I’m happy to say that for most of you out there, the answer to this question is “no.” That’s as it should be. I’m not anyone all that special. I present technical sessions at various events from local user group meetings to SQL Saturday’s to international events like the PASS Summit and 24 Hours of PASS. Why? Not because the attendees know my name, that’s for sure. It’s because of a combination of at least two of these three things:

1. The organizers might know my name or may know of my books or the fact that I’m working for a vendor that sponsors their event
2. I’ve submitted sessions that seem to be of interest to the people who might be attending the event being organized
3. I’ve got a track record of delivering decent, if not world-altering, presentations that people find useful.

Let’s say you’re organizing a SQL Saturday event. And, let’s say that you want to get as many attendees as you possibly can. Is your best bet to find a bunch of people with MVP or MCM after their name? Or, should you focus on getting an interesting set of content from speakers that you know can deliver?

From what I’ve seen, it’s that second option that is your best bet. I’ve stood in front of people and started talking about a topic that I have a written a book about only to find that the entire room was not aware that I had written that book. They weren’t there for me. They were there for knowledge that I might be able to communicate to them. They were there for the topic, not the speaker. I’ve seen local speakers give presentations that were simply amazing, despite the fact that they didn’t have a book or weren’t blogging constantly. It’s the content and delivery, not the person delivering it. You’re going to know your local speakers as well as, or better than, any of the MVPs. Rely on your knowledge of these people and the fact that you’ve seen them present before.

This is something that I think way too many people overlook. Especially when you’re managing a SQL Saturday event, you need to build an interesting set of topics, not lure a bunch of MVPs to your event. Guaranteed, you’ll get an MVP or three. Don’t focus on that or worry about it. Instead, focus on your agenda. Build a good set of presentations, the kind that are going to be the most useful to your audience.

Don’t believe me? Check out these links to the front page of the PASS Summit 2011, 2010, 2009. Note a couple of things. First, no headliners at all. No speakers are called out in any way except the people delivering the key notes. Second, there are Flickr & Twitter streams in which anyone can be one the front page for a time. In short, the focus is on content and attendees.

Remember this when you’re setting up your event.

Oh, and don’t bother linking to this post. Everyone has my permission to copy and paste this and claim it as their own. You just have to include this disclaimer for everyone else to copy and paste this post as well.

I’ll be presenting at the Colorado Springs SQL Saturday on January 7th of 2012. The session is called Seven Ways to Fix Bad Parameter Sniffing. Please, if you’re in the area, register and come to the event. There are going to be some truly excellent speakers there. There is also evidently skiing on Sunday, although I won’t be taking part in that.

It’s over. It’s finally over. This year, unlike previous years, Adam Machanic (blog|twitter) was very good about delegating the work. Which, is actually a mixed blessing. I did a lot more work this year than I have done in years past. Luckily, we had more help this year from, new MVP, Mike Walsh (blog|twitter) and Tom LaRock (blog|twitter). The team came together and pulled off the event with the help of a great set of volunteers. Of special note, Allen White’s (blog|twitter) wonderful wife, Cindi, stood at the front desk all day, and in other ways helped us organize and run the event. It would not have been the same without her. Thanks so much.

We couldn’t have pulled it off without our vendors. Here is the rather substantial list. Of special note, I want to single out one vendor. SQL Sentry is a great supporter of the SQL community. They supported our event, but I screwed up and did not get their logo onto the bag that we gave out to attendees. It’s completely my fault. I want to publicly apologize and let you know that SQL Sentry was there, they have great products, they are great people, and we appreciate their support. Sorry guys.

Our venue at the Babson College Executive Conference Center was magnificent and, assuming I could afford it, I’d love to host more events there. Lunch was a glory. If you missed it, I think you may have missed some of the best food ever at a SQL Saturday event.

Thank you to all the speakers. Unfortunately the Duck Tour was cancelled due to the threat of inclement weather (although, on the day, the sun was shining and it was quite nice) but we went up to the top of the Prudential Center (you can see us testing the weight limit in the elevator in the picture above) and had a couple of drinks before we went to dinner at Brasserie Jo. It was a great meal with great conversation with great people. What more can you ask for?

We had a special speaker that traveled all the way from New Zealand just to take part in our event, Paul White (blog|twitter). Paul was also celebrating his new status as an MVP. To my knowledge, that’s some of the longest travel done by a speaker for a SQL Saturday (and yeah, I know, Gail Shaw (blog|twitter) went to the SQL Saturday before the MVP Summit, but she was travelling for the MVP summit, she just added a day for SQL Saturday).

