PASS Summit 2022 - Day 3 in Pictures

Other PASS Summit 2022 Days - Pre-Cons | Day 1 | Day 2

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Day 3 of Summit 2022 was "Community Day" with a "community keynote" given by the amazing Kimberly Tripp (@kimberlyltripp) with help from her lovely assistant Paul Randal (@paulrandal).  The keynote was sponsored by Amazon AWS (@aws) but because it was community day the keynote did not include any sponsor content - a nice touch and a big thank you to AWS for supporting the concept.

Before the keynote Steve Jones (@way0utwest) introduced some warm-up entertainment, KillaDBA (@killadba) who rapped his way through #HugADBA getting the crowd ramped up for the final day.

Kimberly and Paul were up next, and Kimberly chose to take us all through "30+ Years of Innovation: How Do We Keep Up with Technology?" - a tour back to the start of her career and all of the changes in SQL Server and the world of data along the way.  She and Paul displayed their inner hoarders with an array of memorabilia, old software, and giant boxes of documentation from versions long past, and also discussed the sheer volume of data being produced in our modern world, including the fact that while we made it to the Moon with 64 kilobytes of memory, today we generate over 333 *billion* emails every day (of course 2/3 of them are probably spam!)

Kimberly wrapped up with comments about the community and how amazing it is, especially compared to many other technologies that don't have anything like the #sqlfamily - I have to admit I teared up a couple of times hearing the comments of some of my friends as to how the family has helped them in the careers and their lives.  She also talked about how sharing and teaching were the best ways to learn yourself - as she told us, "Learn-Share-Grow!"

Paul tweeted the following while I was writing this post:

Exactly.

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My first session was "Performance Monitoring, Tuning and Scaling Azure SQL Workloads" by Deepthi Goguri (@dbanuggets) and Surbhi Pokharna (@Surbhi_Pokharna).  They were first-time Summit speakers and came through their talk in amazing fashion - even with a network hiccup causing problems in one of their Azure demos, they recovered well and handled questions and comments from the audience like champs.

Next I went to "Built-In Query Intelligence in SQL Server 2022" by Kate Smith and Bob Ward (@bobwardms) from Microsoft.  I had already seen some of the material from Bob in his workshop earlier this week, but during the workshop he told us we should come see this talk to get Kate's insights, and it was worth it - as a Senior PM in the area she added extra info beyond the base presentation.

After lunch I went to see my buddy from Chicago Frank Gill (@skreebyDBA) - I first met Frank at a SQL Saturday in Chicago years ago, and he is a great DBA and member of the community.  He talked about backups in Azure SQL and Managed Instance, and I definitely learned some things I didn't know before.

The last session of Summit 2022 for me was "SQL Server in Azure Virtual Machines - Configuring for Price-Performance" by Pam Lahoud (@sqlgoddess) and Aditya Badramrajo (@aditya_feb22) of the Microsoft Azure team.  I have seen Pam speak several times before but had not seen Aditya, and the two of them presented very well together.  I learned the nuts and bolts of Azure VM sizing and the different models, especially as it relates to capacity constraints (any given model only gets a certain amount of SPU, a certain amount of RAM, of I/O, etc.), along with some recommendations on the best models and configurations to use for SQL VM's inlcuding Pam's favorite VM model for SQL Server, the Ebdsv5, aka the #DoubleSprinklesVMs

Summit 2022 in-person has been awesome - Redgate and the event staff did an outstanding job recreating the magic that was the PASS Summit from before the pandemic, and I can't wait to come back next year!

PASS Summit 2022 - Day 2 In Pictures

Other PASS Summit 2022 Days - Pre-Cons | Day 1 | Day 3

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Day 2 of Summit 2022 started earlier than usual with the "Breakfast with the Microsoft team: SQL Futures and Strategy" - the food was good and the conversations with the @AzureSQL Team were great, outlining why some features make it into the product faster than others as well as commenting on future directions for the product.  

Next was the Day 2 keynote "Doing More with Less: The Challenges Ahead for Every Data Professional" by the event sponsor Redgate (@redgate) - Steve Jones (@way0utwest) gave some nostalgic history of the PASS Summit as well as some history of Redgate, and then a string of Redgate people demonstrated a cool-looking database migration product they acquired called Flyway (@flywaydb), and finally Kathi Kellenberger (@auntkathi) wrapped up with the many ways Redgate supports the community and ways to do so in the future.

