As always, I had an awesome time at SQL Saturday. I heard at least two people say that the SQL community is full of genuinely nice people, and it certainly seems to be true. I followed a bunch of new people on Twitter and won a Kindle Fire!
(By the way, if you’re a SQL person and are not on Twitter, you really should be. I’ve specifically heard that you want to know about #sqlhelp.)
The amusement started when my friend iffer pointed out that they were using a Lord of the Rings theme. The panel tracks were named things like Merry, Pippin, Arwen, Aragorn, and Gandalf. Hee!
As a DBA stolen originally from the System Administration side of the house, I spent most of my time in panels with words like “internals” in their titles. I’ve always believed that the more you know about how things really work, the more able you’ll be to fix them. Brian Kelley and Denny Cherry in particular fed the geek within with the FREAKING AWESOME “Windows Operating System Internals for DB Pros” and “Index Internals.” I also enjoyed Brian’s professional development panel (“Being the Swiss Army Knife of DB Pros“). (The other panels I went to were also really good.)
I also want to put in a plug for the PASSWIT informal lunch. (Photo by Jennifer Levy.) We talked about outreach to girls about STEM careers, and asking for better Barbies. Tell your daughters/nieces/young cousins that they can go into computers today! Encourage a girl in math or science! (By the way, the man in the photo is a college computer science professor. W00t!!!)
Biggest SQL Saturday regret? I didn’t make it to any PowerShell panels this time. 🙁 I’ll have to download some and check ’em out. (I’m particularly interested in “PowerShell Modules You Should Know About.” I’m also interested in “Manage SQL Server 2012 on Server Core w/PowerShell,” but my interest in that is pretty academic, as I think my employer is unlikely to be using either SQL Server 2012 or Server Core in the near future.)
In short? If you work with SQL Server and have never been to SQL Saturday, you probably want to. It’s free! What’s not to love?