I had a blast putting on a filler session with Tom LaRock that we called “SQL Winning.” It was just a free-form Q&A session where the five people who attended just asked us questions and Tom and I tried our best to answer them. Thanks everyone for attending. I think it’d be fun to do the same thing with a bigger audience at another event (we didn’t get many people because Paul White sucked the oxygen out of the building, and rightly so).

That’s about it. It was a great event. Thanks to everyone who attended.

Just… Wow. What an event. What a great group of people. I’m just so lucky to be involved with fantastic individuals like these. Thanks for having me out to play everyone, I really appreciated it.

SQL Saturday #67 started for me with my second FreeCon (follow the link for details on the first one). Brent Ozar (blog|twitter) put together another great session where we spent a lot of time talking about blogs and blogging as well as swoops through other topics. We, by the way, is like a who’s who of great SQL Server people. I’m not going to post the list just in case everyone doesn’t want to be outed. However, I found the event extremely useful. I have a ton of notes and action items for myself and I really need to get to work on them. I think you’ll begin to see a few changes around here, and over at my other blog (I can’t resist the occasional shameless plug, please forgive me). I may have to put together a sseparate blog post, just on the Freecon.

After the FreeCon I went to the speaker dinner. It was hosted by SQL Sentry (thanks guys). There were several MVPs and speakers from all over the country (including a contingent from Cleveland, reversing my earlier trip). I had the opportunity to meet a bunch of local people, a few speaking for the first time. If you take nothing else away from my rambling, remember this: Yes, these events are about the exchange of knowledge and skills, but even more, it’s about people.

The day of the event I was presenting in the morning. Which meant that I didn’t attend any of the morning sessions because I have a hard time focusing when I have to present in an hour or two. Instead, I ran through my slides, getting ready for my presentation (details below) and shot a few videos. In the afternoon I had to present again for my vendor slot. Only two people showed up. Getting people into the vendor sessions is something that SQL Saturday events should try harder at, and scheduling them at the same time as other sessions, probably hurts the vendors. Oh, and could the two guys who were there get in touch. I lost your contact info. Sorry.

Finally, I was able to go to a session. I went to see Jess Schultz Borland (blog|twitter) and her talk on “Make Your Voice Heard.” She covered Twitter, blogging, Linked-In and forums, all as a means to build your presence on the internet. It was a great session. She’s an excellent speaker, very engaging, highly energetic (something I strive for in my sessions, but she leaves me in the dust on that), and clearly informed on the topic. She had construction paper and crayons as part of an interactive approach with the audience. It worked really well. Most everyone came out of there with one or two new contacts on Twitter (or an interest in joining Twitter). If you get the chance to see this one (or anything else she does), I’d recommend it.

The second session I attended was unfortunately the final session of the day. But, it was a great session on DMOs from none other than the Man, Tim Ford (blog|twitter). Tim has a delivery style that is very relaxed and conversational. Using it he just puts out reams and reams of info. You really do want to get to his sessions when he talks. I took a bunch of notes and came away with great info. Tim attracted quite a few other speakers, so when questions & comments came from the audience, there was good information there too. Definitely worth going to and a great capper to a great day.

There was an after-party. It did include some SQL Karaoke. But that’s all I’m going to tell you about that. If you didn’t go, you missed out.

My Session:

My session was packed (go here to see a short video of the room) with people sitting in the aisles and around the edges. There were approximately 80 people and I received about 62 feedback forms (thank you, everyone). Here are the results and comments. The ratings were simple. Did the session meet, not meet, or exceed your expectations. Rate the quality of the session, 1-5. Then there were comments. Here are my percentages:

Met Expectations:

12 blank
1 Did Not Exceed – 2% (more on this)
21 Met – 41%
29 Exceeded – 57%

Rating:

Blank: 3 – 5%
1: 0
2: 0
3: 5 – 8%
4: 16 – 25%
5: 39 – 62%

I’m very happy with the results. I quite happy that a large number of people thought I met expectations. I wouldn’t want there to be, even as many as I have, on Exceeded expectations. Because then it means that expectations of me were low indeed. Met is fine. The one person that wasn’t happy, I’ll talk about in a moment. Ratings on a scale like this are hard to judge, but clearly a majority of the people were happy. That’s good. Here is a selection of comments and some of my commentary about that comment:

“It would have been nice to know this was high-level rather than low level. Demos didn’t work too well.” I’ll take the hit on this one. I could have been more clear in the abstract, but it does say “introduce the query optimizer.” It doesn’t say anywhere, “deep dive,” “detailed,” or “low level.” Sorry. This is also the “Did Not Exceed” rating. I could have been a bit more clear, but it does show the importance of reading the abstract to understand what’s going on. If I’m talking about the optimizer and statistics and constraints and indexes, all in one hour… seriously, how detailed could it get? So while I’m sorry I didn’t reach one guy, I don’t think there’s a darn thing I could do for him beyond a little more clarification in the description.

