I attended one of
these events last year in Seattle and it exceeded my expectations.
SQL in the City is a free event
that takes place in
various cities and provides great learning and networking opportunities for the
SQL Server community. This year they visited three cities; Pasadena, Atlanta
and Charlotte with touring speakers Steve Jones, Grant Fritchey and members of
Red Gate product team. I attended two out of three events and also spoke at the
Charlotte event.
Atlanta
This event had
speakers Tim Radney doing a session titled 'Life as a DBA' and Stuart Ainsworth
doing a session called 'Simplifying SQL Development'. I had a great time
meeting Red Gate team members again as well as their new members and also hanging out with attendees like Tim
Radney's son. The
sessions were very informative but I have to say that the
most useful information I got was the advice that the presenters gave me for my
session in Charlotte.
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| Red Gate team in Atlanta |
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| Steve Jones Presenting |
Charlotte
I have been looking
forward to this event since August, when
I found out that I was accepted to be a speaker, because it would be my first
time presenting in the US! I got to the event very early to review my slides
but spent most of the morning in awe because of the venue; the Ritz-Carlton is
awesome! Eventually when I settled down I saw Tony Davis, author of Red Gate's
Transaction Log Management book, and asked him to review my slide deck. His
feedback caused me to make some necessary last minute changes and after three
cups of coffee I was ready to go.
There were 105
people at my Understanding and Controlling Transaction Logs session and I
received some positive feedback from people after the session and also a good
rating from Red Gate's review. To be honest presenting for the first time in
the US, added some stress to me before the session but the advice from the guys
in Atlanta and seeing familiar faces in the crowd during my session made it so
much easier to present. It was a great experience and I want to thank Annabel
Bradford, Carly Harding, Amy Roberts, Hannah Jermy and the rest of the Red Gate
team for giving me this huge opportunity and also for all their assistance in
preparing for it. Also want to thank people like Tony David, Steve Jones, Grant
Fritchey for the advice and tips in the morning.
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| Presenting in Charlotte |
Besides me and the
rest of the touring team, this event had speakers like Louis Davidson, Kevin
Boles, Kevin Hazzard and Mickey Stuewe. The sessions that I attended were fun
and informative. The extra fun stuff started around 4 pm when the
Charlotte BodyWorks masseurs came to
relieve some people tension, followed by the networking event at 5 pm that
included food, drinks and of course free swag. I want to congratulation the Red
Gate team on another successful SQL in the City Tour. How do I know it was a
success? Well besides me enjoying it and learning things I met someone later in
the week who had attended and to
paraphrase her "For a free event I was impressed at the level of sessions,
all of them were very useful and they were done by good presenters. Some paid
events don't even give you that."
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| Performing a demo |
You can download my
slide deck as well as any of the other presentations from
Red Gate SQL in the City site. I want to thank Paul Randal for permission to use some of his
demos during my presentation.
UPDATE: While
writing this post I received a Christmas card from the "Friends at Red
Gate" team so I wanted to public acknowledge that and wish everyone at Red
Gate a very happy holiday and a Happy New Year as well.
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