27Jan 2009 by Grant Fritchey 3 Comments

New England Data Camp Evals

PASS, T-SQL, Tools
Anyone reading this who attended the New England Data Camp and filled out an eval, for any of the sessions, thanks. For those 63 evals between the two sessions that I received, thanks. Here are the aggregates on my sessions: Using Visual Studio Team System Database Edition: Average of Knowledge 8.344827586 Average of Presentation 8.482758621 Average of Preparation 8.103448276 Average of Interesting 8.172413793 Average of Overall 8.275862069 Number of Submissions 29 Understanding Execution Plans Average of Knowledge 8.647058824 Average of Presentation 8.617647059 Average of Preparation 8.705882353 Average of Interesting 8.529411765 Average of Overall 8.625 Number of Submissions 34 These are all on a scale of 1-9. I'm really quite happy with the results. Here are the average results for all the speakers and all the sessions at the Data Camp:…
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26Jan 2009 by Grant Fritchey 14 Comments

New England Data Camp v1.0 Results

Misc, PASS, SQL Server
I believe that the very first New England Data Camp was a success. We had about 185 attendees. There 18 sessions from 16 speakers. Both the sessions I gave and the one I sat in on were full. Credit goes to to Adam Machanic who did 90% of the work pulling this together. Amazing job Adam. My personal thanks to our sponsors.  First, Microsoft, who provided us with a magnificent facility, nice swag, a full AV suite, coffee and donuts and in the morning, and a lot of help. It wouldn't have come out as well as it did without you guys. Next, the Professional Association of SQL Server Users (PASS), who supplied us with money, without which we could not have eaten lunch, a few posters to decorate the…
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07Jan 2009 by Grant Fritchey 1 Comment

New England Data Camp v.1.0

PASS, T-SQL
It's getting a lot closer to the 24th.  On Saturday, January 24th, the first ever New England Data Camp will launch. We've got a number of speakers registered. Aaron Bertrand and Andrew Novick are guys I've got a lot respect for. I've been to their presentations before and they've been consistently very good.  We've got a few guys I haven't heard of personally, Talbott Crowell, Ayad Shammout, Sunil Kadimdiwan, Igor Moochnick. I'm going to present on execution plans and multi-environment deployments using DBPro (updated from the PASS presentation).  The other presentations cover topics from using the Resource Governor on SQL Server 2008 to Defending SQL Server from Injection Attacks to Create better and more Useful Cubes. It's shaping up to be an actual event. If you're in the neighborhood (New…
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15Dec 2008 by Grant Fritchey 10 Comments

PASS Evaluation Results

PASS
I received my evaluation results this afternoon (thanks so much Marcella). I had about 35 people attend the session and 11 took the time to respond. Overall, the session seems to have been well received. I had one person ding me for finishing early. I did finish early, but then we actually went over time on the Q&A session, so I think it was a wash. For my first time presenting in this type of environment, I find this to be useful feedback. I can see where Andy Warren is coming from in suggesting some questions that would be specifically helpful to the speaker would be nice. The questions are primarily aimed at determining whether or not the topic will be useful next year and whether or not the speaker…
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11Dec 2008 by Grant Fritchey 2 Comments

New England Data Camp v1.0

Misc, PASS
Adam Machanic of the New England SQL Server Users Group (among other things), has contacted the Southern New England SQL Server Users Group to ask us to take part in a one day SQL Server code camp. Of course we said yes. It's taking place at the Microsoft facility in Waltham on Saturday, January 24th. You can register here. If you're interested in speaking, speaker registration is here. I'll be listing the sponsors as they become available, but it will be a PASS event. As information gels around this, I'll continue posting updates.
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21Nov 2008 by Grant Fritchey No Comments

PASS Board

PASS
The winners were the other guy, Lynda Rab and Andy Warren. Congratulations to all three. I lobbied hard for one of the three winners, Andy, so my special congratulations go out to him. On the back of my laptop, as I type this, is the logo (probably due for a law-suit soon) of the SQLBatman. He lost his second PASS election in a row. However, he came through like a trooper and says he's going to run again next year (go Susan Lucci, uh, I mean Tom).
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21Nov 2008 by Grant Fritchey 3 Comments

PASS Summit Day 2

PASS
I only half listened to the key notes. The party's the preceding night may have had something to do with it. First session was with Kalen Delaney on Plan Guides. She didn't really do plan guides though. Instead she talked about guiding plans. She is such a great presenter. I like her use of the language and precise definitions. Lubor Kollar (sp?) was in the room and made a point of standing up & addressing some of Kalen's info.  My best take away was that plan guides (she covered those too) do not reduce compile time and can in fact increase compile time. Second best was the use of plan guides as a mechanism for testing since you can apply the guide, enable & disable, without rewriting the proc. Sessions…
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19Nov 2008 by Grant Fritchey 1 Comment

PASS Summit Day 1

PASS
What a day. I'm not going to do justice to the keynote. First off, the room was frigging huge (not Tech-Ed huge, but enormous for PASS). It was pretty full too. The keynote wasn't terribly exciting, but it was terribly interesting. Watching 150tb databases process queries in less than 30 seconds is not something you see every day. Of more interest to me was the info on the new deployment mechanisms across database "fabrics" coming up with the new version of SQL Server (yes, it's at least two years away, but it's only two years away). It pretty clearly incorporates some of VSDB, but it's also a bit different. It includes data for example. This will be something for me to keep an eye on. My first session was with Allen White.…
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19Nov 2008 by Grant Fritchey No Comments

PASS Summit: Tuesday Night Parties

PASS
I visited at three. I went to the Opening Night Reception hosted by the SIGs of course. I kept score in the quiz bowl (I wasn't informed math would be involved). Nice enough party. It was a big room, but we mostly filled it up. Went over to the SQL Server Central party next. Steve still puts on a nice shindig. I tried finding other SQL Server Central posters, but didn't track any others down except for GilaMonster (Gail Shaw). I put all my money on the craps table, 30:1, a single roll of the dice. I guess there is a reason those odds are so high. I had an invite to the Solid Quality Mentors party, so I went over there. It was a little overly crowded (I almost…
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