SQL Saturday #295 Las Vegas wrapup

(written while disconnected in the southern desert of Utah on April 8th)


This last weekend found me travelling to Las Vegas to help celebrate its first SQL Saturday ever. The team of Stacia Misner, Jason Brimhall, as well as a slew of others, were able to stand up a great event that drew a descent opening round as well as great support from local, regional and remote speakers.

As it is only a few hours (6) from my home, we decided to go as a family, spend some time in Vegas, then start a Spring Break week vacation afterwards. Various options were discussed in my family, and it was decided that we would go camping and dirt biking after an extra bit of time in Vegas. This requires us to load up anb haul our camper somewhere. We chose to camp and bike in St. George, which is partway to Las Vegas. We found a location where we could drop off our trailer and leave it for a few days while we spent time in Las Vegas.

The fateful day came when we left to make our way south. With the trailer loaded and ready we took off around 10:30 am, with 2 planned stops that would consume an hour or so, extending the trip from 6 hours to about 7 hours.

The first stop occurred as planned, and I even saved $20 I wasn't planning on. Yeah, its always nice to save money. Around 11:30 am we left that stop and headed south. We passed a town called Nephi that is an hour plus from our home. As we pass this town, there is a large gap of towns that usually means you are really on your way. The trip underway, we get excited to be going. Its about this time that I hear a small explosion from the left side of our vehicle, and am alerted to flying debris from the mirror. Having never experienced a blow out on a tire, I was surprised at how I simply knew what had happened. Blowout. Yeah. less than 200 miles from our home and at the beginning of the tirp, boom. I pull over semi gracefully and get stopped to  inspect the damage. As I exit the vehicle, I grab my nexus 5 cell phone so I can take pictures, if needed. As I exit, the phone slips from my hand and lands screen down on the pavement. It looks fine, but I can tell that it just added to the cost we had just had shoved down our throats with the blowout. Sure enough, the screen was cracked before I could even go see the damage behind us. It turns out that only 1 of the 4 trailer tires blew, which explains why it was easy to pull over after I saw the tire pieces in my mirror escaping their previously contained existence.

After several phone calls, we found a tire dealer that could send out help. When Ben arrived, he was able to pull the borked tire off our trailer. While he was there, I inquired as to his expert opinion concerning the other tires. The prognosis was rather negative, and while he returned to his shop to fix the 1 tire, we deliberated what we should do. Several options lay in front of us. Replace the single tire, replace the other partner tire on that side, replace all 4, take the trailer back home, continue on with some or all tires replaced, and so on. Ugghh. When Ben returned with a brand new tire, we were able to get it mounted easily. We had decided to return to Nephi and get all 4 tires replaced. The tires were from 2007, and though they didn't have a ton of wear and were actually had plenty of tread left, there was evidence of age and cracking visually. The time had come, we just hadn't planned on it. The tire store was amazing and got us fixed up really quickly and on the road again. 2.5 hours delayed, but on our way. Let SQL Saturday trip begin, again.

Back on the road again, with stress levels high, we got to experience them even higher as the winds blew us all over the road for the next 4 hours. At some points during the trip I had to remove my hands from the wheel and shake them out because of holding on so hard to counteract the pull of the wind gusts. Stress was a constant companion. Eventually we made it to St. George and were successfull in dropping off the trailer at storage. Phase one of the trip was complete. On to Vegas, just hours and hours delayed.

We arrived in Vegas about 20 minutes after the speaker dinner started. I went in to the dinner to grab some keys to our hotel (SQL Solutions Group had a suite of rooms rented for us and had checked in already). I intended to grab and go, but ended up hanging out a bit to talk and say hi to #SQLFAMILY members before getting my family to the hotel. After dropping the kiddos off at the hotel, my wife and I returned to the dinner and had a great time catching up with folks. It is always fun to introduce my wife to the members of my other family. The dinner that was thrown for the speakers was delicious. The gifts given to speakers were spot on for the locale. A deck of cards with the SQL Saturday Las Vegas logo, a handful of similarly logoed poker chips and a usb jump drive shaped like a poker chip. Turns out my cards have 2 5's of clubs and no 4 of clubs. But #firstworldproblems aside, I love the cards and enjoyed playing card games with my family and with them already.

