Summer of Presenting!

24 HOURS OF PASS
It’s been a couple of months since I was honored with an invitation to speak at PASS Summit 2016. I’m still overwhelmed, amazed, and grateful, when I reflect on my career journey since my first PASS Summit in 2013. Speaking at the PASS Summit is an opportunity that I never imagined that I would receive.

Fast forward to a few weeks ago, when I received an e-mail from PASS, inviting me to present at 24 Hours of PASS: Preview Edition!! This special event highlights select speakers from the upcoming PASS Summit.  It’s one thing to be picked just to speak at PASS Summit, but is a double-honor to be asked to present at 24 Hours of PASS!

Because I’ve presented my Summit Session: Why Your Datatype Choices Matter, at 24 Hours of PASS: Community Edition in 2015, it was suggested that I present another session to highlight myself as a speaker.  I decided to offer my new Performance Pitfalls of Code Reuse session, which I debuted earlier this year.  If you work with developers who favor an Object-Oriented approach to developing T-SQL, then this session is for you!
USER GROUPS & SQL SATURDAYS
Since the beginning of the year, I’ve spoken at 6 SQL Saturdays and 2 User Group meetings!  At SQL Saturday Iowa, I debuted my 3rd session, Performance Pitfalls of Code Reuse, with great success! I’ve presented it 3 times thus far and have gotten rave reviews every time! I’m just thrilled that attendees are getting a lot of out of it and enjoying it!

But the fun isn’t over!  In addition to 24 Hours of PASS, I have 3 more User Groups (and hopefully 1 more SQL Saturday) lined up!  I’ll be presenting at the Chicago Downtown User Group in early September, followed by MADPASS in late September.  I’ll be presenting my Performance Pitfalls of Code Reuse session at both.  In mid-October, I’ll be presenting my new and improved Why Your Datatype Choices Matter session, at my Chicago Suburban User Group.  That’ll be a week before I present it at PASS Summit.

 

Things are really exciting for me right now, and I couldn’t be happier to be sharing the things I’ve learned with all of you.  Hope to catch you somewhere soon!

Advertisement

Post 24 Hours of PASS & Other Speaking Engagements

24 Hours of PASS

Last week, I had the thrill and honor of presenting for 24 Hours of PASS. I presented a shortened version of my successful Every Byte Counts: Why Your Datatype Choices Matter session and had a blast.

While I’ve presented this session in person a number of times, I faced some new challenges this time. First, I was presenting a new, shortened version (the original has grown to 70 minutes of content!). The second challenge was presenting online – a much bigger challenge than one might think. I had no crowd to feed off of. Additionally, I had to consciously remember to make eye contact with my webcam, instead of looking at my slides. Finally, I had picked up a head cold the week prior. 30 minutes before my start, my nose decided to start running, so I had to excuse myself a few times to tend to that. A little embarrassing & irritating, but I suppose it’s no different than presenting in person. After all, the show must go on!

Despite the challenges, it was an amazing experience. I was honored to have been given the opportunity and want to thank everyone who worked hard to put another successful 24 Hours of PASS together.

Here is Matt Penny’s (@salisbury_matt) Sketchnote from my session.

PASS Summit

On another note, I also received notice last week that I was not accepted to speak at PASS Summit. I wasn’t upset about this. After all, almost 900 abstracts were submitted, of which only a 15% were accepted? While I know that my Every Byte Counts session is useful information, and COULD be Summit quality, it is also a niche topic that given the volume of other submissions, would probably lose out. And it did, but I’m okay with that. I will not be dissuaded from speaking or submitting, and am still proud to be part of this community!

What Next?

So what’s next? Last week, I was also accepted to speak at SQL Saturday Indianapolis! I’m thrilled to be making my return to Indianapolis & joining a great group of presenters. Additionally, I will be presenting remotely to the Las Vegas User Group. This will be the first time I’ve done a remote User Group session, but I’m hoping that this will be the first of many! And finally, I just submitted for SQL Saturday Minnesota!

Keep on Talking!

I’m happy to share that my SQL Presentation spree for 2015 is going strong! I wanted to highlight when/where I’ll be presenting again, in the next month.

SQL Saturday Iowa

After several years of conflicts, I’m thrilled to finally be attending SQL Saturday Iowa! I will be debuting a revised version of my Every Byte Counts presentation. The original version of the session had grown to 70 minutes of content and I needed to compress it to fit 60 minute speaking slots.

FoxPASS

My good friend Jes Borland (b|t) runs FoxPASS and I’ll be making the trek up there to present! This will be the second time I am presenting my other session: Cleaning House: The Indexing Edition. I had a lot of fun with it at MadPASS, so am looking forward to giving it again.

You can watch online too! Lync info is available on the FoxPASS website.

24 Hours of PASS

I am without words to describe how I feel about 24 Hours of PASS. I’ve been watching these semi-annual webinar events for years now, and now I get to present in one! I’m thrilled to be joining a fantastic line up of speakers. I will be presenting my Every Byte Counts session

Three presentations over the course of the next month – wow, that’s a lot! Nevertheless, I’m jazzed to share what I’ve learned. Hope to see you all soon!