SQL Saturday #79 Recap

I had a great time this past week in South Florida. First up was the PASS Board of Directors meeting on Thursday and Friday. We chose Ft. Lauderdale as the location for our meeting because it gave us all a chance to visit a SQL Saturday event, similar to what we did in Nashville last year. After getting our business done on Friday we went over to the speaker dinner where I got to meet a handful of the local user group members such as Scott Klein.

The event on Saturday was very well run and had a great facility. The best way to describe it? Think “mall food court atrium”. We had plenty of space, the vendor tables were position all around the perimeter so that the people would flow around us all day. Any time I attend a SQL Saturday event that allows for people to interact easily (like KC and the old casino) I consider it to have the makings of a great event. I’ve seen a lot of venues over the past two years and to me that is the main differentiator between them all.

I was originally scheduled to do two talks but about a week before the event I was asked if I could do a third talk because someone had backed out. Naturally I said yes as it gave me the chance to try out a brand new talk regarding database monitoring in a virtual environment. After my first talk of the day I went back to the Confio table and heard Scott make the following announcement:

“Is there anyone willing to speak right now? We had a speaker no-show and there is a group in the room waiting.”

I quickly said “yes”, followed by “what should I talk about”. The Quest rep at the table next to me said “I think you should talk about Foglight for the next hour” which was his way of telling me that he really doesn’t know me. I agreed to talk about Foglight and had to ask him three times if he really wanted that. Eventually he looked at me and said he would pay me to NOT talk for the next hour.

I went into the room and told everyone that I wasn’t the guy they were expecting to see and that if they had a second option they wanted to attend they should go to that one because I didn’t have any presentation materials. Then I asked what the session was supposed to be about and they told me SQL Server Audit. As it happens, I did some talks on SQL Server Audit as recently as 16 months ago, so I told them I would go see if I did have some slides. I came back with my laptop five minutes later and sure enough I had some slides. About a dozen people stuck around to listen to me talk about SQL Server Audit despite not having prepared anything for them.

I got through that talk OK, the best parts had to be me looking at a slide and saying “I have no idea what this is for”. Most of those slides were pictures that had helped to enhance my story, but I had long forgotten the story. My favorite slide had to be the one that just said “DEMO”, which took me by surprise. I think I managed to get through the demo of SQL Server Audit anyway, but the fact that each slide was like Christmas morning was an interesting experience.

So I ended up doing four sessions on the day, was able to stay around for the vendor drawing, and then boarded my flight home. I got in about 1AM and slept for most of the day on Sunday.

And if you pressed me for a ranking, I would tell you that SQL Saturday #79 has entered my Top Five Favorite SQL Saturday events of all time.

Great job to everyone that made it happen.