I don’t think I’ll ever forget, walking out of the Speaker room, rounding the corner, and seeing the hallway JAMMED with people. I thought to myself, why are all of these people out here?!? The rest of the classrooms are down the hall. Wait… these people are lined up to see ME?!?! WHOA!!!

Let’s flash forward a few more minutes. It’s was 3:50PM. I was exhausted, a bit nervous, but ready to rock & roll with my 2nd presentation ever. I look out at my classroom, and while it’s small, it’s PACKED! Then it hits me like a brick wall – the room is SILENT! There was no idle chatter – everyone was just sitting there staring at me. And that sure didn’t help my nerves!

I opted to throw caution to the wind and test my ability to engage in idle chatter with a room full of strangers. I asked the audience how they’ve been enjoying SQL Saturday. That nearly fell flat, but my friend & room monitor Gina Meronek helped save me & keep the chatter going. I eventually started sharing about community & SQL Family. I talked about how strong the community is, and how I value resourcefulness far above raw technical knowledge. By participating and involving yourself in this community, you gain an unbelievable resource to aid you in your career.

And to me, that’s what SQL Saturday is all about – community & SQL Family.

But back to my session. I’m pleased to say that it went really well. I made one key change from my first version I ran in Madison, adding in an audience interactive section, which went really well. I managed to successfully bait my audience into making one particular data type decision, then launched a curve ball at them. It was simple, but illustrated the need to really think about your data when choosing appropriate types.

I was also honored to have Grant Fritchey attend my session. His feedback was gold to me and I’m grateful for it. And as many of you know, he subsequently honored me.  I still don’t have words to describe how I felt about that!

I’m really excited to continue to tweak and grow this presentation, and to give it again at future events!

Am I giving it again? Where you ask?

* SAVO Group (my employer) – May
* PASS Performance Virtual Chapter – July’s Palooza Event
* SQL Saturday Indianapolis – August; Submitted & hopefully accepted?
* MADPASS – August

Hope to see you somewhere soon!

Been working on my post SQL Saturday Chicago & 2nd Every Byte Counts presentation entries over this past week, but had to post a quick entry now.

I was shocked this morning when I opened TweetDeck, to find this:

Grant Fritchey @GFritchey
Speaker of the Month, May 2014: Whoa! Another month gone by already? I guess I better pick a speaker of the mo… bit.ly/1iR2HP6

That was maybe 20 minutes ago, I’d be lying if I didn’t say that I’m still on Cloud 9.

It was more than enough, just to have Grant agree to attend my session, and to receive his feedback afterwards.  But this… wow…

So thank you Grant, and thank you to everyone who attended my sessions in Madison and Chicago!

P.S.

Where is he speaking next? I don’t know.

Over the course of this week, I was also honored to be invited to present at MADPASS.  I should be there in August.  I’ll most likely also be submitting and crossing my fingers for SQL Saturday Indianapolis & Minneapolis.

It’s Thursday morning, and I’m still riding the wave after a fantastic SQL Saturday in Madison, WI. Of course, it was my very first time presenting a session, which made it all the more memorable.

We were in a new facility this year – American Family Insurance has a training facility as part of their larger campus, and it did not disappoint. The facility was beautiful! Loved the classrooms and the on-site equipment was nice and reliable.

For my own presentation, I wasn’t terribly many people, since I was up against Brent Ozar. Truth be told, I was perfectly okay with this. But I was pleasantly surprised and pleased that as fellow Speakers learned that it was my first time speaking, they committed to attending. In some regards, their presence and subsequent feedback was more valuable to me as a first-timer. On the other hand, maybe 10 or so people did come out to see me – yes, see ME! What a funny feeling that is!

I’m happy to say that my presentation went very well. I did my best to watch my pacing and not speak too fast as I am sometimes apt to do.

I did have one minor demo goof-up, when querying a DMV and getting 4 records back unexpectedly instead of one. I rolled with it and 30 seconds later realized my mistake – I was still in the Master DB! Oops! Some of the other more seasoned speakers commended me on handling that like a pro.

One other funny anecdote, was when Jim Drame asked if I was going to bring up Page Splitting after my Data Page segement. Why yes Jim, in fact it’s coming up in another two modules! Score! 🙂

In the end, I got some fantastic feedback. What made me feel really good though, were feedback sheets from normal participants who said they’d be taking some of my tips & tricks back with them to work. I’m actually excited to tweak the presentation and give it again – that’s how much fun I had!

So yeah, I’m addicted. 🙂

Gushing aside, I cannot thank the organizers of SQL Saturday Madison enough, for giving me this opportunity to try my hand at speaking. They put together a fantastic event and I look forward to attending more in years to come!

Thank you to those who attended my VERY FIRST session yesterday: Every Byte Counts!  I am grateful for the opportunity to speak, and for the awesome feedback I received from all attendees.

I have just finished posting my slidedeck and a 2012 backup of my demo database.  You may get them here:

http://www.sqlsaturday.com/viewsession.aspx?sat=287&sessionid=20892

https://onedrive.live.com/redir?resid=3151C3F6F6FB2E99!151&authkey=!ACYQDKQ7LnBe4as&ithint=file%2c.bak

I’ll have more post-event thoughts later I’m sure.

Thanks to everyone, who made yesterday a fantastic day!

I’ve never put much stock in setting long-term goals for myself. I’m not a New Year’s Resolution kind of guy. But a couple of years ago, I did set a loose goal of becoming more involved in the SQL Server community.

I figured at first, I would just network with as many people I could. Then last year, I started to volunteer at SQL Saturdays & travelled out of state to attend SQL Saturdays. Finally, I made it a personal and professional goal to finally attend the PASS Summit.

I achieved all of those goals!

Through those accomplishments, I set a few new goals. For one, I started this blog.  But the bigger, more intimidating goal was to finally start speaking. I had an opportunity to get my feet wet, late last year, by giving a Lightning Talk at Chicago’s SQL Server User Group. This gave me a solid foundation upon which to build a full blown session.

I set my sights on two early 2014 SQL Saturdays in my region – Madison & Chicago. And I am honored and humbled to say that I was accepted to speak at both!

If you come out to one of these SQL Saturdays, you can see me present Every Byte Counts: Why Your Datatype Choices Matter!

I want to give a special thanks to Jes Borland, Eddie Wuerch, and Mark Vaillancourt. When I first started this endeavor, Jes shared some fantastic advice with me on how to structure and put a session together. Later, I attended a SQL Saturday session by Eddie, on speaking and presenting, which also influenced me greatly. He incorporated a dialogue exercise with his audience, so I volunteered my topic idea to work through. Finally, I attended another SQL Saturday session by Mark, also on speaking and presenting. Mark gave me some other fantastic insights and ideas.

So thank you everyone!  Here goes nothing!