SQL Saturday #67: Priceless

Having presented at SQL Saturday #66 in Colorado Springs, I was eager to present again. I was understandably delighted then, when my “Data-Driven Subscriptions in SSIS” abstract was chosen for SQL Saturday #67 in Chicago.  A week or so before I got that news, I committed to going either as a speaker or volunteer.

The week leading up to the event was insanely busy — I had just presented a 60-minute session at the Denver SQL User’s Group meeting the previous Thursday and hadn’t addressed my Chicago presentation yet.  I spent that week frantically adapting my code from a production instance at work, making it suitable for public consumption.  Plus, my four year-old son got very sick on Wednesday night. (He caught the stomach bug that’s been hitting people hard everywhere of late.)  I debated staying home, but with my wife’s support, I headed out to Chicago instead.

The Night Before

I got to the hotel around 4:45 Friday night and my roommate, Randy Knight (blog|twitter), showed up a little while later.  From then until the speakers’ dinner at 7:00, I worked on debugging my demo.

The speakers’ dinner was hosted by SQLSentry (whose Plan Explorer I adore) at the Home Run Inn.  I’ve had their frozen pizzas before, but the restaurant version is far better.  I wish I could say I enjoyed the dinner more, but I still had my unreliable demo on my mind.  Heading into the weekend, I wanted to meet three people in particular with whom I’ve already had contact: David Stein (blog|twitter), Jes Borland (blog|twitter), and Brent Ozar(blog|twitter).  I met David and Jes that night; I’d end up meeting Brent the next day.

I also got to meet Aaron Bertrand (blog|twitter), Grant Fritchey (blog|twitter), Jose Chinchilla (blog|twitter), and many others for the first time.  I have to admit I was a little star-struck.  After all, I’m still way down the totem pole of SQL Server and they sit at or near the top.

With the dinner winding down, Randy and I went back to the hotel and I immediately set in working on my demo again.  It wasn’t until 2:44 AM I got my complete set of green boxes along with the expected output for each task.  I set the laptop aside the bed and I fell asleep within minutes.

Saturday Morning

I checked in and immediately went to the speaker’s room to iron out any last kinks with my demo.  David Stein mentored me (naturally) on one issue that, while it wasn’t a bug, was not an efficient way of executing.  I was disappointed to skip the first sessions of the day; the schedule was rich with useful content.  I had to focus on delivering a good session myself and spent the morning finalizing mine.

The speakers’ room is an incredible place.  As Nic Cain (blog|twitter) mentioned in his recap, the combined knowledge gathered in the speakers’ room is astounding.  Many of the speakers there are SQL Server MVP’s, authors of a book on my shelf, or both.  Like Nic, I can’t help but feel I’m not worthy of such company.  I’ve made it a point to tune in to the conversations there as much as I can because hearing them talk shop is very enlightening.

Though I was feeling good about my 10:45 session, around 10:15 I started to feel physically sick.  It was a familiar feeling to me.  I used to play co-ed ultimate frisbee at a national championship level, and I’d get this way before the first game of a big tournament.  While thumbing through my virtual machine, I noticed my RS unattended execution account was running as Adminstrator.  Since it felt a bit like I was cheating, I changed it to the account that should have proper permissions.  I closed my laptop and headed to my room.  It was now 10:45.  I was exhausted, had a potentially shaky demo, and felt like I had a bathroom emergency in the making.  What could possibly go wrong?

Showtime

Much to my surprise, the room filled up near capacity.  I was opposite Grant Fritchey and Aaron Bertrand, along with five other outstanding speakers, so the full house was a delightful surprise.  I got my session underway on time, and a few minutes into the presentation I was feeling better.

The session went along pretty well until I all but invited trouble into my demo.  After about 30 minutes of explaining my solution’s prerequisites and architecture, I said the following:

“Just so we all know this won’t be a giant waste of time, let’s go ahead and run this so we know all the boxes will turn green.’

You know what happened next.

Three boxes changed to green and the fourth, a cringe-inducing blood red.  I had blown up a demo that just an hour before had worked to perfection.

Within a minute or two, I had deduced that something I changed in the last hour broke the demo.  I went back to the RS Configuration Manager and set the account back to Administrator.  I rationalized that more so than showing it runs with good security practices, I wanted to show that the solution just runs.  I was also subjected to a few “[it works] when you run it as Administrator” taunts from the audience.  I deserved a little heckling over it, so I didn’t mind.  Switching back to the demo, it was all green boxes from there.

At another point, my VM slowed to a crawl, and I had to wait until it thawed.  Fortunately, someone in the audience unintentionally bailed me out with a question about the ExecutionLog view.  This was the perfect opportunity to kill time.  My presentation from the Thursday before spent a lot of time on the ExecutionLog view, so I was able to seamlessly and almost effortlessly transition into (and later back out of) that material.  Truly a life-saver to have that experience to fall back on.

I wrapped up a few minutes past 12:00 — a little over the allotted 75 minutes.  A few attendees came to me after the session to discuss the solution, as well as Reporting Services in general.  This was my favorite part of the session because I love to talk RS with similarly engaged people.