At the dinner, I was able to meet and talk with several of the volunteers that would be helping out in the morning. Questions were answered, tasks discussed, and times set to meet in the morning to get it going.
The next morning I awoke late, but was at the facility a little after 7am. I grabbed the signs and went back out to the various roads to put up the directional signs to help attendees find the facility. The morning in the desert was glorious, warm, wind blowing slightly, and bright blue skies. ?I ran around with my truck and the signs and the radio blaring, pounding the sign holders into the bedrock around the area. Once complete, I returned to the facility and said more "Hi's" to folks as well as started doing various volunteer tasks. The morning got going with a couple of hiccups, mainly the printing of SpeedPasses had some issues. The rooms were up on the third floor and we found attendees had an issue initially getting around and finding the rooms and getting around. Once the layout was understood, folks had less of an issue with it. It turned out that the printed map had a typo that also lent to this confusion. It was a problem, but not a large one, and once communicated out, it was overcome. The location of the vendors was not ideal, and lent to light foot traffic to visit the vendors. This should be remedied next time if this facility is reused. The location for lunch was ideal as it was the largest room and also served as one of the session rooms. So once lunch arrived, attendees and speakers knew where it was and easily found their way there. Lunch had been catered and the catering folks did a great job keeping the supply available as the attendees flowed thru to get food. The food was good and probably one of the best lunch selections I have had at an event like this. There was a sponsor for lunch, which may have helped it be such good food as well as catered. I likey.

The facility was a bit odd, and one of the rooms had almost lounge chairs to sit in instead of the normal desk and office type chairs. The speaker stations were really high tech and had an ipad controller to select all the options for display. Initially I thought that this may prove to be a problem as each new speaker took the station, but it turned out to not be an issue, as the previous speaker had already selected the options and left it ready to go. The speaker ready room was large enough for a few speakers to get ready in, and small enough that all the speakers were unable to hang out the entire day there. This is a good thing, as it forced speakers to get out and around the event, instead of holing up in the speaker room. It was also centrally located and lent to a good flow. It's nice when the speaker room is not off in a far off location of the facility.

When the last session was completed, we all adjourned to the lunch room and got to listen to a sponsor session from Microsoft. This was a bit odd, and luckily was not the entire half hour as previously mentioned. Since it was a large room, folks gathered in the back of the room and started talking. These conversations became loud enough that the attendees actually trying to listen started turning around and giving 'that look'. Truth be told, i was one talking and received 'that look'. Suffice it to say, the location in the big room and the gathering of us all there, was not ideal for an after session. Maybe it would have been better to let folks know to convene in the big room at 5:30, after the sponsor session was over, instead of 5:00 and talking. But its never a perfect science.

After the sponsor session, the attendees were able to receive the large prizes from the sponsors. Each sponsor was given a moment to talk and give out their prizes. A lot of folks were able to receive some great prizes and they all looked happy. Once completed with the giveaways, Stacia and Jason were able to sell the event for next time, as well as PASS and the local user group. Hopefully this activity will have instilled in the local populace the excitement that we have all felt, and propel them to continue building these communities, networking with locals as well as others in the community, and help themselves and their careers.

There was an after party and though not everyone attends these, enough folks did that we were able to hang out  a bit and ultimately say our good byes to the #SQLFAMILY members we did get to see. Hugs, shakes and networking completed, we went our separate ways. Some returning to hotels, others going to the airport, and still others heading out to be entertained by the Vegas nightlife. Thus bringing to and end, the event, the learning, and the networking. Another one in the bag.

Thanks to all organizers, volunteers, speakers and attendees. Let's hope that this is the start of many more to come.

SQL Saturday #295 in Las Vegas – April 5, 2014

This weekend, SQL Saturday #295 is in Las Vegas. I am lucky enough to have been selected to present a session. I speak at 11:30 AM in DBA - Room 2 on some tips that I have used to help me with Monitoring. I have given this session before and really enjoy the topic, as well as the discussions that come from it.

As I have had to create and maintain monitoring on various machines, database servers, services and processes, I wanted to help others with some of the pain I have overcome. I got to learn powershell as a result of this process. Doing this task for my own shop has helped me learn and I enjoy sharing this with others. 

In this session, I hope to really share with you my experience, examples and tricks, and hope that you will be inspired to improve your own shop, make a change for the better, and come out of this session with something gained, be it directly related to what I talk and show or not, it matters not to me. Just that you are inspired, and become better for that inspiration.

I am bringing my entire family with me to Las Vegas for the weekend and we will start a spring break vacation after this event has concluded. We all look forward to a days of warm weather. After spending a few days in Vegas, we will go back north, and go camping and dirtbiking for the rest of the week. Returning home on friday and flying out to the next SQL Saturday even in Colorado springs. 

If you can make it out to this free event, please do. Come and learn and network and experience the #SQLFamily as we share and grow together. 

SQL Saturday #279 Phoenix wrapup

This last Saturday I had the opportunity to go from 29 degree mornings to the Arizona desert and 70 degrees during the day. Looking at it that way, it wasn't much of a choice. The weather was nice and very enjoyable. Thanks for having it. If whoever was in charge of that weather, please send some my way.

