Ok, the acronym is a little unwieldy. The entries are still coming in for The Best Thing I Learned at PASS Summit (TBTILAPS) contest. I know Fridays can be kind of slow so I suggest you take some time and enter our contest. It’s either that or rewrite that horrible stored procedure you’ve been meaning to get to.
Here are some snippets from some of our recent entries:
- Grant Fritchey writes “I’ve attended technical sessions that blew my socks off and made me twitch in my seat, fighting the urge to start writing TSQL code, immediately.” And that isn’t even the best thing he learned! You can read the full post on his blog.
- Brian L. wrote about choosing “sessions that had ‘lessons learned’ or ‘capitalizing on’ to benefit from others’ experience in MS SQL 2008. Sometimes the lesson taught was what Microsoft had learned to improve their process. These breakout sessions helped to meet my goal of learning what is new in SQL 2008.” He also wrote about the Summit DVDs saying “The recordings of the conference sessions which I purchased have been extremely beneficial. Not only can I 'refresh' my memory about the sessions I attended, but I can also see what I missed and hope to learn at future Summits. With PASS, it’s 'What you See is What you Get!'". Don’t forget that when you register you can purchase a set of DVDs with the recordings of all the sessions for $95. After the Summit the price goes up.
- Thomas L. stopped by the CSS First-Aid Station to ask about a problem he was having. “The PASS First-Aid station had a Sr. Escalation Engineer with Cluster Environments. The gentleman had done a cluster presentation at PASS2007 I attended, so this was a good start. He started by explaining in detail about a Cluster Environment. The tip that helped us was Possible Owners on a cluster resource. This is where the SP & Hot Fix installation program determines what servers to update. Again, our company sponsored trip to PASS pays off. One thing I have discovered about going to a conference is always come back with something valuable for management. Instead of attending the 'here is what’s new' sessions, I have become determined to learn 1-2 more valuable tools for what we are doing today.” The CSS First-Aid station is staffed by Microsoft’s top support engineers. Stop by and ask them your hardest questions!
- K. Brian Kelley writes in his blog about a session from the late Ken Henderson that helped him solve a problem a couple of years later. The one thing that jumped out at me was in the discussion he and Steve Jones had in the comments section of this blog post. Brian wrote “Also, it got me away for a week to really focus on SQL Server.” I find the that’s true also. Getting away in a place where I can think about SQL Server but not be at work makes all kinds of interesting ideas pop into my head. I usually come back with a big list of things I want to work on.
- Simon D. writes “At the 2008 PASS conference in Seattle, I learned that a DBA’s most valuable resource is the SQL Server community. The engagement of the community at PASS transformed my problems to projects, and my tools to solutions.” He concludes with “Impromptu sessions with peers at PASS … helped bring my project to production. My superiors at work couldn’t have been more impressed that I had accomplished so much in such a short time-frame, at such a low cost.” Simon hits on one of our key goals for this competition: helping you cost-justify the Summit. Hopefully stories like this will convince management that PASS is an investment rather than an expense.
The contest runs through Tuesday, July 1st. We’ve received some great responses so far. Since we’re giving away prizes to the top ten entries you’ve got a great chance to win!
-Bill Graziano
PASS Board of Directors – VP Marketing
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