SQLAuthority News – Notes of Excellent Experience at SQL PASS 2009 Summit, Seattle

Update: Do not forget to checkout last three photos and follow me on twitter (of course!)

I have previously documented my four-day experience of SQL PASS 2009 Summit at Seattle. There were many reasons for SQL enthusiasts to attend the SQL PASS event; I am listing my own reasons here in order of importance to me.

• Networking with SQL fellows and experts
• Putting face to the name or avatar
• Learning and improving my SQL skills
• Understanding the structure of the largest SQL Server Professional Association
• Attending my favorite training sessions

During these four days, there was so much happening that it is difficult to document everything. I had tried to cover this event briefly on a daily basis in the following blog posts:

SQLAuthority News – SQL PASS Summit, Seattle 2009 – Day 1
SQLAuthority News – SQL PASS Summit, Seattle 2009 – Day 2
SQLAuthority News – SQL PASS Summit, Seattle 2009 – Day 3
SQLAuthority News – SQL PASS Summit, Seattle 2009 – Day 4

I will list a few of the additional details that I have not included in the earlier post. Keynotes were the best part of the event, and I have covered major points of the keynote in above mentioned posts. I had met many SQL Legends during this event and included information regarding them. However, there were few things I still missed and I am listing them here. Seattle is great city, and I am visiting it the second time. This time I got an opportunity to take the Underground city tour and I had really enjoyed.

It was great to meet SQL Server MVP Glenn Berry at the MVP Summit. He is a very kind and friendly person. You will always find him hanging around with people from different organizations and countries. If you try to eavesdrop his conversation, you will hear terms like ‘dmv’, ‘performance’, and ‘optimized query’ very often. He is very much known for his excellent optimization script known as “SQL Server 2008 Diagnostic Information Queries“. If you have never taken a look at that, I urge you to go there and check this out. I believe that even if he blogs once a year only with this script, his fans will not complain. I have previously published his interview on my blog. Please note that he is the only person ever featured in an interview on this blog.

It depends! This is one most loved (or hated) phrase in the world of programmers or DBA. It is quite common to start answering question using this phrase. Mostly, this phrase initiates humor but rarely, people take this as offence. Again the intent of speaker is not always conveyed properly, it depends on how the phrase is used (I could not resist to use this phrase as well :P). I had very interesting discussion with Michelle Ufford and Jason Strate when we were waiting for coffee at one afternoon. We discussed both the sides of this phrase. Michelle suggested many good points when and why this phrase is valid. Jason also suggested that this phrase is commonly used a) when the presenter does not have sufficient information to answer or b) when the presenter does not know the answer. We discussed that it would be really interesting to start the conversation answering the most possible answer and then talking about special cases (for which it depends is quite commonly used.) Let us see one example.

Q: Does index improve performance?
A1: It depends on query and data you have.
A2: Usually YES; however, there are cases when it reduces performance, for which the query and data needs to be examined carefully.

There are times when it depends totally make sense. I use it several times; I love the blog of Andy Warren which talks is branded as it depends. This discussion between three of us was just a friendly discussion, and if you think we are talking about you, it is wrong!

During this event, I had great conversation with SQL Legend Buck Woody. This man is full of energy and may be the most loved person in this summit. His session was the funniest session I have ever attended. At the end of his session, I had more than 2 pages of my notebook filled with notes. If I have wrote down how many times, I have laughed loudly, I would have no time to do anything else. Buck had a good hour of discussion with me. We discussed many different topics, ranging from Community to Microsoft and Collage Students to SQL. I am very thankful to Buck for spending his valuable time with me – I am honored.

Joe Celko – this name is very popular in SQL world, and I admit that I was always afraid of him. Every time I see his photo, I just felt nervous. I never thought that I should meet him. Honestly, for the same reason, I did not attend his session. I was absolutely wrong. I met him right after his session was over. He is one of the most friendly people I have met in my life. He is very soft spoken. He gauges the level and understanding of other person and speaks at the same level. He made me laugh and taught many good techniques for how to become good speaker and presenter. When I said I was sorry that I was scared of him, he laughed and said that he knows this. Boy, what a mistake I did!! I should have attended his session. Well, at least I am accepting my mistake here. He is indeed a very friendly soul. He promised me that one time he will come to India.

Brian Moran is the newly elected board member; I would like to call him as ‘the Man with 1000 successful ideas‘. You have to come across him to know what I am talking about. I had the great opportunity to meet him and discuss few things, besides SQL. Brian had many excellent ideas about how to build the community, how to help SQL PASS and few excellent ideas about how to take PASS to the next level. I am glad that he is one of the board members for PASS. PASS is all about passion, and Brian clearly demonstrates the same.

I met all of them and had a great conversation with them. It was great to meet Ed Hackney; he is a wonderful person and very easily approachable. He talked about SQL community in India and how any community cannot be restrained within geographical boundaries.

I was waiting to meet Thomas LaRock. He is an excellent SQL Master, and he talked in detail about outsourcing SQL technology and SQL community. I really enjoyed meeting him and spending some time with him during the summit. I plan to learn more from him when I meet him next time.

Robert Cain, he is one of the very few SQL masters, who have expertise in .net and Business Intelligence at the same time. I have previously wrote about him in Big Thinkers – Robert Cain. He has given approval that I can write about his BI presentation on this blog. I will write about it soon.

I have previously written a lot about Greg Low on this blog. However, I just can not resist to put this excellent photo once again here. He has great respect for the international community; and he had spent some quality time with me discussing how to enhance and grow the global community. Greg gave his insight and few plan cache tips as well. You can read my review of his book ‘Book Review – The Rational Guide to Building Technical User Communities (Rational Guides)‘. You can also read our discussion on plan cache ‘SQL SERVER – Plan Caching and Schema Change – An Interesting Observation‘.

Following image is for sure very interesting! Can you recognize the person? Well, just go here and read about Mr. Denny. And I do have permission from him to publish this photo!

PASS 2010 dates are announced; this event will take place between 8 and 12 November 2010.

Following image is my favorite as it brings the future and past of PASS together. Kevin Kline, a hero of PASS summit, (as he dedicated 10 years of his life to serve PASS board) is in same frame with Rushabh Mehta, who is President Elect for 2010.

Now I am coming to the most interesting part of my experience. I want to introduce to all of you the youngest SQL PASS fan and follower. Her name is Shaivi Dave, and she is big fan of SQL PASS! Shaivi suggests that save your money and register right away for PASS. There is no other conference which is as valuable as SQL PASS.

She had conveyed her wish to SQL PASS President Elect Rushabh Mehta when she was just 19 days old. May be one of following years, we will see her at summit.

This is note is addendum to my four original posts. I strongly suggest you all to read my earlier posts for details on keynote and other SQL legends.

SQLAuthority News – SQL PASS Summit, Seattle 2009 – Day 1
SQLAuthority News – SQL PASS Summit, Seattle 2009 – Day 2
SQLAuthority News – SQL PASS Summit, Seattle 2009 – Day 3
SQLAuthority News – SQL PASS Summit, Seattle 2009 – Day 4

If you have visited this event and have something more to add to what I have written, please feel free to add it here as a comment. I am looking forward for you all to add more details and information here. Follow me on twitter.

Reference: Pinal Dave (https://blog.sqlauthority.com)