Today is Thursday at PASS Summit. I started the day early by getting up, and getting to snooze. Then again and again and again. I then changed the alarm for alater time, and snoozed that a few more times. When i finally got up, I was lae for the Quest breakfast event with the panel of experts. I showered and hurried over to the conference center. Its awesome to be so close, so that the trip is in minutes. Once i got there, i had a little bit of breakfast, and listened to the panel of experts talk about their ideas. It was neat to hear so many different ideas up there, and solutions ot real world problems.
After this event, i made my way over to the keynote event and sat in the second row behind the board of directors. While the keynote event went on, twitterverse was reap with underlying information from myself and others. Its great to see others insight into an event, in realtime. When the Keynote was over, we had a friend in Kalen Delaney's session already saving us seats. Many thanks goto Grant Fritchey for getting us seats. Kalen is always interesting to listen too. she has such a way of sharing experiences with us, and not following a script. Before you know it, you are pulled into her world and are learning along the way. I love it.
After this sesion, i made my way to the Women in Technology luncheon. The purpose for going was there is always good food at this event. Secondary purpose was because Sanj invited me to attend, and i felt like i should help out the women in thee PASS organization that i work with. While i sat there eating the great food, i learned a lot too. The panel consisted of a few women with great experiences that they shared with the audience, and opened it up to questions from the audience. Here are some of the nuggets of wisdom i caught during WIT.
- No schedule wednesday. Not allowed to have meetings on wed. U r allowed to plan life events to occur that day.
- Find friends who enhance who you are but let you be who you are.
- Kalen made a great point. Set a goal and strive for it, but do not be afraid to reevaluate it. Do not be imprisoned.\
And in that vein, goto search.twitter and look at all the comments on #sqlpass to follow along. Some will be out of context, but others will be priceless.
I spent some time grabing pieces of information i was listening too, and throwing it out to the twitterverse for others to read. I was even commented on by Louis Davidson as the only one on twitter posting about the WIT event. Though there were a couple others also.
After this lunch, i went to another session, then another one, etc. I leared some great things and always enjoy these sessions. some more than others, but most will teach us great tidbits we can bring back home. One of them was Tom LaRock's session on Operations Manager. This is a tool i really need to dig into, and see if i can get it implemented. It seems like a great tool for monitoring your databases. Tom actually was remoted into his work, via VPN, and amazingly, did a great job demoing this, with few issues. The session was great overall, and i hope to learn from it, and implement it.
I made my way down to the exhibition hall and got a bit more swag, and even filled out my card, in the hopes to win one of 15 prizes to be given away later. After getting it filled out, i ran back to the hotel to dump my swag, and get back for the drawing. On the way, i ran into another chapter president, Fransisco Rosario. He ended up winning an XBox guitar hero game and gear. It was cool to be standing by someone who won. Earlier, a name was read off of an individual that i recognized. It was an interviewee that i met over the phone when i interviewed him for Cybersource. He was not present, and didnt win. Too bad.
After the drawings occurred, and i didnt win, i went up to Brad McGehee's talk on being an exceptional DBA. I also went to Joe Webb's session on quering suggestions. It was hard to hit both these, as they were at the same time. Both had good information and i look forward to reviewing the slides and videos online later.
At 6pm, there was an event for everyone. It was a huge concert like arena. Music, guitar hero stations, lights, etc. I wondered around a bit and talked with a bunch of people. Its always fun to network and see people and alk shop and not shop. I didnt stay long, as there was a dinner being thrown for Friends of Red-Gate at Ruth's Chris Stakehouse... yummy. i went with a few other PASS folks (Pat Wright, Grant Fritchey and Tim Ford). Once there, more shmoozing occurred, good food, and great conversation. We ended up at a table with Greg Low and his wife, and had stimulating conversations about a good dozen different topics. They were a joy to discuss to many different things with, and i really loved the time spent together. By this time, it was about 9pm, and aboout 14 plus hours of being up and going. Its tough to be up and going so long and learning and networking and all that. It seems to tire me out so easily. I returned to the hotel, spent a couple mintues recording a podcast for my family, and this blog. Now i'm done, and will crawl into bed. Tomorrow, i get to be an ambassador at breakfast, and sell PASS to folks eating. Then more sessions will occur, more learning, more networking, and more learning. I can't wait, but first, sleep.
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