainers are peer professionals and not professional technical educators. Events are held on the weekends, and by the way, they're free to attendees.

I stepped in and did something I had never done before: I volunteered to be a presenter at this event. I've been working toward expanding my capabilities by writing and speaking more, and this was a great opportunity to do the latter (and hopefully will open some doors for the former). The session I presented addressed the SMO (SQL Server Management Objects) framework and how DBAs and developers can use these objects to automate the administration of SQL Server instances throughout an organization. As I shared with my attendees, SMO is the coolest technology that nobody is using. I've posted my notes from this session on my website, so if you're interested in learning more about SMO feel free to download the slide deck and samples and use them as you will (these will likely be posted on the SQLSaturday website as well).

I got to spend some time visiting with Andy Warren and Brian Knight about the framework of the SQL Saturday event, and I am convinced that something like this would be a big hit back home (the Dallas/Ft. Worth area). There is a large user base, and there are enough people who have demonstrated a willingness to volunteer their time to make such an event a success in north Texas. I plan to seriously pursue this so if you are interested in seeing a SQL Saturday event in the Dallas area, please let me know.

If you are a north Floridian or will be in that area next month, there is actually another SQL Saturday event coming up next month at the Orange County Convention Center. If you can make it, I encourage you to stop by.

I've just received notice that I will be a presenter at the upcoming SQL Saturday event in Jacksonville, Florida. I'll be speaking about the SQL SMO object namespace and how this powerful set of classes can be used to administer SQL Server instances programmatically.

I'm looking forward to this opportunity. I've not had much experience delivering presentations to those outside my own places of employment, so this should be a learning experience for me. I'm also the last presentation of the day, so I'll get to attend many other sessions as well.

So if you can get to Jacksonville the first weekend in May, I encourage you to come out to SQL Saturday. Hope to see you there!