Tag: PASS (Page 1 of 4)

SQL Saturday Recap: #933 – Nashville, TN

January 20, 2020 / jpries

In what has become a yearly tradition, I attended my first SQL Saturday of the year in Nashville — SQL Saturday #933 — Nashville, TN, which took place on Saturday, January 18th, 2020. As with prior years (I’ve attended 4 of their 7 now) the event was well worth the drive from Atlanta.

While the weather wasn’t great (cold and rainy) at least it wasn’t snowy and icy like we’d had in previous years. Fortunately, the entire event takes place indoors — so the cold and gloom outside was easy to ignore with all the action inside. The schedule this year, as usual, was made up of a ton of great options and all of the speakers were fantastic. Lunch in Nashville is always a treat — hot and delicious BBQ and everything was well run and professional.

I had a great time at the event and look forward to attending the 10th anniversary next year!

Morning registration at SQL Saturday 933 – Nashville

SQL Saturday Recap: #919 – BI Edition – Atlanta, GA

October 22, 2019 / jpries

With fall in the air and pumpkins and skeletons making an appearance, the third Saturday in October was the day for something else to make an appearance the annual SQL Saturday BI Edition for Atlanta, GA.

For the third consecutive year, I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to attend the BI Edition of SQL Saturday, which was held conveniently nearby — once again at Alpharetta Microsoft office.

With the Atlanta events, it’s pretty easy to take for granted how well run they are. Registration was a snap for those with pre-printed SpeedPasses, GuideBook was available for keeping a copy of the schedule handy, and the venue offered just enough room (with one exception — a jam-packed session by Patrick LeBlanc) for all of the sessions.

The schedule was a good mix with plenty of great picks throughout the day and the whole event had the usual well-run feel to it. For anybody that hasn’t attended this event (or the May event) before, you should definitely look into the next one!

As always, I’m thankful to the organizers, speakers, sponsors, and great attendees for a fantastic and well-spent Saturday and look forward to the next!

Reza Rad presenting “Architecture Blueprints for Power BI Implementation.”

Ed Watson presenting “The Psychology of Better Power BI Reporting.”

Patrick LeBlanc presenting “Data Modeling and DAX Tips for Power BI” and “Power BI Performance in 6 Demos.”

Shabnam Watson presenting “Aggregations in Power BI.”

Raise your hand if you learned something today at SQL Saturday.

Outside the venue at lunch, in the rain, some event or filming was taking place as one street of the Avalon outside of the Microsoft building was lined with these amazing machines.

A whole lot of money parked along this street. Might’ve been cheaper to actually pave the street with gold.

SQL Saturday Recap: #845 – Atlanta, GA

May 21, 2019 / jpries

Saturday, May 18th marked the 10th anniversary for SQL Saturday Atlanta. As per usual, an army of organizers, sponsors, speakers, and volunteers helped to pull off another incredible event. The scope of SQL Saturday Atlanta never fails to impress and this year was no exception with no shortage of incredible speakers and fascinating topics, not to mention a very large number of folks who traveled multiple states to attend the event.

A theme is tradition for SQL Saturday and officially the theme was “Office Space,” which is a pretty fun one to work with. Unofficially, I think the theme was “Docker” and “Kubernetes” based on the number of sessions mentioning one of the other (usually both) and the huge amount of buzz about those topics in the halls. It’s going to be really interesting how these new technologies shape the SQL Server world over the next 5 years.

As always, a fantastic event and time very well spent for anybody in the field. The event organization was very professional and the entire day flowed great. Avoiding room capacity issues while still having huge Microsoft speakers such as Bob Ward and Buck Woody sessions is an accomplishment all in of itself!

Do yourself a favor and attend this event next year (if you missed this year)!

SQL Saturday Recap: #815 – Nashville, TN

January 13, 2019 / jpries

My first SQL Saturday of the year, SQL Saturday #815 — Nashville, TN, took place Saturday, January 12th, 2019. As with prior years (I’ve attended 3 of their 6), everything ran very smoothly and there were no glaring issues that I noticed. Lunch was excellent (a hot lunch featuring catered BBQ — pork, chicken, and mac & cheese!) and the session selection was excellent. The venue split sessions among three floors, but it was easy enough to get from one to the next with plenty of time to spare and no session that I attended had issues with the room being too small for the crowd.

I usually (either consciously or unconsciously) theme the sessions I select to attend. The theme for this event was definitely Data Science, with a number of sessions on Python, Azure Data Bricks, R, and other data science technologies. It’s a pretty rare occurrence for a lunch session to be the most enjoyable of the day, but in this case, I really enjoyed the lunch session which I attended — a panel discussion on the future of the data professional, given by a number of well-known community speakers, many of which are or were Microsoft MVPs and many of which are current Microsoft employees. A really fun and informative session!

The whole day was great and I look forward to Nashville each year. At only a 4 hour drive from Atlanta, and always a great selection of sessions and pre-cons (which I was unable to make this year), this event is always time well spent!

SQL Saturday Recap: #800 – BI Edition – Atlanta, GA

September 28, 2018 / jpries

SQL Saturday #800 – the annual BI Edition for Atlanta, GA, took place on Saturday, September 22nd at the new Microsoft Avalon offices in Alpharetta, GA. This was the second large-scale event I’d attended in this space (the first being Azure Data Fest). Initially, I’d had some reservations about the size of rooms vs. the number of attendees, but everything was planned excellently and no session on my wishlist was over capacity to the point where seats weren’t available. No small feat for the planners! The entire day went off great and the sessions were some of the best I’d attended to date. Unofficially, it seemed the like underlying theme of the event was performance tuning SSAS Tabular and Power BI, which was very timely for me as that is currently an area I’m focusing on.

