This past week, October 24-28, 2016, I attended my first PASS SQL Summit. It was a whirlwind week of learning, meeting new friends, and social events. Overall, I had a wonderful time – I have learned so much, and I have a list of things I want to dig deeper into that ls a little overwhelming to be honest. Below are some of my thoughts, good and bad, on the entire experience. Please feel free to leave a comment with your own thoughts.
Logistics
I flew to Seattle from New York City on Monday. SEA-TAC airport is pretty easy to get around. The easiest way to downtown Seattle is the Link Light Rail. There is a bit of a walk to get to the station, but there are plenty of signs.
When I arrived at the convention center on Tuesday for the pre-con session I had registered for, getting around was fairly straight forward. There were plenty of volunteers there with bright orange t-shirts and hand signs indicating that they were there to answer any questions. Those volunteers were there all week, even on Friday afternoon. I obviously did not speak to all of them, but each one that I did speak to was very friendly and helpful.
There was breakfast in the dining room, and lunch, as there was throughout the week. The food was better than I thought it would be, although a little more variety for breakfast would be nice (every day was a variation on scrambled eggs).
Finding your way around can take a little bit of work. Most of the sessions I went to were on the 6th floor of the convention center, however, some of them were in another connected building called The Conference Center (TCC). To get there, attendees would have to take an escalator down to the fourth floor, go through the SQL Clinic, the Community Zone, the Dining Hall, and the off to another set of escalators. It will take a good ten minutes or so.
Summit is big – really big. In size, scope, number of attendees, number of sessions, and countless other ways. The folks that organize it did a fantastic job keeping everything flowing.
Precons
There were 14 pre-conference sessions offered on Monday and Tuesday. They are full day sessions, with seven on each day. I traveled on Monday, but did attend one on Tuesday. The one I attended (The Complete Primer on SQL Server Virtualization, by David Klee (b|t)) was fantastic. From conversations I had with others, most people were satisfied with their experience.
Sessions
The sessions were generally of very high quality. Every aspect of the SQL Server suite had coverage, from the traditional SQL engine, using Business Intelligence tools, to the new Data Science tools built into SQL 2016. There were very technical sessions, and more overview type sessions. There were also sessions that were focused on building your career or working more with PASS.
The biggest issue I had was choosing which sessions to go to – at times, there were 2, 3, or more sessions that sounded really compelling. This leads me to what was probably my biggest issue. I ended up walking out of two sessions on Wednesday. Both of them were fairly blatant sales pitches. The first one was titled “Architecting SQL Server for Mission Critical and High Performance.” In the schedule, here it is:
And here is the description:
Five minutes into the session and it was apparent I was in a sales pitch to HP hardware. Obviously, after travelling cross country and spending thousands of dollars, I was pretty annoyed. I know I can call HP and get a sales pitch next week in my office if I wanted to.
I eventually learned that if the session number has a suffix of PR, it is promotional. However, this needs to be highlighted to a far greater degree, especially for us first timers. It needs to be in the schedule, not just the program. I do not have an issue with a promotional session per se (although they should be limited). I understand that the vendors help support PASS and are vital to its continued existence. However, they need to be forthright about it. For example, there was a session titled “SentryOne Tools for Productivity and Performance.” I know what that is all about just from the title.
Having gotten that off of my chest, the other sessions I went to were excellent. I went to some where the presenter was “SQL Famous” such as a Data Science session with Buck Woody (b|t), some tech sessions with people I had never seen present before such as a corruption session with Steve Stedman (b|t) and an OLTP session with Mark Broadbent (t), and a PASS volunteering session with Cathrine Wilhelmsen (b|t). All very different, and all very good. And all left me wanting to learn more.
Social Events
In addition to the plethora of sessions to choose from, there are also plenty of social events to attend as well. There is a welcome reception on Tuesday evening, and a reception in the exhibition hall Wednesday evening. In addition there are vendor sponsored events on most evenings – SentryOne, RedGate, and Pragmatic Works all had events, as well as Denny Cherry’s SQL Karaoke. You can burn yourself out if you are not careful.
Leading up to the Summit, there were plenty of blog posts and social media messages that stated if you were in your hotel at night you are doing it wrong. I can understand that to a certain extent. However, as an introvert, some of these events are tough. At the welcome reception, you are in a room with a few thousand people, and it is loud. Even if you do talk to some new associates, it is hard to hear. I did go to Denny Cherry’s (b|t) SQL Karaoke, but left relatively early (probably around 11 or so). I did spend time meeting several SQL practitioners from the upper midwest, but it was just so loud that everyone had to repeat themselves several times. I know that many people had a great time there, but it is still tough for someone like myself to enjoy.
There were several other low key social events, and I tried to take full advantage of them. Three of them were organized by Steve Jones (b|t) and Andy Warren (b|t), and I went out of my way to thank them both. The events were small dinners, where you can talk to a small group of half a dozen colleagues, and a game night on Thursday, where I ended up playing cards for a few hours with some new SQL friends.
In addition, another semi-social event was the daily #sqlrun that was organized by Nick Harshbarger (t). Roughly a dozen runners would meet daily outside the convention center. We would all start at the same time, around 6 AM, and head to the waterfront. As we ran, we sorted out into various groups based on pace. It was a great day to start the day.
Conclusion
How long until Summit 2017?