My first two sessions of the day were a Denny Cherry and Associates Consulting (@DCACco) doubleheader, with Denny Cherry (@mrdenny) presenting "How to Maintain the Same Level of utilities in Cloud Deployments" where he discussed the "Security, Reliability, and Scalability" of moving to Azure, and then Joey D'Antoni (@jdanton) following him with "Deep Inside Azure SQL High Availability."

It's Thursday, which brings the annual Women in Technology (#passwitnetwork) Luncheon, which is inspiring (and as a straight white male, also sobering) every year.  The topic this year was "Women as Tech Leads - Tackling the Challenges" and the panel this year was awesome, made up of Shabnam Watson (@ShbWatson), Jen McCown (@MidnightDBA), Anna Hoffman (@AnalyticAnna), Blythe Morrow (@blythemorrow) and Leslie Andrews (@landrews5807).  The conversation was amazing as usual with special emphasis on taking ownership of your own career and paying attention when others need help - a great overall message for everyone.

My afternoon sessions were Kimberly Tripp (@kimberlyltripp) on "VLTs: Very Large Tables - Problems, Options, THE Solution!" and then first-time Summit speaker Josh Handler (@gt1gt1) covering "PowerShell and dbatools Tips and Scripts for the DBA." Kimberly is always an amazing speaker, and the back and forth with her husband Paul (@paulrandal) always adds that little extra touch; Josh did a great job as a first-timer in front of a pretty full room - he kept a good pace through his material, and when he didn't know the answer to a question he didn't stumble but rather told the person he would find out, or probed the other attendees to see if anyone knew an answer - a great first of what I am sure will be many more outings of Josh speaking at Summit.

One of the sad points of this year's in-person Summit are the people who *can't* be here for some reason, and for me personally the most painful is the absence of David Klee (@kleegeek) - David helped me quite a bit to escalate my community involvement during the time we actually worked together, pushing me to speak and write and also going out of his way to introduce me to some of the MVP's who make up a big part of my #sqlfamily now.  Klee can't take the COVID vaccine for medical reasons, so he is still quarantining at home with his wife.  Fortunately, someone had the idea to bring a #flatklee with them to SQL Saturday Portland last weekend and then to Summit this week, and I finally ran into the person with #flatklee today during my last session of the day - it made me happy to be able to take a picture with #flatklee although it does also remind me that *REAL* Klee isn't physically here.

Thanks to everyone and I need to get some sleep before the final day of Summit 2022 tomorrow!

PASS Summit 2022 - Day 1 In Pictures

Other PASS Summit 2022 Days - Pre-Cons |  Day 2 | Day 3

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The first "full" day of PASS 2022 kicked off with a bang when Rohan Kumar (@RohanKData) stepped out on the keynote stage to announce SQL Server 2022 was GA (generally available) and then the day continued full throttle to the end of the day when I won a free copy of a book at the Amazon booth written by one my favorite SQLPeople Kevin Kline (@kekline).

Along the way we had an amazing Microsoft Keynote including a fun competition between Anna Hoffman (@AnalyticAnna) and Bob Ward (@bobwardms), and another episode of the classic "Bob and Conor Show" featuring Bob Ward and Conor Cunningham (@sqlconor).  There was a live episode of the Data Exposed show featuring Anna Hoffmann and a swarm of Microsoft SQL leaders, and more SQL 2022 content with Bob and Ajay Jagannathan (@AjayMSFT).  I got Bob Ward to sign my new copy of his SQL 2022 book, and then went to the Redgate lunch on learning and managing your career.  After lunch I saw Erik Darling (@erikdarlingdata) threaten to throw stickers at his audience while he demonstrated query plan gotchas and performance hacks, and then exposed my #LEGOSteveAtSummit to caffeine overload.  I wrapped up my session day learning about Upgrading SQL via Distributed Availability Groups from Stacey Kyrylova, and then went to the Exhibitors Reception for food and friends, where I won a copy of Kevin's book - signed by the author himself.

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As an aside - Kevin was one of the first SQL "celebrities" I met in person long ago - at least more than 15 years ago - when he came to speak at our Omaha User Group.  He was in town on a job from what was then Quest Software and came to speak to our group while he was in town.  I remember being star-stuck to a degree - I used to read SQL Mag (remember SQL Mag?) and some blogs, but had never imagined actually talking to one of "those people" that wrote for the magazine - but I was also amazed at how *nice* Kevin was to everyone - he smiled at everybody and no question was stupid (even the stupid ones!)

That experience has shaped a lot of how I eventually ended up sharing in the community via blogging, speaking, and participating at events - the firm belief that we all should share what we know to make everyone better together.

Thanks, amigo!

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It was an AWESOME day - what's going to happen tomorrow?