Last year at PASS Summit 2017, I heard a number of comments related to people not recognizing me without the hat in my social media photo/avatar. The linked post started and concluded with the notion that I needed to take a new photo.
That never happened. Instead, I embraced The Hat. And it was totally worth it. I got a bit of ribbing from folks early in the week but it was all friendly. Trying to meet up with people at various points in the week, I’d get messages like “I’m in (location), looking for your hat, where are you?” People introduced themselves when they spotted me doing my PASS Ambassador duties because they recognized the hat from my photo.
I met a few people sans hat and they didn’t immediately connect me (the person) with me (the Twitter account). Not a big deal, but I learned an important lesson from it. Apparently, this is how I’m known in a portion of the community now – the guy in the hat. Folks are accustomed to seeing/talking to me on Slack/Twitter with a particular image next to my name. That’s the image of me they have in their mind. Therefore, it’s best if I maintain that appearance offline as well.
I’m OK with this. It sets me apart from the crowd a bit and as time marches on and protecting my head from the elements becomes more important, it becomes a more necessary part of my wardrobe. At big events like this where I’m actively trying to meet people I’ve only spoken with online, I just need to be more consistent about wearing it.
My album of people and events at Summit 2018. Somehow a number of photo opportunities were missed!
Preparing to board our first flight.
I'd like to stop at the duty-free shop
It was 7 AM and the place was already open. Too bad I had no space in my carry-on. And wasn't drinking the whole week. And everything was overpriced.
About to board flight #2. Do I look tired? It's 8 AM and I've already been up for 5 hours.
Prepare for takeoff
This NEVER happens. Would have preferred it on the flight home, but I'll take it either way.
Frosty
I couldn't get comfortable on the flight, despite the empty seat next to me. But I found the bit of ice on my window entertaining for a few moments over the northern plains.
Boeing field as seen on final approach to SEA from the north
Patiently waiting for a gate to open up.
We landed early, but that just meant no gates were available for us.
Obligatory Link photo.
We have arrived! If this isn't the same hotel room I had last year, it's very, very close.
Checkin time! Do I look tired?
This was about 2:00 PM Seattle time, so I'd been up for 15 hours and flown cross-country by this point. Right after this, a video crew grabbed me and interviewed me for the community segment of the Day 2 Keynote.
Sweet swag. My son loves Rubik's Cubes
v.20 Celebration underway!
One of these individuals found my lack of foreign key constraints disturbing.
It's a fleece. A red fleece.
Somehow I missed all the people falling into the big tub of ping-pong balls
👞 & I didn't get to hang out last year, so we had to get a selfie right away this year
Hugs exchanged for badge ribbons. Fair trade?
Brent working the room in his session Wednesday morning.
Caught up with SQLZelda
Caught the Day 2 Keynote & first session of the day with Deb
We're all learning this morning! Photo courtesy Deb Melkin
Games night! Jenga got a little dicey, we had to get creative.
Can this piece get nudged out?
Or do we have to grab with two hands and pull out sideways?
Trying very hard to not wreck the tower. We're not engineers, after all.
Photo by Olivia Allard (https://twitter.com/dboliviaa)
Bumped into Andy Yun on the escalator Friday morning.
Photo by Andy Yun (https://twitter.com/sqlbek) & used with permission
And he spotted Andy Leonard!
Photo by Andy Yun (https://twitter.com/sqlbek) & used with permission
Rochester User Group in the Community Zone
Chatting with Sheila Acker & Ed Pollack in the Exhibitor Hall
Preparing for the Friday Birds of a Feather lunch
I...I don't know. Someone said something funny.
Badge ribbon check!
Our Codenames table at Thursday Games Night
Photo courtesy James McGillivray (https://twitter.com/JamesMcG_MSBI)
I didn't really get a chance to talk to Rob until the very end of Friday, as everyone was saying final goodbyes.
On the eve of this year’s PASS Summit, I find myself reflecting on my first Summit in 2012. My employer was generous enough to pay for not only Summit itself, but a pre-con session on Tuesday as well.