But back to the event. I took off from Utah around lunchtime and flew down to Phoenix with Randy Knight and Jason Brimhall of SQL Solutions Group fame. We had an uneventful flight down, with rough weather on both takeoff and landing. Landing in Phoenix with clothing on the bottom halves of my legs seemed like a bad idea and was remediated quickly. The evening found us at a baseball game with the rest of the speakers. Amy Lewis and crew were able to acquire tickets to the D-Backs vs Cubs game. We also got vouchers to get food in the local offerings. After standing in line for 15 minutes and waiting for a my food for a half hour I had a descent burger with some incredible garlic fries. They tasted amazing. And hours, even days later, they still tasted great. Just kidding, but they did hang around for quite a while. I enjoyed them for most of the time that they were with me. The game was disappointing if you were a DBack fan, but it was still enjoyable, with some great plays and tense moments, as well as some great time to mingle and talk with all the folks attending the event. It is always like the first day of summer camp when you get to see all your friends and catch up with them, telling stories, comparing, sharing and simply enjoying each others company. Mixing and talking to everyone, watching the game, repeating, I think that we all had a blast. With the game over, folks broke up into groups and disappeared, the evening almost over and the next day looming.

Luckily I was able to return to the hotel and not have to dig into and demos or slides, as my presentations were ready to go. I know that some were not so fortunate and went back to do more work on session prep or even more real work. Saturday was rapidly approaching and i am sure we all made it there in different way. But collect again we did, the morning of Saturday at the event. More mixing and mingling and reuniting with old friends not seen the night before occurred. The morning started with some great bfast snacks and a keynote in a large windowed room with garage door openings and massive fans. One can imagine the doors opened and the fans pushing the air around. However, since the weather was just nice and not insanely hot like Phoenix can be, the room was nice, with the blue skies glowing softly outside. 

After the keynote, folks traveled to 3 different buildings on campus to attend from 11 distinct sessions. I was up for the first session hour and had the opportunity to speak on Release Management. The session time came and I only had 2 attendees and the room monitor that was forced to attend. We waited for a bit past the start time and a few more folks came in, bringing the total up to 8. So an intimate session it was, with discussion and sharing, and me blathering on about my experiences and ideas on how to keep change from impacting us negatively in our production environments. I believe that the session was well received and I enjoyed giving it and interacting with the attendees. 

More sessions came until the lunch hour. We reunited back in the large room with the glass and glass garage doors and massive fans. Pizza and pasta and salad was on the menu as well as networking and story telling. Food was consumed and connections made. SQL was discussed and plans were made. 

Sessions resumed in the 3 locations and more learning was presumably acquired by the attendees and speakers. I got to listen to parts of 2 sessions in the afternoon and learned a few things, and need to make follow up to learn more. I love being able to have access to such great knowledge and experience. Keying into the right people and making those contacts to forge even stronger relationships through learning is what these events are about for me. Sharing and learning.

The last hour of the event found me in a room with nearly 20 other folks discussing the gloriously exciting topic of Documentation. One would not think that I could get even my closest friends tricked into coming to my session of documentation, let alone 20 strangers, but alas, this is what happened. After a lively discussion that strangely started out with an explanation of my name and ended with folks wanting to get copies of my documentation, I finished the session. 

With the session ended and the final group session beginning, the attendees that were left were energized at the chance to receive presents. We went to the keynote room and swag was given out to a ton of folks. Books, licenses and more was given away. 

Cleanup started, goodbyes were hugged out, and eventually attendees, speakers and volunteers finished and parted ways. Some to the airport, some to hotels, some back to their homes and some went to the after party at a local watering hole. More networking and stories occurred, which eventually led to more hugging and departing friends. Some of us were talked into going to a Packers Bar to witness the lovely Tim Mitchel and Kathy Kellenberger sing karaoke. After some descent performances and some, well, other performances, we were treated to our favorites sing 'Babe' to the packed bar. After that, more hugs and goodbyes. And it was over.

I enjoyed the venue. The keynote room was large and spacious, with views to the outside making it feel larger than it was. The speaker room was spacious and allowed folks to spread out and practice their craft. There was also a speaker lounge just outside the serious room where seats enough for a few more speakers to kick back and chat. One could wander in here and always find someone to talk with and scheme. The rooms were not all together, which i heard a few 'complaints' about. In quotes because they were not hearty complaints, more a discussion. But having them grouped together as they were was helpful. one could go from 1 to the next easily. Once inside the rooms, with the doors even open, it provided enough space and quiet to perform the session well without outside interruptions. Having the sponsors on the way to the sessions outside one of the buildings was a great idea, letting folks chat up the sponsors without impacting any of the rooms or hallways. And being outside was glorious. The parking was plentiful and close to the venue. The venue was close to the freeway and easily accessible. I really have no complaints about this event that would even help it be better next year. It was well done, the volunteers kept the machine running along well, and you could tell that they had had some practice with previous years, and this year it just coasted along smoothly, giving everyone a great experience.

My thanks to the sponsors and volunteers that put the event on. Thanks to the speakers that came from near and far to help with the event. And a very special thanks to the attendees for giving up their Saturday to come out and get some SQL learning on.

Cya next year!!