2012 is already upon us and I have been busy working on my travel schedule for this year. It is still incomplete, but I have many events scheduled, and I am leaving room for some additional events as they are announced.

So how about you, have your scheduled the training events you want to attend this year? In a recent poll of readers of my blog, it looks like the most popular SQL Server training events are SQL Saturdays (18 events already scheduled for this year), SQL PASS Summit (Seattle, November 6-9, 2012), SQL Rally (Dallas, May 10-11, 2012), SQL Bits (UK, March 29-31, 2012), and SQL in the City (Dates and locations not yet announced).

While many of you may not have a training budget, fortunately, many of the events are free, and assuming they are within easy driving distance, attending them should be a no-brainer decision for you to make.

So if you have not done so yet, begin planning out your training this year. With the launch of SQL Server 2012, it should be a very busy year.

This year there are three spots available on the board and there are five candidates, including:

• Mark Ginnebaugh
• Geoff Hiten
• Allen Kinsel
• Douglas McDowell
• Andy Warren

You can find out more about these candidates at the SQLPASS Board of Directors web page. You can also find interviews with the candidates at Andy Leonard’s blog.

In selecting three candidates I voted for, I had a great difficulty as I personally know four of the candidates, and I would have liked to have voted for all four of them. These include Mark Ginnebaugh, who is a great PASS user group leader and businessman; Geoff Hiten, an outstanding SQL Server MVP and PASS user group leader, and a person who is not afraid to speak his mind; Andy Warren; who has been a long-time supporter of the SQL Server community, and who has shown in his last term of office that he is working towards greater PASS Board transparency; and Allen Kinsel, who has dedicated large amount of his time to the PASS program committee the past several years. All four of these are great candidates, and I can recommend all four of them to anyone who is still deciding on who to vote for.

So if you did get your PASS Board Elections e-mail, be sure you carefully review all of the candidates and select people who you think will lead PASS to a brighter future.

Looking for some free SQL Server training? How about 24 hours of free training offered by some of the top SQL Server experts in the world? If so, sign up for the upcoming 24 Hours of PASS live webcasts to be held September 15-16, 2010. It’s your opportunity to continue and broaden your SQL Server education, with your only investment being your time.

Unlike previous 24 Hours of PASS events, this event will be presented 12 hours a day for two consecutive days, making it much easier for many participants to attend the sessions of their choice. Of course, if you are not able to make all of the sessions, session recordings will become available shortly after the event.

To find out about the topics to be presented, and to register for the event, check out the PASS website today.

I’ll be speaking on “Automate Your Database Maintenance Using Ola Hallengren’s Free Script,” which provides a live demo of Ola’s script which I wrote about in an article published in Simple-Talk.

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.