“Sidekick in the corner was distracting” Actually this is my favorite comment. Tom LaRock (blog|twitter) was sitting in the corner at the front because there just wasn’t any room. He did make a few comments, but not that many. I didn’t see an issue with it, and still don’t. I’m just excited because, now, Tom is my sidekick. However, it is important to be aware that banter with the audience doe upset people. But, no, again this isn’t anything I’m taking action on beyond keeping myself aware. And of course starting Tom in the sidekick training program.

“Very good session. Please hide “Object Explorer” in SSMS for better code views” Crud. I usually do, but my head appears to have been elsewhere on this one. Thanks for the feedback. Something to correct going forward.

“Great information on the optimizer. Got some resources for further research”

“Very engaging and fun to listen to”

“Obvious enthusiasm & knowledge. Lots of pointers to useful things.” It’s like I paid this person. “Useful” is one of my target words for my brand, so I love seeing it in feedback. There’s a small indication I’m doing something right.

“Very informative.” Again, a key word. Your check is in the mail.

It was a great event. I’m happy I got to attend. Thanks to Wendy Pastrick (blog|twitter) and all her volunteers.

I just received 35 speaker evaluations from SQL Saturday #60 in Cleveland. It was a great event (although I had a hard time getting there) and I really enjoyed giving my presentation on “Gathering and Interpreting Performance Metrics” (a warm-up presentation of part of my SQL Rally pre-con).

Feedback is a wonderful gift. Thanks to everyone who filled out the eval and especially to those who commented.

The evals have six questions and an area for comments. The questions are rated from Very Poor to Excellent. I’ve decided to assign them number values from 1-5. The overall average is 4.82. Here are the breakdowns per question:

How would you rate the usefulness of the session information in your day-to-day environment: 4.79
How would you rate the Speaker’s presentation skills: 4.85
How would you rate the Speaker’s knowledge of the subject: 5
How would you rate the accuracy of the session title, description and experience level to the actual session: 4.76
How you rate the amount of time allocated to cover the topic/session: 4.67
How would you rate the quality of the presentation materials: 4.85

Here are samples of some of the comments:

• Great enthusiasm, demos are valuable
• Not enough on “interpretation” focused on “how” I was hoping to hear more on what they mean, and which ones to focus on. Too general & broad for the title
• Lots of info to digest. I hope I can remember enough to use it.
• Fun guy
• Great finish to the day
• Clean up the order some, but good stuff
• Good energy and style. Get your order sorted & you’re good

My take on the evals? Overall, I’m very happy. I’m especially happy with that 5 on Speaker Knowledge (not that I believe it). I’m a little disappointed in the low scores on Usefulness and Accuracy. I’m flatly surprised that people aren’t finding this useful in their environments (although, I realize I got a 4.79, which is really good, but I need to be able to comment on something). Maybe everyone already has a great monitoring tool installed. Accuracy of the session, I’m not sure where to go with that one. I tried to be very clear in the description that we would be talking about data collection and interpretation and if you look at the slides, it’s about 50/50. Yeah, I do cover how to collect the data, but I also spend time giving actual numbers for evaluating what’s what. And the time on the topic rating? Who cares. I hate this question. Did people rate it low because they thought more time was needed or did they rate it low because I spent way too much of their time? Yeah, I don’t know either. Take that away and my overall average goes up to 4.85. As to the comments on order, I had rearranged some of the slides and kind of lost track of which was when. My mistake. I think I’ll keep the order their in, but just remember where I put them.

Thanks again for the feedback everyone. It was a wonderful gift.

First, let me thank Erin Stellato (blog|twitter) and all the volunteers for running such a great event. Nicely done.

