Thursday, April 17, 2014

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.

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