I was a developer with an interest in SQL Server and PowerShell at the time, not a DBA. Becoming a DBA wasn’t on my radar yet. Regardless, I used the opportunity to attend a full-day class on managing SQL Server with PowerShell, taught by Allen White (blog | twitter). One of the big focal points of the day was the SQL Server Management Objects, aka SMO.
What I learned that day wasn’t immediately usable in my day-to-day job. Parts of it flew way over my head at the time. But the seeds were planted. It’d be several years before I got to the point of really applying it. Initially, my application was limited to some development “DBA-lite” tasks and suggestions for our sysadmins.
After a job change to become a full-time DBA, I started using and then contributing to dbatools, which uses SMO heavily. That previous exposure to SMO proved very beneficial. dbatools provides a lot of functionality, but it doesn’t do “everything.” In my own scripts, I’ve used that knowledge of the SMO object methods and properties to extend that functionality.
As I pore over this year’s schedule, I remind myself and ask you to consider not just what’s applicable to your present work and environment. Catch some sessions just to see what else is out there, or what’s coming. It’ll open doors for you in the future. Being informed about a wider range of topics will help you guide the conversation toward better solutions in the future. You don’t have to become a master of the topic; just know that something exists, what it can be applied to (equally valuable: where it won’t apply), and where to start gathering information if the solution is worth pursuing.
In addition to being an amazing opportunity for both technical and professional development, PASS Summit is a #sqlfamily reunion and a huge networking event. Catching up with old friends, meeting new ones, finding out who’s doing what with which technologies, etc.
This is one of the few times each year I’m anything even approaching a social butterfly and I’ve had one or two people ask about my schedule so we can plan meetups. Summit is so huge that you have to plan these things. You can’t count on randomly bumping into people around the convention center or city, and if you happen to spot someone you really want to meet, you have to take advantage of that opportunity the first time it presents itself.
I will have somedbatools badge ribbons with me this year, but I waited too long to re-order so they’ll probably run out early. Get ’em while you can!
So, with less than two weeks until we’re all together in Seattle, where will I be found? Here’s my schedule thus far for “extracurriculars” – non-session, non-keynote time. Keep in mind that this is just what I have booked right now – I’ve purposely kept time open as I know other things will pop up, plus I like to see where the breeze takes me
Note: I’m an early(ish) riser and while I’m not out until 3 AM at #SQLKaraoke, I don’t turn in at 9 PM either. I’m always ready for a late-night snack & beer or if you want to grab breakfast, we can probably make that happen Thursday or Friday.
Tuesday
12:00 – My flight is scheduled to arrive in Seattle
13:30 – 13:30 – PASS Local User Group Leader meeting. I’ll probably arrive late and I expect to catch some flak from Grant for that.
11:30 – 12:30 – Hosting the Development & Administration Tools Birds of a Feather table in the Quest Dining Hall
15:00 – 18:00 – Community Zone US East Spotlight hours. I won’t be there the full 3 hours but as I’m in the US East region, I’ll be there for a while meeting folks.
19:00 – 21:00 – I’ll be at an event off-site.
20:30 – 22:30 – I’ll be at a different event off-site.
Thursday
Sometime – I need to find a geocache so I can get one day closer to having a find recorded on each day of the calendar year. Fortunately, there are a couple very close to the convention center
12:45 – 13:45 – I’ll be posted as a PASS Ambassador in the 6ABC Lobby helping people find their rooms and sessions. I’ll be wearing a red PASS vest for visibility.
17:00 – 18:00 – PASS Board Q&A
19:00 – 22:30 – Games Night in Ballroom 6A. If you aren’t signed up for one of these (they’re happening both Wednesday and Thursday nights), it’s really a good time to unwind and have a relaxing evening talking with people over a board or card game.