This event was to be my very first walk on to the public stage as a Red Gate employee, so I was excited about getting there. About 10 minutes before I left for the airport, I got a call from the airline. My flight had been cancelled, but no worries, they rescheduled everything for me. Instead of flying to LaGuardia and then on to Cleveland, I would fly past Cleveland to Chicago and then back to Cleveland, getting there at 7:30PM instead of 4:30PM. Ah well. What are you going to do. I’d prefer not to go to Chicago, but everything should be fine…

The plane was supposed to leave Chicago at 5:05 PM. At 4:45 it was delayed to 5:30PM because they were working on the plane. Not a problem. Then it was delayed to 6:00PM then 6:45, then 7:30… and yes, I was waiting all that time at the airport. Finally, at 8:00PM they announce they have the plane ready. We just have to wait for the crew to do a safety check. Then, word comes at 8:30PM that they don’t have a flight attendant for the flight… in one of the world’s largest airports there is no flight attendant available. OK. Fine. They go to find one. At 9:30PM, the flight gets canceled. Why? Because they managed to find one flight attendant, yes, just one, but she was “too tired” to fly again. There were no other flights from this airline and they were not supporting transfers to another airline and they were not refunding tickets. And that, as they say is that. I was stuck in Chicago overnight.

No worries though right? They’ll schedule us on a flight first thing in the morning… Yeah, sure, as long you define “first thing” as 11:20AM. Which would have put me into the Cleveland Airport at about 1:30PM. I wouldn’t get to the event unitl 2PM or later. I would have missed the lunch time presentation I was supposed to give for Red Gate on SQL Monitor, let alone missing all the time to network with the attendees and presenters. There was no way I was missing this. So I called a couple of car rental agents.

Alamo came through. That’s right, I hopped in a car at 10PM at night and drove straight across Illinois, Indiana, and half of Ohio in order to get to Cleveland. It was a six hour trip. I drank so much coffee along the way I thought I might actually lose the car as I vibrated between the molecules of the seat and fell onto the pavement. But it was all good. In fact, I got to make some squished penny’s for my kids at the rest stops along the way (where I got rid of the old coffee & got new coffee).

At 4:30AM I was in my room. I slept for two hours and then went to the event, on time.

The venue was a community college that was pretty well set up for the sessions. It worked well for the 150 or so attendees. I didn’t get to any sessions in the morning, but I got the chance to speak with a number of attendees. My lunchtime session went fine and was well attended. After lunch I went to one session, but was honestly have a hard time staying awake, despite the fact that it was an excellent session from Mike Walsh (blog|twiter) and Erin Stellato on vendor/dba relations, so I didn’t attend any more. Better to stay on my feet & keep moving. Finally 4:00 came and I did my presentation. There were about 30 people in attendance and I thought it was a great audience. They seemed engaged and interesting. Hopefully you got something out of the session.

Then it was off to return the rental car to the airport, oh, during the 4 inch snow storm that had started up while we were having fun inside. I got lost twice because the car rental place is like, 15 miles away from the airport and not well marked, but finally got that job done and got a ride back to the after-party where I had a good burger and a good beer along with good conversation to finish out the day.

Thanks again to everyone involved with SQL Saturday #60. Now I have a great story to tell about my first day of work with Red Gate Software.

The SQL Saturday #71/New England Data Camp #3 call for speakers has been open for quite a while. But, we had not yet sent out an official request. That email has now gone out the door. Here it is for those who might be interested in presenting. Please consider this your personal email:

Let me tell you a little bit about our event. Last year we had over 300 attendees. We plan on doing that well again this year. That’s a guaranteed audience for your presentation. We’re holding the conference in the Microsoft offices on Jones Road in Waltham. The venue is well appointed and set up for presentations. We’re already gathering sponsors from all over the country and the region. It’s going to be a great event.

Please submit a session because we’d love to have you. The call for speakers closes 3/3/2011.

Thanks,

Grant Fritchey, President, Southern New England SQL Server Users Group

Adam Machanic, President, New England SQL Server Users Group

Mike Walsh, President, Seacoast SQL Server Users Group

Thomas LaRock, President, Hartford SQL Server Users Group

I’ve finally got everything together to get the web site going for SQL Saturday #71. The call for speakers is open. We’re open for registrations. I’ll be contacting sponsors shortly (or you can always contact me). In short, SQL Saturday #71, New England Data Camp #3, is a go!

Not so much my special as SQL Saturday #59′s Special. These guys in NYC are pulling out all the stops. This blog post proves it. If you can make it to only one SQL Saturday in the next 5 months (I’m hosting one in 6), you should go to this.

The real world can get in the way of important things like SQL Saturday. In the case of SQL Saturday New England, the original date was the same time as the Boston Marathon. Unfortunately, that means that Boston’s somewhat limited hotel space will be tweaked. Rather than try to compete with that, we moved the date. Please mark it as April 2nd, 2011.