SQL Saturday Recap: #733 – Atlanta, GA

May 25, 2018 / jpries

This past Saturday, May 19th marked the 733rd SQL Saturday Event — SQL Saturday #733 – Atlanta. Being my home event, and consistently a large and well-executed event, I look forward to this one every year and also volunteer to help out with room proctoring and any other help that is needed. Since the loss of the GSU Alpharetta Campus as a venue, the event has bounced around looking for a new home. This year, it was hosted at the Alpharetta Campus of Gwinnett Technical College, which I felt was an excellent venue (though not quite as convenient to me as last year’s Duluth Campus).

Like previous years, I felt the event was executed very well — with an army of organizers and volunteers, it seemed like everything was handled well with only minor mishaps here and there. The new location was great and will hopefully end up being a new permanent home for the event. As I was helping to work the event, I didn’t get to attend as many sessions as I would have liked, but everything I attended was excellent and time well spent.

Marco Russo presenting “DAX Optimization Examples” — my favorite session of the day. He easily could’ve filled multiple hours with his content and I look forward to seeing him speak again whenever I next get the opportunity!

SQL Saturday Recap: #698 – Nashville, TN

January 28, 2018 / jpries

On Saturday, January 13th, despite a pretty snowy winter weather forecast, Nashville held SQL Saturday #698. I watched twitter like a hawk in the hours leading up to making the drive, watching for reports on the roads in the area. All-in-all, the roads ended up being in decent condition for the drive, and I only really encountered any ice in the parking lot when I finally arrived at the hotel.

Saturday morning was frigid and it snowed throughout the day, but that wasn’t enough to stop the event. The organizers did an excellent job enduring the stress caused by the weather and in my opinion the event was a great success and went off without a hitch. Lunch was hot BBQ, which was excellent and a great upgrade from the standard boxed sandwich lunches which are typical fare at SQL Saturday events. As an added touch (and part of the yearly tradition) after the end of day raffle, SQL Saturday customized pint glasses were given out to all the attendees to take home as a souvenir. Another one for the shelf!

It was a great day and well worth the drive up to Nashville. Looking forward to attending again next time.

The snow fell throughout the day on Saturday at SQL Saturday Nashville.

SQL Saturday Recap: #624 – Chattanooga, TN

July 9, 2017 / jpries

On Saturday, June 24th, I attended SQL Saturday #624 in Chattanooga, TN. I’m a bit behind in posting this writeup, so I’ll keep it short. This was my second time attending an event in Chattanooga (and I believe their 3rd overall). The event went very smoothly and had a very well selected schedule of speakers and topics. As with other Chattanooga SQL Saturdays, nobody leaves without being offered Moon Pies, which is a great and fun touch!

I attended a number of excellent sessions and really enjoyed my day in Chattanooga. With my crazy summer schedule, this looked to be the only summer event I’d be able to attend, so I’m glad it was a good one. Looking forward to visiting Chattanooga again some time in the future! See below for a few of my pictures from the event:

SQL Saturday Recap: #578 – Atlanta, GA (BI Edition)

December 12, 2016 / jpries

Saturday, December 10th marked the 2nd annual SQL Saturday Atlanta BI Edition. Atlanta is known for its massive SQL Saturday held every spring / summer, so I’m happy to see the smaller, more BI-focused winter event continuing on. With such a large number of SQL Server professionals in the area, there is definitely room for multiple events.

As with last year’s event, this one was a well-run event with no flaws that I was aware of. This year seemed to be a bit of a “back to basics” theme. Many of the extras that are frequently seen at SQL Saturday events — lots of sponsors, attendee bags and printed materials, speaker shirts, paper session evaluations, and other extras weren’t present. Instead, the focus was purely on providing a full day of content across multiple tracks, and you know what, that’s just fine. (Many) free donuts were provided for breakfast and boxed lunches were purchased, and everything was adequate. The core idea behind SQL Saturday is free training and networking, and the event delivered! I particularly thought the session lineup for this event was a great mix of topics.

SQL Saturday Recap: #560 – Charlotte, NC

September 18, 2016 / jpries

SQL Saturday 560 - Charlotte, NC This past Saturday marked Charlotte’s 5th consecutive SQL Saturday event, and my 4th in Charlotte (I missed last year’s due to a scheduling conflict) — SQL Saturday # 560. Also fun, this happened to mark the 20th SQL Saturday that I attended over the past few years — a pretty cool achievement!

As a change to this year over previous years, this year SQL Saturday Charlotte offered 2 all-day precons on Friday, both of which would sell out. With a “go big or go home” type attitude, they made life very difficult and forced me to choose between two incredible spears and presentations: Adam Machanic’s (B | T) “Tuning Your Biggest Queries” and Jen Underwood’s (B | T) “Advanced Analytics” With two fantastic speakers to choose from, each with a great, and relevant, session, I had some decisions to make.

After an easy drive from north Atlanta to Charlotte after work on Thursday, I headed out bright and early Friday morning to attend Jen Underwood’s (B | T) “Advanced Analytics” The precons were held in an off-campus location, the Ballantyne Center, which worked out to be a pretty decent venue. Adam’s precon was held in a standard classroom and Jen’s precon was held in a computer lab, which provided each person a computer with a solid network connection and the ability to follow along with the presentation slides and run the lab exercises locally.

Jen Underwood presenting Advanced Analytics

Jen’s Analytics precon was an excellent session and a great introduction to the topic. The topic is far too deep to cover in a single day session, but Jen did a good job of hitting the highlights and getting people introduced to the material and inspired by the possibilities of the subject with plenty of resources for further learning. This was certainly time well spent!