Friday
12:00 – 13:00 – Hosting the Migrating SQL Server Birds of a Feather table in the Quest Dining Hall
13:00 – 14:00 – I’ll be posted as a PASS Ambassador on the Skybridge, once again in the red PASS vest
22:15 – Plane leaves Seattle. If you’re flying out on JetBlue, hang out with Matt (b|t) & me in the terminal!
Please ping me on Twitter or the SQL Community Slack (@alevyinroc there too) if you want to meet up during the week, whether it’s to grab a bite to eat, attend a session together, get a beer, trade badge ribbons, or just say hi!
One person hypothesized that I’m joining Microsoft (it seems to be the thing to do lately) and another jumped to the conclusion that I must be pregnant. Both creative responses, but not quite correct.
Figure out the social media photo situation (see above, “Up my selfie game”)
If you’re attending Summit, let’s meet up! I’ll be on Twitter, Slack, and Instagram (@alevyinroc across the board) all week and roaming the convention center & various evening events so ping me there to find out where I am.
Because Summit starts on Election Day here in the USA, be sure to either get to your local polling place that morning or follow your state’s process to request & submit an absentee ballot. Every election is more important than the one before it (that’s the most political I’ll get on this blog, I swear).
That’s one of the most important (non-technical) conclusions I drew from my week at PASS Summit 2017. It seemed like everywhere I went, I heard “I didn’t recognize you without the hat!” The picture I use on Slack, Twitter and Instagram is the same one I use here on my About Me page. This photo was taken in 2014 at the West Bend, WI Cache Bash and it’s one of the few photos of myself that I actually like (harsh shadows aside). I nearly did bring The Hat with me, but decided against it as it’s big, heavy, and not really an “indoor” hat.
But I digress. The point is, a lot of the people who I met at Summit only previously knew me with The Hat. But that also means that I was meeting a lot of people in person for the first time. And meeting new people is my second-favorite thing to do at PASS events – my favorite being catching up with everyone I already know.
Once I was registered for Summit, I told myself that I was going to make every after-hours event I could and meet everyone I could all over Summit & the associated events. I even signed up for the Summit Buddy program to meet people while helping them navigate their first Summit.
Monday
I didn’t even get through the hotel lobby in before spotting my first SQLFamily. En route from the front desk to the elevator, I crossed paths with Chrissy LeMaire (b|t), Rob Sewell (b|t), Constantine Kokkinos (b|t), and (I think – memory’s fuzzy here) Sander Stad (b|t)! I immediately introduced myself (with The Hat, no introductions would have been needed). We chatted for a moment but they had dinner plans they needed to get to, and I needed a bit of a rest from my trek before heading out to the networking dinner at Yard House.
I arrived at the Networking Dinner hosted by Lisa Bohm (though I didn’t meet her until Tuesday evening) and all the tables were full. I was early for my seating but after a short wait I was able to get a seat at a table with Jeremy Marx (t), whom I’d spoken with on Slack but we didn’t realize it for a few minutes (again, The Hat). A few moments later, we were joined by George Anderson (t), and then finally Kiril Kravstov (b|t) – another dbatools contributor!
Monday was over and I’d already met a half-dozen people. Incredible. I also managed to track down my friend Bill Schultz (t). We worked together a several years ago, and now despite living only an hour away from one another, we only see each other at Summit.
Tuesday
I had an early start as I needed to meet up with Chrissy to give her the badge ribbons I finally found buried in my backpack (not the first time I’ve lost things in its various pockets). Along the way, I bumped into another dbatools team member, Shawn Melton (b|t), who was awarded MVP status by Microsoft the following day.
A bunch of us hung out in the precon classroom and helped with setup, but as I was neither registered for the precon nor running it, I had to take off. I needed breakfast anyway. At the Daily Grille, I spotted Mike Fal (b|t), Rie Irish (b|t) and Monica Rathbun (b|t) at another booth and when I was finished with my meal, I stopped over to say hi. I worked with Mike when we were both at previous jobs, but I’d only spoken with Rie and Monica via Twitter previously.
