SQL Saturday #22 was held on Saturday, June 5, 2010, with about 224 attendees participating in this free event. It was held at the Pensacola Junior College in Pensacola, FL.

Forty-three different sessions in six different tracks were offered (mostly SQL Server, but with a few .NET and miscellaneous sessions thrown in for good measure), offering attendees a wide choice of sessions to attend.

Many well-known speakers attended, including Steve Jones (see photo), Brad McGehee, Joe Webb, Joe Healy, Rushabh Mehta, Robert Cain, Kevin Boles, Patrick LeBlanc, Tim Mitchell, Rodney Landrum, Kevin Kline, and many more.

The event was hosted by Karla and Rodney Landrum, and of course they were helped my many behind-the-scenes volunteers to make this a successful event.

Below are a few photos from the event.

Rodney Landrum teaches a session on “DBA Repository Update 2010 Using SSIS and SSRS”, where he describes the SQL Server management system he developed for his company, and has shared with the SQL Server community.

Karla Landrum giving out prizes at the end of the event.

Annabel Bradford (left), in charge of the Friends of Red Gate Program, gives away a prize to the audience, with Rodney Landrum (right) helping out.

My session, the only professional development topic at the event, is called “Manage Your DBA Career, Don’t Let It Manage You,” is session 13, which will be held at 00:00 GMT on May 20. My session focuses on specific steps you can take to help take control of your career. Of course, if you are in control of your career, then you don’t need to attend. 

I will be traveling that week, and will be making my presentation from a hotel room in Dallas.

The two sessions he will be doing for me include: “Essential DBA Skills: Best Practices Every& SQL Server DBA Must Know” and “How to Analyze Performance Monitor Data Using PAL”. I have been working with Bodo to get him up to speed with my presentations, and I am sure he will do a great job. Although I won’t be at European PASS in person, at least I will be there in spirit.

If you attend these sessions, he will be giving out a limited number of free, signed paperback editions of several of my books. You can only get these books if you attend his sessions.

AlantaMDF SQL Server Users Group. Photo courtesy of www.sqlvariant.com.

I have just finished up a three event speaking tour that, which unfortunately, should have been a four event tour, but my flight to Germany (via London) was cancelled, and I was unable to attend European PASS as I had hoped.

I started out on Monday, speaking at the AtlantaMDF SQL Server Users Group, which is lead by SQL Server MVP Geoff Hiten. I spoke on “How to Become an Exceptional DBA,” which is a presentation based on my book of the same name (download the free eBook version here). Apparently, the meeting has its highest attendance ever, with 93 attendees, about one third of which were first time attendees.

Next, I flew to Chicago to speak to the downtown Chicago SQL Server Users Group, where I spoke Thursday night on “How to Optimize tempdb Performance.” The group is lead by Bill Lescher, who was a most gracious host. We met at the Chicago Microsoft Technology Center, and I got a brief tour of the facility from Ross LoForte, a SQL Server technology architect with Microsoft (and SQL Server book author).

Chicago SQL Server Users Group. Photo by Bill Lescher.

Then on Saturday, I made two presentations at the Chicago SQLSaturday event. I presented on “How and When to Use Indexed View” and “Introduction to Graphical Execution Plans. The event, which was coordinated by Wendy Pastrick, Ted Krueger, and Aaron Lowe, had about 20 speakers, over 30 sessions, and over 300 attendees.

Photo courtesy of www.michaelkappel.com.

Chicago SQL Saturday wraps up with Q&A and prize drawings.

After the Chicago SQL Saturday, I was supposed to fly to Neuss, Germany for European PASS, but my flight was cancelled due to the Iceland volcano ash, so I ended up going back home to Hawaii. My next trip is in May, where I will speak at IndyTechFest in Indianapolis, IN and the North Texas SQL Server Users Group.

Registration for the 24 Hours of PASS is now open. This free, online training event will be held starting 12:00 GMT on May 19, and include 24 live presentations on a wide variety of topics, with a special emphasis on SQL Server 2008 R2.

Speakers include Adam Machanic, Andy Leonard, Brad McGehee, Brent Ozar, Brian Knight, Chuck Heinzelman, Dean Richards, Don Kiely, Don Vilen, Donald Farmer, Glenn Berry, Greg Low, Jacob Sebastian, Jessica Moss, Kevin Cox, Kevin Kline, Louis Davidson, Maciej Pilecki, Peter Myers, Peter Ward, Rushabh Mehta, Sean McCown, Simon Sabin, Thomas Grosher.

This year, I will be presenting on “Manage Your DBA  Career, Don’t Let It Manage You.” The session is targeted at DBAs who are tired of letting their career just happen and want to take control of it. It is session number 13, to be held at 00:00 GMT on May 20 (7:00PM Central Daylight Time, May 19).

While it is probably out of reach for most DBAs in the United States to attend, the PASS European Conference is a great opportunity for those DBAs in Europe, who are unable to attend the PASS Community Summit in United States, to improve their skills and make new contacts within the DBA community.

This year’s European PASS, which is to be held April 21-23 in Neuss, Germany (just outside of Dusseldorf), features more than 45 sessions from speakers from around the world.

This event will also be the official SQL Server R2 launch in Europe, which includes an optional, full-day session will be conduced by Donald Farmer, focusing on new R2 features. In addition, there will be a R2 FastTrack that all conference attendees may attend.

I will be presenting two sessions at this event, including:

• Essential DBA Skills: Best Practices Every SQL Server DBA Must Know
• How to Analyze Performance Monitor Data Using PAL

I will be giving away free paperback copies of several of my books during my sessions on a first-come, first-serve basis. Hope to see you there.

PASS Events: Find out about many different SQL Server-related events, including both PASS and non-PASS-related events.

SQL Saturday: Now that PASS is running SQL Saturday, all SQL Saturday events are listed here (which somewhat duplicates the events listed in the above link).

PASS Blog: Some of the more interesting news from the PASS board of directors is available here, although not a lot of blogging is happening. You can also provide feedback to the board of directors using the blog’s comment feature.

PASS Virtual Chapters: If you aren’t able to attend a local user’s group, or if you want to participate in more than just in your local users group, PASS Virtual Chapters sponsor many online events, which are often not well advertised.

PASS News Releases: These are the official news releases that PASS provides to the press.

PASS Newsletter Archive: Current and past issues of the PASS’s Community Connector newsletter are available here.

PASS LinkedIN: For LinkedIn members.

PASS FaceBook: For FaceBook members.

PASS Twitter:  For Twitter members.

In regard to the last three social networking sites, the PASS news varies from one to another, which means that you would have to be members of all three in order to see all the available PASS news from these three sources.