Let’s Get Ready to Summit!

Friends…the conference season is upon us (and could I have thought up a cheesier title for this post?!).   In less than two weeks the PASS Summit kicks off in Seattle and I am very much looking forward to a week of all things SQL Server. I will be in Seattle a full week, but it seems that’s never enough time to see everyone.  I’ll be posting here and on Twitter – with hopefully more pictures this year!  If you are not attending Summit, let me know if there’s something you want to hear about, or see, and I’ll see what I can do.  If you will be there and want to say hi or catch up, let me know! Even better, let me tell you where I know I will be to increase our chances of running into each other 🙂

Sunday, November 2

  • The MVP Summit kicks off in Bellevue, and most of my day will be spent absorbing as much as I can about what’s coming in SQL Server vNext.

Monday, November 3

  • Another day of MVP Summit…my eyes might be glazed over by the end of the day.

Tuesday, November 4

  • My pre-con with Jonathan kicks off at 8:30AM! If you haven’t signed up for a pre-con, there is still time… Jon and I are covering everything about Extended Events we can possibly can fit into one day: Everything You Never Wanted to Know About Extended Events. We finalized our slide deck last week when we were in Chicago teaching IEPTO2, and my only concern is whether we can get through all the material (maybe not?!). Whether you’ve been a devout user of Trace and Profiler for years, or have never used it in your life, this session will have everything you need to embrace Extended Events and be off and running in SQL 2012 and 2014. I am *so* looking forward to this day.  Oh, and check out the preview that Jon and I did with PASS…Jon’s answer to the first question still makes me laugh.
  • In the evening I plan to attend the Summit Welcome Reception – one of the best times to see A LOT of people and at least say hello.

Wednesday, November 5

  • I am kicking off the day with #sqlrun, organized by the best-roomate-ever, Jes Borland.
  • During Wednesday’s keynote, I will be sitting at the blogger’s table, live-blogging the event (any guesses on what vNext news the Microsoft team will share?).
  • After the keynote I plan to attend sessions throughout the day and will probably spend some time in the Community Zone.

Thursday, November 6

  • I will again be at the blogger’s table for Rimma Nehme’s keynote. I am looking forward to Rimma’s talk! I met her briefly before Dr. DeWitt’s keynote last year; she helped him put together that session and then surprised him by attending and lending her support.
  • I will be sitting at the blogger’s table during the WIT luncheon as well, and I love the slight change in format for this year. The past few years the luncheon has had a panel discussion so several individuals have the chance to share their stories, which I find fascinating and inspiring. However, I always struggle with an “action item” – what can I do to make a difference? Therefore, I’m extremely interested in hearing Kimberly Bryant talk about her non-profit, Black Girls CODE, and hopefully getting ideas for ways I can get more involved.
  • Thursday ends with my regular session which starts at 4:45PM: Five Execution Plan Patterns to Watch For. Thursday is a busy day. I think this is the first time I’ve had a session land in the application development track, which is cool. If you’re not sure where to start in a query plan, this is a session for you. I assume that attendees already know the basics of plans, and how to capture them, so we’ll just jump right into talking about the patterns I often see. As usual, I’ll have lots of demos 🙂

Friday, November 7

  • Sleep in. I’m kidding! I have nothing planned for Friday so I will be attending sessions, meeting people, and catching up with anyone I haven’t seen yet.

Saturday, November 8

  • Flying home…for once I don’t have a flight at o-dark-hundred and I get home in time to put my kids to bed before I unpack and tell my husband all about the week. Ok…let’s be honest, I’ll probably fall asleep with the kids as I’ll be so exhausted. But it will be worth it.

And just in case you’re wondering, here’s the Summit session schedule for the entire SQLskills team (unfortunately, some sessions overlap):

Tuesday

Pre-Con: Everything You Never Wanted to Know About Extended Events [Erin and Jonathan]
Pre-Con: Performance Troubleshooting Using Waits and Latches [Paul]

Wednesday

Dealing With Multipurpose Procs and PSP the Right Way! [Kimberly] 4:30PM – 5:45PM
Analyzing I/O Subsystem Performance [Glenn] 4:30PM – 5:45PM

Thursday

Advanced Data Recovery Techniques [Paul] 1:30PM – 2:45PM
Solving Complex Problems With Extended Events [Jonathan] 1:30 – 2:45PM
Five Query Plan Patterns to Watch For [Erin] 4:45PM – 6:00PM

Friday

Going Asynchronous With Service Broker [Jonathan] 9:45AM – 11:00AM

I look forward to seeing good friends and meeting new ones in a couple weeks.  If we’ve chatted on Twitter or email and haven’t met in person (or if we haven’t chatted but you follow my blog!), let me know if you’ll be at Summit so we can connect.  Safe travels everyone, see you soon!

edit added October 22, 2014, 3:40PM EDT:

p.s. For those of you do attend Summit, two requests.  First, introduce yourself to people.  When you sit at breakfast or lunch, or when you find a seat in a session, take a second and say hello.  You never know who you might meet and what might develop.  Second, please thank the volunteers and the PASS staff for the time and effort they put in to create an amazing event.  It takes a lot of people to make the Summit run smoothly, and many of those people are volunteers, and a good number of them work behind the scenes and are not visible to most of the community.

2 thoughts on “Let’s Get Ready to Summit!

  1. Erin, I’m really looking forward to attending your pre-con and query plans talks. It sounds like it’s going to be a great summit. Thank you from a newbie for all the information you and your team put out there. It’s really helped me to settle in and get past some of the “shock and awe” when coming into a production environment for the first time.

    1. Pam-

      Thanks for your comment! I look forward to meeting you at Summit, please make sure to come up and say hi! And I’m glad that posts from the SQLskills site have helped you as you adjust to a new production environment – it can definitely be overwhelming at times. Feel free to email me offline if you have specific challenges you don’t see answered – sometimes those turn into good blog posts 🙂

      Safe travels!
      Erin

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