Just got back from presenting the DBA track in Lisbon at the kickoff of the European tour of the "Get Ready for SQL Server Road Show".  We had about 1200 people show up in Lisbon to learn about what it takes to upgrade to 2005 and some of the really cool features in this new release.  The turnout in Lisbon was fantastic!  All three tracks had sizable rooms that were filled and in some cases overflowing.  The BI track had the smallest room, but that didn't keep people from filling every square centimeter!  The Dev Track had the biggest room.  I had the second biggest room which seemed to be the right size.

I found the people of Portugal were very friendly and accomodating.  Obrigado!

I always learn something at these events.  In this case, I learned some portuguese.  Seriously, I spoke with Niels Berglund who delivered the Dev content about the features of Service Broker and how SQL Server Express can be integrated into an architecture using Service Broker for Scale Out.  Very cool.....

Douglas McDowell delivered the BI track.  He noticed the same thing that I had noticed in my sessions; Reporting Services is something that a lot of people want to learn about, but have not taken the time to really use it .  In my sessions, I had asked about usage of RS and found a lower number of folks than I had expected had actually used and deployed it in SQL 2000.  Although my track was more DBA focused, I was still expecting more.

Next week, Larry Chesnut - a colleague of mine - will be delivering content at the Prague stop on the European tour.  I will be at Tech Ed next week spending a lot of time in the SQL Server Community Cabana.  Please stop in and say "Hello" if you are in the area. 

The following week, I will be in Iceland for the SQL Server Roadshow.  If you know someone in Iceland, please let them know about the event on June 15th.  More details can be found out at www.sqlpass.org.