I spent much of Tuesday in meetings for User Group leaders and SQL Saturday Organizers, but that just meant more new people to meet! On the lunch break, I walked down to Beecher’s with William Assaf (b|t) and Adrian Aucoin (b. Later in the day was the First Timers Orientation and Speed Networking. I attempted to arrange a meeting of my first-timers group just before that event but was only able to find half of them, Kathy & Jasper. The event is set up as a way to get you talking to new people, but unfortunately when you have a couple hundred people all in one room in pairs, all trying to have the same conversation, it gets very loud and a number of people left early. By chance, I found myself sitting next to James Livingston (t), a fellow Rochestarian!
After Orientation was the Welcome Reception. They had a live band! But wow was it loud. I hung out with Kiril and we managed to chat with a number of people including Luis Gonzales (t), Lisa, and Allen White (b|t) before making our way toward the exit with Chrissy and Rob to head over to Tap House for the dbatools team gathering. At Tap House, I met Amanda Crisp (b|t), whom I’d spoken with a few times on Twitter. I don’t recall what it was that put us each others’ respective radars, but it was good to finally meet!
Wednesday
As is tradition, Wednesday started with #SQLRun at 6 AM. 2017 was a bad year for me with regard to running, but the cool weather and good company like Nick Harshberger (t), Allen, Jen McCown (t) and James (who I ended up running with the whole time with) make it lots of fun. James and I clocked about 3 1/2 miles at a relaxed pace, though I had to take a bit of a breather coming up out of Pike’s Market (the ascent from Alaskan Way is tough).
After the run, I got cleaned up and braced myself for the madness that is Day One. On my way up the escalator to breakfast, I spotted someone I’ve wanted to meet for a while at one of the coffee shops and decided it was now or never. Summit is so large that if there’s someone you want to meet for the first time or someone you already know and want to catch up with, you have to do it the first time you’re anywhere near them. You may not get a second chance.
So, I detoured from my path to breakfast, apologized for interrupting his breakfast, and introduced myself to Brent Ozar (b|t). We chatted for about 5 minutes, he gave me a suggestion for mitigating some SQL Server performance issues I was dealing with at work (which I immediately texted to my colleague back at the office), and then he gave me a few Query Bucks and was gracious enough to pose for a selfie. Terrific start to the day.
After breakfast I meandered to the ballroom for the Keynote and found myself a prime seat right behind the blogger table. Closest to me was Kevin Kline (b|t), and we got to catch up for a few minutes before he had to get ready to liveblog the keynote. While we were talking Gail Shaw (b|t) arrived and I got to meet her as well!
Post-keynote, I found my way to the exhibitor hall. After checking in with a few folks, I bumped into Justin Whaley (b|t), who I discovered was working on some PowerShell functions for Red Gate tools just before Summit. We chatted a bit and decided to catch up later on to discuss his work.
One of the best things that happens at Summit is the chance encounters. As I started down the buffet table to get lunch, I looked up and discovered Deborah Melkin (b|t) across the table from me! Deborah spoke at SQL Saturday Albany last summer and had I been able to attend the event, her session was on my must-see list.
Wednesday evening was the big night for events. As an avid listener of the SQL Data Partners Podcast, I signed up for Carlos & Steve’s SQL Trail Mix event as soon as I heard about it. In their post-Summit podcast, I learned that they had a very limited number of tickets available for this event, so I’m glad I didn’t wait. Right away I saw Kathi Kellenberger (b|t) and Sheila Acker (t) (trivia: Sheila’s one of the first people I met & talked to for more than 5 seconds at my first Summit in 2012). Later, I’d find out that there were several people at this event whom I’d run into later in the week or I wanted to meet up with, but didn’t see.
As I left, I chatted with Carlos & Steve for a bit about Scouting; all three of us are currently or previously have been involved with Cub Scouts and/or Boy Scouts over the years (something I’ve noticed across SQL Family for a while).
