PASS Summit v20 - A look back at my first Summit

I returned from PASS Summit v20 in Seattle, WA early Saturday morning after taking the Friday night red eye home.  After a few days of settling back in to home life with my wife and 2 daughters (as well as coming back to work this morning -- more on that later), I wanted to blog about my experience, tips/tricks and some of the things that I learned in hope that someone else who is attending their first PASS Summit will have some insight into the ins and outs of this incredible conference.   

Day 1 (Monday) - Travel Day

I left Syracuse at about 3pm after a one hour delay, arrived in Newark with what I thought was plenty of time to spare.  By the time we got taxied to the gate (since we were late, it seems they weren't ready to pull us up to the gate), my remaining 2 hour layover was shrinking rapidly.  After getting off the plane, I had to haul across EWR from Terminal A to Terminal C.  Not an easy feat with their bus system, which took about 40 minutes to get me to the correct terminal.  Once I arrive in terminal C, I realized that my gate was on the opposite side of the terminal, cue the running shoes!  I made it to my gate as boarding just started, got on the plane and began the 6 hour flight from EWR to SEA.

I managed to get quite a bit of work done on the flight.  Hindsight being what it is, I probably should have slept a bit as I didn't know how exhausting Summit can be both physically and mentally, but I digress.

Day 2 (Tuesday) - Pre-con / Summit v20 Welcome

So Tuesday I attended Kim Tripp's precon 'Fixing Query Performance Problems from Estimates, Statistics, Heuristics and Cardinality' with a friend of mine, Chris Sommer. My mind was completely blown.  It's a 8 hour deep-dive into the nuts and bolts of how statistics work, what they tell the optimizer and how to identify/troubleshoot issues that arise from statistics that may be inaccurate or skewed.  By 4:30pm when we wrapped up, my brain was total mush.  

Tuesday night is the PASS welcome reception in the keynote room.  It's basically a giant welcome party complete with video games, food and frosty adult beverages.  Grant Fritchey started us off as Darth Vader and welcomed everyone, the usual pleasantries and got the crowd excited for the next 3 days.  Got to meet a slew of new, friends like Kim StJacques and Tom Freedman.  After the reception we proceeded to SQL Karaoke, I ended up bailing out around 10pm as I was just too tired but got to hang out with several speakers and community veterans.  Well worth it!

Day 3-5 (Wed-Fri) - Summit v20

I wanted to bundle the actual conference days into one topic because I didn't blog during each session that I went to so I felt that an overview with tips/tricks would be more helpful than just an overview of the sessions I attended.

I'll start off first by saying that you shouldn't underestimate the power of the hallway track!

Just because there are sessions going on doesn't mean you have to attend one in every time slot.  I encourage you to take at least one slot a day and just go walk around the exhibitor hall, hang out in the community zone or visit the MS Data Clinic.  I was able to visit Idera, fix an issue with our DM installation (turns out it was a simple configuration fix), then hit up Redgate to see how to tell SQL Compare/DLM to ignore CDC schema/tables. Again, easy fix but they're all right there and are so willing to help out.  There were also chair massages, which you should definitely enjoy each day.  Take 10 minutes, get a back rub and jump back in.

Exhibitor Hall

The hallway track also gives you the benefit of interacting with people that are major in the SQL community.  Just hanging out in the exhibitor hall, I was able to have a quick one on one chat with Kendra Little, Brent O, Bob Ward, Grant Fritchey and a slew of others.  Most of them simply to say thank you for being an influence in my career and helping me through some really tough problems.  They're all normal people and are polite, humble and appreciative.  That's one common thread among the #sqlfamily, everyone is welcoming, encouraging and supportive.

The Birds of a Feather luncheon is a great chance to meet with people with similar backgrounds.  Being a veteran of the US Navy, the veteran's table is where I spent my lunches.  I met people from all branches and even a few from the Royal Army.  There's tables for everything from BI/Analytics, SQLSaturday, LGBTQ+, you name it!  I highly recommend finding a table and chatting it up!

I found a connection and bond with my fellow veterans and we were able to pose for a group picture at the end of the conference.

 Tips and tricks for your first PASS Summit

1. If you're like me and you have a phablet (I use a Note 8, currently), bring an external charger.  Sure, there are plugs, etc but you're going to want to have the portable power available and plugs can be hard to come by in session rooms
2. Do at least one pre-con.  It's 100% worth it to have an entire day deep dive into a topic that interests you or something you've been struggling with.
3. Don't be afraid to talk to people you may be 'star struck' by.  They really are nice, normal people just like you and they love to know that their work has had a positive impact on you and your career.
4. Go to speaker idol, if you can.  Speaker Idol is a 4 round (3 quals and a 1 final) face off of speakers from the community.  Specifically, speakers who have not spoken at a PASS Summit.  They can speak about any topic, it just has to be 5 minutes or less.  There are 4 judges who give their feedback on the presenters slides, presentation skills, eye contact, everything.  The winner from the first 3 rounds (and 1 wild card from the pool of 3 runner-ups) compete in the final round, which is in the last session timeslot of the week.  The winner gets a session at next week's PASS Summit and, as Denny Cherry says, '12 months to panic about what you're going to present'.  Here's this year's winner:  

Wrapping it all up

PASS Summit is something that has changed my professional outlook and it was amazing getting to talk to people who have the same challenges in their day to day lives.  The #sqlfamily truly is a big giant family that puts the 'fun' in dysfunctional.  I made so many new friends that I already can't wait to see next year!

Thanks for all the memories and I can't wait to see you all again!