Wow, what a day! Starting with the keynote by Paul Flessner all the way to the Idera party at the Rock Bottom Brewery, it was an incredible day. I was especially touched by Paul's emotional close to the keynote. (Michael's demo really does work - I've seen it, but he should have read my blog about the "Cannot Generate SSPI Context" error message .)
I didn't attend a morning session because I wanted to go to the Speaker's Lounge and practice my presentation, as well as to make sure the technical stuff related to recording the session was working. I had a chance to chat with Kalen Delaney and tell her how much I enjoyed her pre-conference session, and I managed to not go 'all fan boy' in the process. She really is very nice and an incredible resource for the SQL Server community. I was also able to spend some time catching up with Randy Dyess from Solid Quality Learning. Randy worked on the 70-444 Alpha Review team with me last year.
After lunch I went to my presentation room and got the presentation all set up and communicating with the recording system, and had a chance before the session to chat with Jon Baker and Tony Mann, and then I got started. Other then some technical performance issues related to the recording system and running the presentation from a Virtual PC image it went well. I received a few questions from the audience (I'd asked them to hold until the end because of the volume of demos, and I didn't want to shortchange any of them.) There were a number of good questions afterwards and the comments I received the rest of the day told me that people enjoyed the presentation and are interested in SMO.
Back in the Speaker's Lounge to wind down I got to chat with Adam Machanic, Victor Isakov (another 444 Alpha review teammate) and Ted Malone, and when Gert Drapers came in and joined the conversation I was able to tell him how his talk about DMO a few years ago was how I got started down the road that led me to my involvement in SMO today. I hope I can have a similar influence on others.
Victor gave a good presentation on Table Partitioning, and then it was time for the vendor reception. I had an opportunity to spend some time with Tony Davis, of Red Gate Software and the SimpleTalk newsletter, and enjoyed that conversation very much. It was a great opportunity to mingle with the people in the SQL Server community I've gotten to know, and to meet others, including Dejan Sarka of Solid Quality Learning.
After the reception I attended parties hosted by SoftArtisans and by Idera, and got to meet more great people and had a great time relaxing after a very exciting day. Thursday should be exciting as well.
Allen