Up next was Pike Brewing Company and the Sentry One party. The place was packed and I immediately found myself catching up with Kirsten Benzel (t) (we never got a chance to geek out about our watches though 🙁 ), Argenis Fernandez (b|t) (whom I saw briefly at SQL Trail Mix) and Monica, plus I got to meet a few more folks milling around the bar. This was also the event where Lou talked me into trying out the 5X Stout Float, a custom concoction presented by one of the bartenders. I was skeptical at first, but wow. I’m going to have to try this one at home sometime.
Thursday
Thursday tends to be my “easy” day at Summit. It’s the “down” day between “gotta meet everyone I can ASAP” on Wednesday and “gotta catch everyone to say goodbye” on Friday. The big daytime event was the PowerShell panel hosted by Chrissy & Rob. We put out the call on Twitter and Slack to get as many dbatools contributors in the room so that we could get a group photo. By my count we had thirteen! At least one other team member had been at Summit but due to other obligations, he wasn’t able to make it for the photo. We’ll just ‘shop him later, right? I finally got meet John Hohengarten (t) and Jess Pomfret (t) there too (we snuck in a photobomb on Chrissy & Nic Cain (b|t)). I’ve spoken with John a lot on Slack, and Jess is another person with whom I’ve crossed paths on Twitter but never gotten to meet.
Thursday evening there were a few more sponsor parties but I was already signed up for Game Night hosted by Kevin Hill (b|t) at the convention center. Three years ago, I attended a small game night hosted by a sponsor in a shop a few blocks from the convention center, but it’s now a semi-official event with PASS backing – PASS even has a collection of tabletop games they bring to Summit for us! I don’t play a lot of board games (beyond the classics) at home but I’m looking to branch out, so I was really looking forward to this event. And it didn’t disappoint! It’s a small, quiet, laid-back gathering so you can chat with people while figuring out how to play the game you’ve picked out. Some welcome downtime.
But between the sessions and the games, we had some open time and needed to find food. Fortunately, Charlie Brown (t) was in the same boat but he’d heard about a good place nearby to get something quick. Charlie & I had talked a bit on Slack in the weeks leading up to Summit but hadn’t met yet, so we got to close that loop. As we waited in line for our food, Kathy and Bert Wagner (b|t) arrived unexpectedly so we all ate together, then several of us walked back to the convention center.
I teamed up with Kathy, Karin (another first-timer) and Swan Web (t) to learn/play Pandemic. Only Karin had played before so the game moved a little slower than with four experienced players, but the we had good time learning how it worked. A 100% collaborative game (as opposed to competitive) was a new experience for me and I ended up buying it to play at home! As things wound down I chatted with a couple of people including Kevin and Matt Cushing (b|t), once again being reminded that I was missing The Hat.
I thought this would be an early night, but making my way through the Sheraton I saw Justin hanging out in the lounge and stopped to catch up about his PowerShell functions for Red Gate tools. What might have been a 20-minute conversation ended up being several hours as we talked about anything and everything.
Friday
Friday’s kind of a sad day because it means having to say goodbye to everyone. I caught a couple of sessions but also spent a bit of time hanging out in the Community Zone. I also made sure to stop by the last few sponsors I needed to talk to, entered a few more of their drawings, and actually won one of them!
Earlier in the week I saw #SQLFamily badge ribbons and I was determined to find out where those came from. Turns out they were brought by ArcticDBA (b|t) and he wanted a dbatools ribbon, so we managed to finally meet up just before lunch and make an exchange.
Closing down the week, I made sure to attend Carlos L. Cachon’s session on baselining, something that I’m not doing a great job of right now. I discussed the highlight (for me) of that session in an earlier post. After the session, having outed myself as a member of the dbatools team, someone approached me with a question about installing the module, as he was having difficulty with one workstation. Unfortunately he’d already tried everything I could think of, so I suggested that he get onto Slack and ask the folks there. Shortly after Summit, he was there and got a solution to the problem.
