Adam Machanic : Conferences

Speaking Season About to Begin: MCM, Roadshow, PASS, and SQLCLR Precon at DevTeach

Adam Machanic — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 20:20:00 GMT

Fall is now in full swing, and after a relatively quiet several months my speaking schedule is about to jump into fairly-packed mode. Following is a list of where I'll be headed over the next couple of months:

Next week I'm really excited to be teaching a day of the Microsoft Certified Master: Microsoft SQL server 2008 program's beta rotation. I'll be teaching developer topics including ADO.NET, XML, and SQLCLR. Should be a good time!

November 12, the SQL Server 2008 Roadshow hits Boston, and I'll be presenting a half day on all sorts of SQL Server 2008 topics. This one is free, so if you're in the Boston area you have nothing to lose by checking it out.

November 19-21 is the PASS Summit, and I'm excited to be involved in three presentations. I'm doing a spotlight presentation on programmatic/application concurrency topics, a duo with Peter DeBetta called "[Anti]patterns and [Mal]practices", and a duo with James Luetkehoelter on performance metrics.

December 1 and 2 I'll be in Montreal, speaking at the always-fun DevTeach/SQLTeach conference. Aside from speaking in the regular conference program, on December 1 I will be doing a full-day preconference on SQLCLR development. In this preconference I will start with SQLCLR beginner topics and take you all the way through to some really advanced use cases. So this one should be of interest even if you've been using SQLCLR for some time. Best practices will be stressed, and you might just learn about some of the dusty corners you've not yet had a chance to touch. I'm also upgrading the content to cover what changes SQL Server 2008 brings to the table, so this will be a complete session on the topic. I think that SQLCLR, while not used much in SQL Server 2005, will really pick up adoption in SQL Server 2008 and beyond. So now is the time to pick up what will be a key skill going forward.

[OT] SQLTeach: Almost Here

Adam Machanic — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 00:15:00 GMT

I was just reviewing my calendar for the next several weeks and noticed that the Toronto SQLTeach conference is now only a few weeks away. This conference includes quite a few interesting SQL Server-related sessions, on topics ranging from best practices, to performance, to some of the new SQL Server 2008 features. I fully expect this to be a great show.

I am doing two breakout sessions during the main conference:

SQL Server 2005: Authorization, Privilege, and Access Control. In this talk I cover SQL Server 2005’s enhancements around granting permissions via stored modules (i.e., stored procedures, views, functions)
Designing Highly Concurrent Database Applications. In this talk I get into the business requirements behind supporting concurrent processes, and the areas where SQL Server (and every other database product) falls short. I then go on to show how to solve the problems in the database programmatically.

I am also doing a full-day post-conference session on SQLCLR programming. This will be the first time that I will be presenting all of my SQLCLR material in a single day; should be fun. I will take attendees from the basics all the way through some advanced applications and techniques, so if you’re interested in becoming a SQLCLR expert I highly recommend attending.

The conference starts in just three weeks, but it is not too late to register.

PASS 2006 and the joys of flight

Adam Machanic — Sat, 18 Nov 2006 16:56:00 GMT

As you're probably aware if you subscribe to any SQL Server-related content, this week Seattle was host to the 2006 Professional Association of SQL Server conference. I had a great time at the conference this year, and really got a lot of value out of the experience. Good job, PASS!

While I was there, I did a couple of short talks at the Simple Talk booth, did a session for the conference on ADO.NET 2.0, and spent most of the rest of the time networking and discussing my favorite topic (SQL Server, of course) with the best minds in the industry. One of the greatest features of this year's conference was the "Microsoft Interaction Lounge," an area at the back of the main hall where various SQL Server team members were stationed at tables, ready to answer questions from attendees. I spent a large amount of time in that area and was able to get some wonderful insights into the product. Unfortunately, I was often the only non-Microsoft attendee in sight, so I think the area was a bit under-utilized. Too bad for other attendees, but great news for me -- and my sincere thanks to those Microsoft employees who were patient enough to let me bend their ears for the hours I spent there!

Alas, the week was marred on either end by air travel, to and from Boston from Seattle. A couple of weeks ago my Alaska Airlines flights (booked three months in advance) were canceled by the airline, and their absolutely deplorable, obviously misnamed, "customer service" department refused to help in any way when I asked them to get me on another set of flights. I managed to book Delta to Seattle, and was shocked to discover upon arriving at the airport that the flight was a code share with... who else but Alaska Airlines! Typical very poor coach flight: zero leg room to begin with, made worse when the person in front of me moved her chair all the way back as soon as we left the ground, and the guy next to me -- probably 150 pounds overweight -- literally spilled over onto my lap.

Coming back I was lucky enough to book the flight with jetBlue. This was my first time flying that airline, and I knew something was a bit different when I got on and noticed both the lack of first class seating, and was greeted by a jetBlue employee with a big smile instead of the usual "who cares" attitude I get from the airlines. I also knew that I had made the right choice when I noticed that Tony Mann from Rational Press was on the flight! Leather seats, probably twice the leg room I had on the flight out, and a TV for every seat, translated into a pretty great flight (well, as far as flights go, at least). Plus the snacks were better, and the airline hands out free samples of various products (such as an eye mask and lip balm). Such a better experience than what I'm used to; I will definitely prefer jetBlue going forward.

So all in all, a pretty great week, ending on a better note than on which it began. And I have plenty of blog fodder in mind. So watch this space as I decompress and get back into technical mode!

Review of VSLive, New York

Adam Machanic — Sun, 17 Sep 2006 20:02:00 GMT

Last week I promised to blog from VSLive in New York... And I completely dropped the ball. So, a quick post-event review:

After getting in on Monday afternoon, I attended an interesting session by Richard Hale Shaw on designing reusable managed code libraries. It was a good talk, primarily focused on how the Framework designers set things up, and what lessons third-party designers should take home from looking at what they did.

After Richard's talk, I retired to the speaker ready room to finish up some last-minute demo changes for my talk on Tuesday. A bit later, the NYC .NET Developers Group had an on-site meeting, featuring Rocky Lhotka and Steve Lasker from MS. This was a really excellent session, with a lot of very interesting insights into the impact of WCF and remoting on SOAs. I really enjoyd this session--great job, Steve and Rocky!

After the user group meeting, Andrew Brust, the VSLive track lead, took some of us to a Brooklyn pizza place called Grimaldi's. Awesome pizza! Highly recommended spot.

I spent Tuesday morning brushing up on a couple of the finer points of my talk, and gave it on Tuesday afternoon. The talk went well, with no demo issues (I triple-checked them before the talk, which I will do from now on), and some great questions from the audience, especially on the topic of SqlCacheDependency. I will definitely pump up that section of the talk a bit more before doing it at PASS later this year; it's a really cool feature, and one that users are clearly very interested in.

After my talk I sat through half of Andrew Brust's intro to SQLCLR talk before I was forced to run out of the building and catch a cab to get on a train back to Boston. All in all, a great trip to New York, and an enjoyable conference experience.