A brief note to my attendees: You deserved a more refined session than the one I gave you.  I work hard to make sure what I’m presenting is useful, clear, and well organized.  I’m glad that (judging by the evaluations) as a whole you enjoyed it.  However, I was not as well prepared as I should have been for this session, and for that I apologize.

I Can Breathe Again

I gave my wife a call to check in on my boy and let her know I survived my session.  I grabbed a sandwich and spent the next hour trying to mentally unwind in the speakers’ room.  Eventually I made my way into Jason Strate’s (blog|twitter) “Index Black Ops” for the last fifteen minutes of the session.  What little I saw made me wish I had been there the whole session.  I’ll have to catch up on his blog series of the same name.

The Other Big Reason I Came To Chicago

Pardon my lengthy digression here.

I enthusiastically support the idea of SQL Saturday: it’s a launching pad for novice speakers to learn how to present in a (generally) low-pressure environment.  It’s also a phenomenal way for attendees to get top-tier knowledge for absolutely zero cost.  Personally, the greatest benefit of SQL Saturday is the opportunity to meet people who share a passion for SQL Server.  In particular, this event offered me the chance to meet the person I credit with jump-starting my career: Brent Ozar.

Last year, I watched the video of his presentation “Top Ten Developer Mistakes That Won’t Scale“.  I loved his delivery and wanted to see more of his material.  This led me to his blog post, “Rock Stars, Normal People, and You“.  While reading the post, I realized my career was stalled just as his once was.  I didn’t necessarily want to be just like Brent, but I wanted to accelerate my skills and profile as he had.  And I absolutely had to thank him in person for that revelation.

I approached Brent briefly for a minute before his presentation (I couldn’t resist), thanked him for being a big influence, and asked to speak with him a few minutes after.  He said he was happy to do so.

Relax and Enjoy

Having met Brent, I went over to Jes Borland’s “Make Your Voice Heard!” session.  This session was not technical, and interactivity, along with Jes’ champagne bubbly enthusiasm, made for a nice break from thinking about code and internals.  We had a lot of fun discussing social media practices.  Regrettably, I had to duck out earlier because I wanted to see some of David Stein’s presentation, “Data Warehousing – How to Convince ‘The Bobs’“.  I enjoyed David’s presentation for his zest for data warehousing (he read a 500-page Kimball book cover-to-cover in two days), his plentiful Office Space references, and — if I’m not mistaken — his Logitech R800 green laser pointer which I also use.  I only caught about 20 minutes of David’s talk before ducking out to see the last few minutes of Brent’s [standing/sitting/hanging from the walls and ceiling] room-only session.

“So, Lord Helmet, at last we meet again for the first time for the last time.”

Brent and I spoke after his session had let out. I thanked him for his blog post that really got my career off in the right direction, as well as his other professional development contributions.  He’s a humble and self-deprecating guy, which helps explain his broad appeal.  I was happy to get a picture with him too.  Since I’m a BI guy, I doubt we’ll cross paths often. I’m grateful I had the chance to thank him in person.

Winding Down…

At that point, I felt spent.  Rather than attend another full session, I went back to the speakers’ room and helped clean up a little bit.  I ducked in on Tim Ford’s (blog|twitter) talk, “Who needs DMV’s? You do!“, for the last fifteen minutes.  Again, what little I saw left me craving more.

In keeping with the theme other bloggers have set, I’ll briefly say that the after-party was terrific, and certain SQL Server MVP’s will now be associated with “Humpty Dance” and “Get Me To The Church On Time” as much as they will with indexing and execution plans.  If you want to know more, you’ll just have to go to an after-party yourself.

Despite Frontier Airlines’ efforts to keep me off the flight I had paid for a month ago — I don’t know why overbooking isn’t illegal, honestly — I returned home Sunday morning short on sleep and long on memories.

Finally { }

This experience lifted any doubts I may have had about my life’s purpose. I have discovered my passions are:

1. Learning SQL Server.
2. Presenting about SQL Server.
3. Connecting people who are passionate about items 1 and 2.

Outside of my family, nothing means more to me right now than that.  I consider myself incredibly lucky to have found my calling at just 35 years old.  While it might seem like I have a man-crush on Brent Ozar (my wife would argue that’s true, as much as I talked about meeting him), it’s really just enormous gratitude I feel.  He’s the person most responsible for turning me on to presenting. (I just know that last sentence is going to cropped and horribly abused. Oh well. Swing away, folks.)  And I want to extend my gratitude to all the volunteers who made SQL Saturday #67 possible, most notably:

Ted Kruger (blog|twitter)
Wendy Pastrick (blog|twitter)
Norman Kelm (blog|twitter)
Jes Borland (blog|twitter)
Bob Pusateri (blog|twitter)
Aaron Lowe (blog|twitter)
Bill Lescher (twitter)
Rich Rousseau (twitter)

Thank you for wedging me in amongst the giants on your schedule, for all your assistance and hospitality, and for an experience I will always remember.

Airfare to Chicago: $300.
Hotel: $99.
Discovering your life’s purpose: Priceless.

UPDATE: My son is feeling well again, and I should have my presentation materials available here and on the SQL Saturday site no later than next Monday morning, April 4th.