The official festivities over, I grabbed my luggage and made my way to Tap House. Kevin mentioned that he was getting a bunch of people together there for dinner and drinks and while I had made plans to go to Crab Pot, I had time to pop in for a drink on the way. We quickly took over the billiards room in the back and by this point in the week, it was almost all familiar faces. I chatted with Shane O’Neill (b|t) for a while and he commented that he’d been to New York to visit family somewhat recently. We got to talking about it and I learned that on that trip, he was actually in my town. Incredible! Hopefully on a return visit we can meet up and maybe even schedule our local user group meeting so he can attend.
On to Crab Pot! I’ve heard about this dinner over the years, hosted by Tim Mitchell (b|t), and decided that since I had to do something besides sit in the airport terminal for five hours, I’d go. I don’t know how many people were there but it had to be at least 50 and it was very busy.
Recap
One thing that really struck me about the week was how little time I spent on social media looking for things to do. Instead, I was talking to people and finding or even making those things happen. I ended up turning the notifications from Slack and Twitter up to eleven to make sure that I didn’t miss anything critical there. As it turned out, my inattention to Twitter resulted in me missing an informal talk at the Microsoft booth about the new SQL Operations Studio, but oh well. On the other hand, I still got the notifications from people I was talking to.
At my past two Summits, I found myself completely drained and exhausted by the time Friday came around. Surprisingly, it didn’t happen this time around despite feeling like I did a lot more. I think I just paced myself better. Or maybe I’m becoming less introverted and talking to people is energizing me more.
I heard “I was hoping to meet you here” a few times outside the folks I’d pre-arranged seeing and that was a completely unexpected, but really awesome, experience.
Things I Did Well
Get up the gumption to introduce myself to new people
Stay off social media/my phone except where necessary
Find lunch tables with the fewest empty seats and join in the conversation, even/especially with strangers
Renewed connections with people I knew from past events
Not get completely exhausted
Things I Need to Work On
Step up the selfie game (including getting the courage to ask people for selfies)
Talk to more people at the booths in the exhibitor hall
Coordinate with my group if I join the Summit Buddies program
Get to a couple more sessions. I bought the session recordings so I can catch up, but sessions are still a good place to meet people
Continuing my series of posts about my PASS Summit 2017 experience. This is about gadgets/gear I brought & software I used, the gadgets I saw around the convention center, and then a little about the hardware & software that was demoed.
Personal
Gadgets
I only brought three gadgets, plus their support items:
iPhone 8
iPad Air 2
Apple Watch Series 3
4-port Anker wall charger
Anker 15K mAH battery pack
2x Lightning cable (for the iPhone & iPad), 1x Micro-USB cable (to charge the battery pack), 1X Apple Watch charge cord
For the amount I used the iPad, I wish I had left it home. I only used it to watch a couple episodes of Stranger Things on the plane. The iPhone astounded me with its battery life. After charging overnight, it still had 30% left on it at 4:30 PM, even with heavy usage. Even better, it charged off the Anker battery pack fast– I was back up to 90% or better in an hour or less, much faster than I’ve experienced with other devices. This allowed me to top up the battery in the final session/event each afternoon and roam the city for the evening, comfortable that I had enough juice to last me until I returned to the hotel.
Software
Throughout the week, I used Day One to jot down important things – people I met, conversations I had, thoughts that came to mind, photos that I didn’t want to lose to the depths of my photo library, etc. I could have used paper and pen, but these were things I didn’t want to lose to my terrible handwriting. The other benefit of using Day One is that it records metadata about each entry – location, the current weather, how many steps I’d logged to that point in the day, even tags for categorization. Plus, it’s secured by TouchID. All told, I recorded 38 notes from the time I got to the airport on Monday to the time I left Seattle on Friday (although the first one, in which I mused about the TSA, is not fit for publication).
Because I’m skeptical of free open WiFi especially in such a large gathering, I bought a 1-week plan for Encrypt.me for protection.
