Summer Speaking Summary 2025
In the blink of an eye, summer has passed. I don’t know about you, but I’m ready for things to get back to “normal” after 10 weeks of events and travel, personal and professional, starting with high school graduation and finishing with college move-in.
Amidst all that, I had three speaking engagements as mentioned in an earlier post. Three different talks, delivered in very different places - putting it all together was more work than I’d anticipated.
Houston
While in Houston for other reasons, I dropped in on the local user group on July 9th and presented an Introduction to dbatools to the group. I was staying near NRG Stadium south of downtown and the meeting was at the Microsoft office on the west side of town, so I got to experience the famous notorious Houston rush hour traffic. It wasn’t terrible but certainly more traffic than I’m usually dealing with.
While I had a slide deck and demos, we kept this rather conversational, took a couple detours, and I had a lot of fun with it. We went right to the end of our allotted time, then adjourned to a nearby restaurant to grab a bite to eat and keep the conversation going. This is what I was really hoping to experience in going to the meeting - not so much doing the presentation, but talking to and connecting with folks there.
This trip was a long 12 days away from home and breaking it up by seeing a few familiar faces (I had dinner with another member of SQLFamily for dinner the following evening as well) was just what I needed.
Cleveland
I was approached in mid-June about doing a remote spot for Ohio North Data Training in early August. Since my calendar was (surprisingly) clear that evening, I jumped at the chance. It’s been a few years since I presented for this group, and even longer since I’ve been to Cleveland for an event.
On this occasion, I debuted a completely new session, Documenting Your Work for Worry-Free Vacations. I’ve submitted this to a couple of events but it hasn’t been selected yet. Based on the feedback I’ve received for the session itself, I think it’s either my title or abstract that needs some work here.
This may be my first zero-code-but-still-somewhat-technical talk and I really like how it came together; all screenshots stepping through the workflow, so there’s no internet connection needed and no chance for me to mis-type something or have a random failure due to a software update. I got some solid constructive feedback on the slide design that I’ll need to work on, but overall I think this session is going to work out well and I’m looking forward to presenting it again.
Summit On Tour NYC
This was the big (professional) event for the summer, and for a little while I was worried I wouldn’t be able to attend. Fortunately, everything worked out. It’d been 19 years since my last visit to Manhattan (people are still surprised to hear that I live in New York but don’t ever go to NYC) and it seems a lot has changed in the city that never sleeps. This was a very short trip - just one night. As a result, I was able to do it with just a 28L backpack - not even a carry-on suitcase. I don’t recall if I’ve ever flown this light and it was liberating. No waiting in line to check or collect bags, no dragging a suitcase to the hotel. Thanks to the new scanners at the Rochester airport, I didn’t even have to unpack my laptop to get through security (I wasn’t so lucky at JFK for the return trip).
This was the first ever Summit On Tour event and I wasn’t sure what to expect. How many people? What’s the room layout? Is everything close together or spread out? I’ve never been to the location where it was held, so all I really knew was what’s on their website.
One thing that is definitely consistent with my past Summit experiences - lots of walking. Between the two days, I averaged over 15,000 steps. Such is life in the city as opposed to the work from home life in the exurbs (bordering on rural).
Once checked into the hotel, I made my way to the conference center to check in there. As is often the case, I stopped to talk to a few people before I could get to registration it closed for the day and of course missed picking up my badge. First up were Grant Fritchey (blog), then I made my way to a side room and located Deborah Melkin (blog | bluesky) & Andy Yun (blog | bluesky). After pre-con sessions let out, I chatted with Ray Kim (blog) and JD from the SQL Community Slack for a bit before returning to my hotel to get ready for dinner. After dinner, I joined Ray at Byrant Park to hang out for a bit with the final hour or so of Interstellar in the background. While I do love where I live, thousands of people gathering in an oasis in the middle of the city and having a communal experience watching a movie is something I wish I could partake in.
Tuesday morning I was up early to get back to the conference center because Ed Pollack had organized a small SQLRun. Four runners, only one walker - me! I walked 3 miles up 6th Ave, over to Columbus Circle, then back down 8th Ave and across Times Square. Along the way I logged a few geocaches which was one of my goals for the walk.
After grabbing a bagel en route to the conference center, I got my badge and settled into the speaker room to fix up 2 slides in my presentation. While there, I learned that the Community Zone Hobby Huddles will be returning at PASS Data Community Summit in Seattle this fall. Submissions are now open if you’ll be in Seattle and would like to talk for 10 minutes about something you’re passionate about. On my way to my first session, I bumped into someone from the SQL Slack whom I hadn’t met in person yet and we got to chat a few times over the course of the day.
The first session on my list was Deborah’s Optimized Locking: Improving SQL Server Transaction Concurrency. Her presentations are always engaging, well-paced, and executed very well. This one was no exception and if you are at Summit in Seattle, you need to check it out. I immediately saw so many places where optimized locking would have saved the day in previous jobs. This is a new feature coming in SQL Server 2025 and I think it will be one of the biggest drivers to get people upgrading from previous versions.
I was up next in the same room, and my session went well. No technical issues, though I did have to make the on-the-fly decision to change my display setup once I saw the room layout. Some good questions were asked which gave me the signal that folks were engaged, and there were a couple familiar faces in the audience which is always welcome. The lectern and wiring were set up in such a way that I couldn’t easily move from my PC to directly in front of the projection screen without dealing with the cords, but I made it work. The projector threw the image a bit too low onto the screen/wall; I think if the first row of tables had been further back, it would have been easier for all to see. But these are both minor things.
I didn’t catch a session immediately after lunch, instead heading to the Experts Clinic where I was able to answer a follow-up question from my session as well as chat with Ray, Edwin Sarmiento (blog), and Taiob Ali (blog). After we adjourned, I dropped in on Ray’s session Networking 101: Building Professional Relationships - very interactive with a lot of audience participation.
The day wrapped up with Bob Ward talking about Scalable AI Solutions with SQL Server at the center of it. This stuff is big and moving incredibly fast - fast enough that I’m not sure where to dive in or how to do it. And once I do dive in, will I have to be working on it every day just to keep up? I will have to figure it out though; I’m not retiring soon, so I need to get my head around it.
Once things wound down, Ray had a train to catch, I needed to get myself to JFK, and we both needed dinner. Luckily, we were able to take care of all of those at Penn Station Moynihan Train Hall, which has a great selection of food offerings. I hopped on the LIRR back to Jamaica Station, which was much more comfortable than the subway I’d taken Monday afternoon and faster to boot.
Wrapping Up
So maybe this wasn’t much of a “summary” after all - I wrote much more than I anticipated. Summer’s over now. We had our usual long weekend camping trip to close it out, kids are back in school, and extracurriculars (sports and clubs) have already resumed. There’s so much to look forward to this fall, including preparing for and attending (and speaking!) at PASS Data Community Summit in November.
A huge thank you to everyone who organized and attended these events - you helped make this a summer to remember!