SQLPASS Summit Recap

  • Article

Yesterday the was the final day of the SQLPASS Summit. Today we have our last Insiders’ Session. There are numerous conference statistics I could site but the one I think says it all is 2,200+. This is the number of attendees. That’s a lot of people gathered in a single place to talk about SQL Server. This number was down a little bit from last year but up from the year before. A real testament to the value of the summit.

As I walked around and talked with people I was amazed to see so many people so passionate about the product I work on. It’s a humbling experience. And this is only a fraction of the actual number of users world wide. I had a number of conversations and overheard others that were a mix between professional and personal. It was common to watch two people walk up to one another, shake hands, give a bro hug, and start talking about families and hobbies rather than technology. This was very cool as it demonstrates that SQL Server is a community not just a bunch of users. It was also cool to hear people debate best practices and tuning techniques.

Just about everyone I spoke with was upbeat on IT Spend. Either they’ve already seen budgets loosen a little or they believe it’s coming soon. Hence it was the perfect time for them to retool on the latest and greatest SQL Server has to offer.

We had a bunch of announcements during PASS: SQL Server 2008 R2 November CTP, new editions (Data Center and Parallel Data Warehouse), and a new partnership with IBM, to name a few.

The details for next year’s conference were announced. It’ll again be at the Washington State Convention & Trade Center  in Seattle WA  from November 8 - 11, 2010. That will make three years in a row in Seattle. This obviously stirs a little discussion. Is it fair to folks on the East Coast or coming  from international locations, for example. The benefit is clear, holding it close to Microsoft means there’s an extremely large presence of people from the SQL Server product team; I heard there were upwards of 300 SQL Server people @ the conference, though I couldn’t get that number confirmed. Second, the way they book it they get a very good deal on the facility and that savings is passed on to you. If you’ve never been to SQLPASS I encourage you to consider it.