SQL Saturday Dallas

I've been to five SQL Saturdays so far and this was my first year to attend the Dallas conference. There

were a lot of good presentations and good speakers present. The venue was well placed and the rooms were nice. The only issues I saw were that the tables were too far out limiting the walking path, the building has no cell reception (Verizon), and the internet that was available didn't allow remote desktop for those of us still working.

All in all, those are very minor complaints. The event it self turned out really well. There was a sizable group of people new to to SQL Saturdays. That's a great thing to see. Our community is growing all the time. I saw Shawn Weisfeld there this year as well, (Hi Shawn!). He's the founder of Usergroup.tv. I've seen him around the SQL Saturday community more than a few times. It's great to see faces often enough at yearly events (per location) to actually recognize them.

I think on a personal note, something is missing in this world now. Community. We see day to day rushing, competing, trying to get to the top... and seldom do we see people helping out. This entire community does just that. We come together, build training, answer questions, watch #sqlhelp and see how we can better the community. I've not found a single A list person yet in this group who has refused to help answer a quick question or help them find self help. ^.^

Originally this blog was opened to setup 101 style training, basically the questions I'm asked - I wanted to document the answer, and to document my training towards the MCM. Given that the MCM is dead now.... I took a break from the idea of blogging. I think this was a mistake. I'm making this my new official first blog post. I am working still towards learning PowerShell, SSIS, proper performance tuning, and overall how to be a good admin.

I think this will be a good start.