My PASS Summit 2011 Recap – 2

This is a followup post of My PASS Summit 2011 Recap – 1, (I know it’s been few weeks that I posted that blog post) where I wrote about the first 2 days of Pre-conferences of PASS Summit 2011. In this blog I will recap the rest of my trip. (really I don’t want to go for a 3rd part in this series, it might well be Jan 2012 if it goes into the 3rd part…).

On Wednesday Oct 12th, for the first time I had the pleasure of attending the PASS Summit keynote in person, I followed PASS keynotes online in the past couple of years.  First it was Rushabh Mehta, PASS President’s brief welcome speech and then it was Ted Kummert, Senior VP, Business Platform Division, Microsoft Corp. Ted announced the official name of the next SQL Server Release as SQL Server 2012 and it would be released in the first half of the year 2012. The following were some of the pictures I took during Keynote on Day1.

PASS President – Rushabh Mehta.

Ted Kummert – Senior VP, Business Platform Division, Microsoft Corp

That day, I attended the sessions “Inside the SQL Server Query Optimizer” by Benjamin Nevarez, “SQL 2008 Query Statistics” by Andrew Kelly and “What’s New in Microsoft SQL Server Code Named “Denali” – Engine and Tools” by Aaron Bertrand. The sessions were all a good.

On day 2 of PASS Summit, after the Keynote, I attended “Advanced SQL Server 2008 Troubleshooting” by Klaus Aschenbrenner. That day after lunch, I knew there was a book signing by all the authors of the book SQL Server Deep Dives – 2. Since I owned the Volume 1 of the book, I knew what to expect from this book, so I bought the book and was there for the book signing and got my copy signed by the authors of the chapters. Post lunch, I attended 2 more sessions “SQL Server Locking & Blocking Made Simple” by Joe Webb and “What Happened? Exploring the Plan Cache” by Kalen Delaney. Later that day, I went to Microsoft Corporate Head Quarters and visited Visitor Center and Microsoft Official Store. These are some of the snaps taken during that visit.

Microsoft Company Store

Visitor Center at Microsoft Corporate Headquarters at Redmond, WA

One of those pics at Visitor Center at Microsoft Redmond Office.

On the final day of the Summit, I attended the Keynote by David DeWitt – Technical Fellow, Data and Storage Platform Division, Microsoft Corp. These are some of the pics I managed to click during the Keynote.

In the second half of the day, I attended 2 sessions “Isolated Disasters in VLDBs” by Kimberly Tripp and “SQL Server Memory Management” by Thomas LaRock

During Breakfast, Lunch and refreshments on all of the Summit days, I had the opportunity to meet fellow DBAs, SQL Server users in different designations. I had the pleasure of meeting Bill Graziano, Brent Ozar, Steve Jones and many more MVPs.

The next day, Saturday I took a 4 hour tour of the Seattle city conducted by Show me Seattle. Then on Sunday, I had my return flight to Baltimore and an hour drive brought me back to home.

— Bru Medishetty

My PASS Summit 2011 Recap – 1

As mentioned last week that I would love to write my experience from this years PASS Summit, which is also my first visit to PASS Summit and to Seattle. I flew to Seattle along with my wife, on Sunday Oct 9th. Earlier in the month, I planned few things to do during my trip to Seattle. We made reservations (yes you cannot just walk-in) for a table at the revolving Restaurant on top of Space Needle, our intention was 2 fold, to dine and watch sunset. The view was fantastic, and the food was good. On one side was Puget Sound and on other side it was Seattle downtown provided a fantastic view all over..

These are 2 of the pics we have taken from top of Space Needle…

Puget Sound

Seattle Downtown

Then starting from Monday Oct 10th, I had 2 pre-conferences (Monday and Tuesday) and both of them were great sessions. Mondays session was with Maciej Pilecki on the topic “The secrets of the SQL Server OS”.

The next days session was with Adam Machanic on the topic “No More Guessing! An
Enlightened Approach to Performance Troubleshooting”. That was also a fun filled session with lots of stuff to digest..

During the refreshment breaks, I had the pleasure to meet Steve Jones, from SQLServerCentral.com. I had the pleasure of meeting many fellow DBAs all over globe during Breakfast/ Lunch and at the end of the day..

After the session when I went to buy my copy of SQL Server Deep Dives – 2 and met Pinal Dave, who is well known for his blog at http://blog.sqlauthority.com/

We spoke for 15-20 minutes and I really enjoyed talking to him. We also happened to meet couple of times later in that week at the convention center, but who would want to wait until the next time to grab a pic, so we found someone who could click a snap for us..

I did not stay for the First Timers Session that was scheduled later that evening, but I followed tweets from those who were attending..

That’s it in this blog. I will finish the rest in the next one..

–Bru Medishetty

PASS Summit 2011, unfinished..

It’s been 2 weeks, PASS Summit 2011 came to an end and I have not yet posted my experience of the PASS Summit in my blog. I kind of kept it pending, (my bad) which I should not be doing. I got an email yesterday from PASS headquarters, asking to take part in a brief survey about my PASS experience. After completing that survey, I made my mind to write a blog about my visit to PASS Summit. I have made note of points that I would write in that blog and I am going to write that blog over this weekend.

So what am I doing in this blog? I am making myself a commitment, an open commitment so that I would not be able to give excuses for not writing. If I don’t write this blog, may be I would never write that actual blog..

–Bru Medishetty