[Sorry I have been a little absent over the past couple of weeks.  Returning from the Olympics just a little over a week ago meant some busy catch-up and a heavy lead-in to today's event.]

Today I spoke at SQLSaturday #33 in Charlotte, NC.  My presentation was virtually a rip-off of the one I gave at SQLSaturday #34 in Boston: Management Studio Tips & Tricks.  The goal is to have everyone in the room say "cool" or "wow" when they learn something new about SSMS; even some of the gurus who attended my presentation admitted that they picked up a trick or two.  So, success!

Get used to this one; I'll be giving this presentation at least two more times this year, including at the Southern New England SQL Server User Group next Monday.  Based on the feedback I've received so far, I think this will be all right.  Though I'll need to update my VM to be a non-evaluation and non-expired copy of Windows Server 2008 R2 this coming week sometime.  If you were at this talk, please feel free to leave me feedback at SpeakerRate; comment below if you want to remain anonymous; or by e-mail (aaron DOT bertrand AT gmail) if you don't want others to see your scathing comments.  😉  Don't worry, I have thick skin.  In the meantime, I have an updated slide deck posted below.

Since I got my presentation out of the way right after the keynote this morning, I had a very nice time relaxing and enjoying the other sessions.  I sat on a panel in the blogging and speaking session by Kendal Van Dyke (@SQLDBA), and it was a fantastically interactive session.  I also attended talks by Tim Ford (@sqlagentman), Andy Kelly (@gunneyK), Ashton Hobbs, and Jeff Schwartz.  Picked up a lot of great information, and got to heckle Tim and Andy… so that was fun.

The after-party was at Mac's Speed Shop which has great BBQ but – wtf – no mashed potatoes?  How can you have pulled pork (my sandwich was called "The Big Pig") without mashed potatoes?  I was kind of surprised because, even though 250+ attendees were invited to join us, it was almost all speakers who showed up.  Maybe next time we should have the raffle at the after-party instead of at the end of the day… that will encourage more attendees to join us to mingle (the venue was spread out so people were almost always rushing to their next session), and then Geoff might win an iPod Touch next time.

I want to give a shout out to SQL Sentry – Greg Gonzalez (@SQLsensei), Peter Shire (@Peter_Shire), Karen Gonzalez, Missy Kelly, all the volunteers (a.k.a. hall monitors), and the other sponsors (Dell, RedGate, Confio, Quest, New Horizons, Intellinet, TEK systems, and CozyRoc).  All of these people made this event possible, and their hard work made it go so smoothly. Hats off!  I also want to clink glasses with all my colleagues that I got to catch up with, or meet for the first time.  The list is way too long to post here (this was an event very well represented by MVPs and the like), but you know who you are: cheers.  And thanks to Andy Kelly for being the designated chauffeur for the event!

File Attachment: SSMS_SS33.pdf.zip