Slack was used in several sessions and pre-cons throughout the week to drive Q&A – Brent Ozar & Erik Darling used it for their pre-con, the dbatools crew used it for theirs, and it was used for the PowerShell panel discussion as well. There was general chatter on Slack as well, but I think a lot more was going on on Twitter.
I set up an IFTTT recipe to capture #PASSSummit tweets to a Google Drive spreadsheet and it collected over 10K tweets over the week; someday I’ll go back through them to see what I missed (I set one up for #SQLFamily too, but haven’t reviewed that one yet) and make the full dataset available as a download. Twitter seems to be better/more manageable for getting notifications than Slack.
Late on Thursday, I spotted this tweet but failed to note who wrote it (had to search just now):
Pro tip: Microsoft Lens takes great, framed & searchable snapshots of presenter slides. In sure there are others. #PASSsummit
If you are anywhere you find a need to take a photo of a whiteboard, projector screen, or document, get this app. Apple may have introduced document scanning in iOS 11 but this is several levels above and it has earned a permanent spot on my phone. It automatically straightens/de-skews images and makes them very readable, then OCRs them. It even works for business cards and integrates with a number of apps/services already on your phone (OneNote, Photos, Mail, etc.). Here’s an example: Photo of a slide, right off the camera.The same slide, after being processed by Lens The one place Lens falls short (in my experience thus far) is with color images, at least in Whiteboard mode. But if the content is text and line art, it’s quite useful.
Other
Despite my terrible handwriting, I still like taking notes at events like Summit (or even in meetings at the office) with pen and paper as I find that writing helps cement the ideas in my mind. My weapons of choice are the Uniball Jetstream 2 pen (seems they’re no longer producing this one, or maybe I misremembered the model; the Jetstream RT is hopefully similar) and Staples Sustainable Earth 9 1/2″ x 6″ spiral-bound notebook. The notebook has a couple pockets for stashing stuff and the covers are rigid enough that they protect the pages and I don’t have to put the notebook on a table to write.
My Eddie Bauer sling backpack got over-stuffed in a hurry. Too much swag plus my water bottle and other daily carry stuff. I need to find a replacement for it but don’t want to give up the convenience/comfort of the single-shoulder sling style. On the bright side, its obnoxious orange color makes me easy to spot from across the convention center.
Around the convention center
I didn’t see a lot of people walking around with iPads or Android tablets. Maybe when the iPad Pro & Apple Pencil become more widespread we’ll see people taking notes on them instead of paper. I did see a number of Microsoft Surface computers amongst attendees, and a few laptops. Lugging a full laptop around all week sounds like a drag (not to mention the battery anxiety) but if I had a well-spec’d Surface and large enough backpack, I might consider taking it.
The WSCC WiFi seemed shaky on Tuesday, but settled down and worked well for the remainder of the week. This seems to be the pattern at Summit, in my experience.
There was a common thread running through almost every session I attended as well as the Tuesday meetings, of the projectors blinking on and off for no apparent reason. It wasn’t any one presenter’s computer, nor was it any one room. It was bizarre but after a while, I think we all got used to it.
New stuff demoed
In Wednesday’s keynote, Microsoft ran several PowerBI (and PowerBI-adjacent) demos, but I didn’t find them particularly captivating. They were quite brief, and didn’t get into the technical work that made it possible. The HPE ProLiant DL380 Gen10 was shown off, boasting high performance thanks to persisted memory. All these demos were very shiny, but very brief. This is a technical audience – give us some more depth here, please.
The item that I found most interesting spent about 5 seconds on screen – a desktop app that looked like someone stuffed SQL Server Management Studio into Visual Studio Code, then a quick slide where the name SQL Server Operations Studio was revealed, along with a note that it’s a cross-platform GUI for managing SQL Server. Ever since SQL Server for Linux/macOS was announced, I’ve wanted this, and they skimmed over it in 5 seconds! Apparently there was a demo session at the Microsoft booth in the Exhibitor Hall later, but only advertised via Twitter; I didn’t hear about it until Thursday.
