This weekend I was at SQLSaturday #698 in Nashville, Tennessee. Nashville SQL Saturday is near and dear to my heart because it was the first SQLSaturday I attended back in 2014 at the suggestion of my good friend, Baron Robert Verell (b|t). It’s where I first saw Andy Yun present, and we’re teammates now!
This year, I had the opportunity to attend ProcureSQL’s “Building Your First Availability Group” pre-conference taught by John Sterrett (b|t). I’m the type of person that learns best through tinkering, and John’s class did a fantastic job of showing us where to begin with Availability Groups. I also now know how careful I should be around the “Add all eligible storage to the cluster” checkbox!
As Friday morning rolled around, so did a massive winter storm that threatened to cancel or delay the flights for many speakers as well as the event itself. While the Friday pre-conferences were cancelled due to the weather, there were thankfully no other casualties. One of the most touching moments of the weekend was seeing organizer Tammy Clark (b|t) become moved to tears by the fact that everyone braved the treacherous weather to come together in Nashville.
What was personally inspiring for me was seeing how well put together the event was. Tammy goes above and beyond to make sure that her attendees have a full day of top notch SQL Server content taught by some of the best speakers in the country, that her speakers have an amazing time amongst friends, and that her sponsors have everything they need. Her attention to detail, and level of hospitality make me want to do more for SQLSaturday Houston this year.
Saturday at the SentryOne booth, I had the good fortune of meeting a number of interesting people, each with their own data story. What I found most interesting was the number of developers who had never heard of Plan Explorer. I love being able to tell people that we have an absolutely free product that can change the way they work from a query tuning perspective.
Nashville always makes for special memories, and this year was no exception. I greatly look forward to visiting again next year. If you decide to make it out there next year, look for me at the booth!
[Note: ProcureSQL is a SentryOne Consulting Partner]
