- Rained as I left (early) for the meeting, confirming again why I always leave early – stuff happens (in Orlando, rain = commute time * 1.5 or more)
- New location for ONETUG in the Orlando Public Library downtown, public parking garage directly across the street ($2/hour)
- Meeting was on the 2nd floor in the new Melrose Center. Gorgeous space. Only downside was no whiteboard/flip chart (a miss on my part to not ask ahead of time). Note that they wouldn’t let me in early, so I found a table in the library to go over my presentation until they opened up the meeting space. I also stopped by the used book store and spent a few dollars.
- About 30 people attended, I think that’s pretty good for a stormy evening
- I forgot the SQLSaturday flyers! But mentioned it several times as did Esteban (and I’ll send a follow up today).
- My plan was to get a sense of the audience and then take them through some demos of the performance tools, but I also had in mind to adapt to how they responded to the first few minutes. I ended up just explaining things – no demo, no supporting deck – for the hour. Lots of great questions as I took them through why things work (or don’t) with simple scenarios they could visualize. Lots of fun to just engage directly.
- Speakers, here’s a phrase I use that can connect you to developers: SQL Server was written by developers. One of my goals is to get them to understand that SQL is a tremendously complex product and getting them to think about the “how” engages them. You can see them light up when I talk about being smart about read ahead reads, flushing out least use plans, etc, etc, not just because it’s interesting but because they get the work involved.
- Sign in for the meeting was on a web page, an experiment that worked ok, but not great
- No name badges and not much real networking, I think they could do more there
- July seems like a great month for someone from oPASS/MagicPASS to visit ONETUG (as lead-in to SQLSaturday) and we should look at the corollary for Code Camp
- I had a great time. Thanks to Esteban and team for inviting me!