I registered for Summit about a month before getting actively involved in the dbatools project, so when I saw the team was running a pre-con and I was going to meet them, I was pretty excited. It was amazing getting to meet and hang out with Chrissy, Rob, CK, Shane, Jess, John, Shawn, Aaron, Ben, Kiril, Shane, and Drew (sorry if I forgot anyone!), even if it was only for a moment.
But I’ll have another post about the people of Summit. This one’s about dbatools being talked about all over Summit and my experience with that as a member of the team. I’m certain there’s a heavy amount of confirmation bias here, but dbatools seems to have caught fire in the SQL Server community. And with good reason!
I was able to hand out about 300 of the dbatools fan ribbons I brought with me; half went to pre-con attendees, and the rest were handed out on the conference center floor at random. Sitting at the PowersShell table at the BoF lunches, people would join us and say “hey, I’ve heard about this dbatools thing but haven’t had a chance to learn it yet.” People would see mine and ask for one as they’d heard about the project and even used it themselves.
Rob Sewell talked about it at the SentryOne booth. I heard on Twitter and around the conference center that dbatools was getting mentioned in a number of speakers’ sessions, even the ones that didn’t advertise it in their abstracts. There was a panel discussion about PowerShell in general, spearheaded by the key dbatools team members and of course dbatools was talked about there. But the star of that session was Ken Van Hyning, aka SQL Tools Guy (t), talking about the roots and evolution of many of the tools we use and where he sees them going. He also hold us how we can impact the direction of the current tools and make pitches for new ones. Key takeaways:
Cross-platform, open-source where possible seems to be the way of the future
There’s a lot of work to be done to migrate the infrastructure and tooling around the tools to get the existing ones there (I think this is why we’re seeing new tooling come out instead of direct ports)
The squeaky wheel gets the love, so make your voice heard on Microsoft Connect and Twitter!
We even managed to get a group photo with the dbatools team members who were in the building!
After all the “I can’t believe this is happening!” moments through the week, the final session on Friday was the icing on the cake. I was in Carlos L Chacon’s session Measuring Performance Through Baselines and dbatools popped up on one of his slides. dbatools on Carlos’s slide
Later, Carlos demonstrated a couple of functions, Get-DbaAgentAlert and Get-DbaUptime. The latter sounded familiar, so I jumped on Github and checked the history to confirm. Yep, it’s one of the functions I’d done some (non-CBH) work on. Which means that code I wrote was executed in a PASS Summit presentation! Yes, it’s a small thing and I’m the only person who even knew it as it was happening, but it happened. Which is pretty awesome.
PASS Summit 2017 is only a week away and to say I’m excited about it would be an understatement. This will be my third trip to the epic gathering of SQL Server and Microsoft data platform professionals and each time, it gets better and better.
Not only is this a time for learning and networking, it’s a giant #sqlfamily reunion. The list of people I’m excited to see is long, both people I’ve known for a while and new friends I’ve only spoken with online.
As a “Summit Buddy” this year, I’ll be helping four Summit first-timers navigate the week. We’ve already been in contact via email and we’ll be meeting for the first time at the First-Timer Orientation & Speed Networking event late Tuesday afternoon. We’ll check in a few times through the week, probably over breakfast or lunch and hopefully see each other in the Community Zone and sessions as well. I’m hopeful that they’ll enjoy Summit as much as I do.
I’m still working out my session schedule. So many great sessions to choose from! My pre-conference and after-hours schedules are shaping up nicely though. For the first time ever, I’m attending as a User Group co-leader and SQL Saturday Organizer, so I’ll be in meetings for those on Tuesday.
Events to find me at outside the normal Summit hours:
One Summit tradition I’m undecided about right now is SQL run. It’s no longer an official event but people still do it. I’ve got a sore leg right now and if I can’t get it fixed I’ll pass on the running. Seattle is a nice place to run, especially by the waterfront. But it’s hilly.
As with every Summit, the schedule is jam-packed and it’s going to be exhausting. I can’t wait.
