A few weeks bit over a month ago, I took the plunge and attended my very first SQL Saturday, SQL Saturday #370 in Phoenix. I’ve never had a chance to go to any of the local user group events or another SQL Saturday due to scheduling issues, etc. but this year I reshuffled things so I could take part. I’m really glad that I did, I truly learned a lot of stuff and I also realized I know more than I probably give myself credit for. Here’s a few of the highlights from me day:
My first session was Understanding Parameter Sniffing by Benjamin Nevarez. We deal with parameter sniffing a lot at work, so it was something I had experience with. I also gave a Lunch & Learn presentation to co-workers on the topic, which made me curious to see what else I should have covered during my session. To my surprise, I knew most of what Benjamin covered - which was great. His session was listed as “Beginner” but it was nice to know almost everything he discussed.
During lunch, I attended the WIT Panel. For those who don’t know, WIT is for Women in Technology. I’ve rarely worked with female developers, so I went to this session to hear stories from the women in the same field. It was interesting to hear similar stories from the women on the panel, as well as from the audience. I found myself saying yeah, I’ve experienced that repeatedly during the session. Hearing about “Mr. Know-It-All” from multiple panelists made me laugh because we’ve all dealt with that guy. There are so many things I could say about the WIT Panel and being a woman in technology, I’ll have to make that a separate post. My takeaway from this was that my experiences are similar to many other women in tech, which I already knew, but it was nice to hear. I’d recommend this session to anyone attending a future SQL Saturday.
The last session I went to Powershell Tips and Tricks for SQL Server Administration by Mike Fal. I had never used Powershell and had limited exposure to it prior to this session, but I know Mike from DBA.SE and Stack Overflow so I wanted to attend his session and I’m glad that I did. I saw a few things that I would be able to use almost immediately at work with Powershell (I’ll be posting my lame attempts in another post).
I was truly impressed by out SQL Saturday that we had here in Phoenix. I’m glad I forced myself to go and I’ll definitely go to more events in the future.