SQL Saturday #51 Nashville Recap

I returned from Nashville yesterday, having been there for four days to take part in SQL Saturday as well as the most recent in-face PASS Board meetings. This was my first ever trip to Nashville and I had really just one goal in mind as a tourist: to find some good music. I managed to find some music every night, and some good BBQ one night as well. I even saw Elvis and a picture of Buck Woody on the wall in some honky tonk. By the time my visit was over I learned why Nashville is often called Nash-Vegas as well as the Music City. I mean, where else can you have the band call out the bouncer to come on stage to sing the next song? I bet they could have called up just about anyone in the crowd and that person could have sang or played an instrument. Everyone just seems…so…musical.

While I was in Nashville for two events, but this post is a recap for SQL Saturday so I am going to keep my focus on that event for now.

Diane debutante backseat of Jacky’s car…

I have been employed by Confio since June 7th, but in many ways this was my first real event as their Padawan. I spent a good chunk of time putting together my talk (“What Are You Waiting For?”) and even had the chance to rehearse it for two local user groups prior to presenting it in Nashville. In other words, I did everything possible to hit a home run for this talk. I treated this like my job, and my reputation, were on the line. I revamped how I built my slide decks, tossing out ideas I had used in the past. I changed my speaking style to be more interactive than previously (mostly because I knew I needed to keep people awake at 3:30PM on a Saturday).

The result say I had some success, I think. I had about 30 people attend, and 21 of them took the time to fill out a short sessions evaluation. The scale was from 1 (very poor) to 5 (great) in terms of quality and there was also a section for expectations (did not meet | met | exceeded). The people were also asked to leave their name and additional comments. Out of 21 tickets I received two ‘met’ and five ‘exceeded’ for expectations (including one person who wrote exceeded ++). For quality I received two 4’s and 19 5’s, giving me an average of 4.9 for the talk. I also had nine people take the time to write something to me personally, here are some of the quotes:

Good, practical, immediately usable solution to query tuning.

Very informative and entertaining, thanks!

Not a DBA, but thought this was helpful to create ‘structure’. Will share with my DBA!

Tom is a solid presenter.

You kept me awake!

Not sure, but since the person I kept awake gave me a 5 I am guessing that is a good thing.

And, if I go by the evaluations, I would like to think I had a good first showing as a representative of Confio Software. I’d also like to think I helped people become a little better at being a database professional.

Ain’t no rest for the wicked…

I was involved in other parts of SQL Saturday as well. I was asked to do an introductory DBA session at 8:30AM in the cafeteria. About 25 people showed up to listen to me talk about being a DBA Survivor. There was not a lot of code or examples in my talk, it is more of career advice. I often tell people how the book was written with the idea that I wish someone else would have written the book and handed it to me on the day I became a DBA. One person left the talk a bit disappointed because they were looking for more examples of (or about) code, but still took the time to tell me that I was a great presenter. So, mixed emotions there, I guess.

I was also invited to participate in the keynote along with Kevin Kline. This was my first keynote ever and probably the best one since I got to insult Kevin’s mom not once, but twice. (Hey, don’t look at me that way, she’s been asking for it!) I never got much feedback on the keynote but a few people told me it went well enough. I didn’t have much time to prepare for that one so a lot of my comments were really off-the-cuff. I did my best to keep my parts quick and concise, not sure if I succeeded in getting my points across in a short amount of time or not.

[The last time I had to speak to a group of adults in a cafeteria I was telling the parents of my basketball players that they were not allowed to ever question their son’s playing time until they had watched a full week of practice. That crowd reaction was a bit, well, different than this one.]

My last event for the day was sitting as part of the “Stump the Experts” panel. I think most people were stumped by my being included in the panel, but I was the only person present that knew you could create 999 non-clustered indexes on a table. No, you don’t want to know how I know that trivial bit of SQL knowledge.

Anything you can do, I can do better…

This is my third SQL Saturday event, and my second as a speaker. I’d like to take a moment to post some suggestions for people looking to organize future SQL Saturday events.

First, figure out a way to welcome people to your city and event that is unique. Meeting in a restaurant is fairly ordinary. For Nashville we met at Kevin Kline’s house and had a cookout. It was amazing for Kevin to invite us into his home and watch him eat barefoot on his living room floor (nothing says “upscale hillbilly” quite like that image, right?). I was accosted by Tamara Clark who ran up and said “Hi, I’m Tamera, as in camera.” It was like some odd family reunion as everyone gathered around inside of someone’s house to talk food and SQL.

And it was awesome. Every other SQL Saturday organizer should take note. I’m looking at you, Kansas City, and I am hoping you can put together a “rib crawl” on Friday for lunch/dinner. I’ll fly in early on Thursday to eat my weight in meat-like products and mingle with other SQL geeks. Other cities should find something else that is fairly unique about them and look to incorporate that into the event. Raleigh could do a pig roast or show us how to chew tobacco. Orlando could show us why it’s called the Magic Kingdom. Lots of things make your city or region unique, find a way to showcase whatever that may be and help create a shared experience for everyone.

Next, when a person get’s his/her packet, they should be given instructions on what the packet contains. Walk me through everything I need to know, or point to a piece of paper that has all the important information. Point out where the speakers room is, and where the restrooms are. Tell people where the food is located, and what time the first event starts. Assume that the person in front of you knows nothing and is lost. Don’t assume that we are smart enough to figure it all out on our own. We aren’t.

Lastly, if you are doing a raffle at the end, you should make it clear at the very start if a person is allowed to win multiple prizes. I would rather spread the wealth as much as possible. If someone wins an MSDN subscription I don’t think they should also win addition software. But that’s just me. If you want to allow someone to walk away with more than one prize, that’s fine, just set your raffle up in a way that goes along with what your rules are.