I did my session on The Top Ten SQL Server Skills You Need for the first time in Baton Rouge at SQL Saturday #64. This was my first time doing this session, which I hate doing at a large event. I had hoped to get to a user group and get this scheduled, but I didn’t have time or the freedom to get it scheduled in a busy summer.

So I went through a dozen practice sessions and hoped for the best. Once again I was packing in a lot of information into an hour, really 55 minutes, and moving quickly.

The session was busy, with the auditorium holding about 100 people. I went through the list, and made it through on time. With a clock on the wall, I could watch and keep myself to about 5 minutes per section. I’m blogging about the ten things over time, so most of the info will get out here, and the deck is available from the event site.

I ended up with 71 evaluations, which was amazing. Usually I get much less, but with this event at a college, and with a beginner session, perhaps that isn’t surprising. The ratings across all categories averaged above 4, and an overall rating of 4.7. I guess I did OK, and am looking forward to presenting this at the PASS Summit in October.

Once again, not many comments, but a few constructive ones:

• Maybe more time per slide to make better notes – I can understand this, though I did not at the beginning that I was moving fast and the deck would be available. Perhaps I need to mention this a few times during the session for latecomers or to reinforce this.
• I was expecting something more in-depth – This is a hard one. It’s always a battle to try and get enough content in there and cover it in depth. One of the things that one hour sessions don’t do well is go very in depth into a topic unless it is very narrowly focused. I’ll have to think about what I could change here, but I’m not sure I can do a lot. I was mostly trying to trigger the idea that each of these skills is something you need to work on and use in your job.
• Speaker volume dips from time to time – Usually I’m a loud talker, but it was a large room and I was trying to turn from side to side. Have to keep this in the front of my mind as something to watch out for.

The rest of the comments were very positive, which is nice and helps make it worthwhile.

I’ve enjoyed my three years in Baton Rouge and looking forward to going back next year if I can.

Filed under: Blog Tagged: speaking, SQL Saturday, syndicated