Yesterday I spoke on 2008 T-SQL and Data Types at the St. Louis Day of .Net event. This was an all day event featuring about 30 speakers, most of them local, and over 50 sessions. When I was contacted by the organizers recently, I agreed to participate even though I had vowed take a break from speaking and writing in December. For one thing, the event was to be held on a Saturday, and I wouldn’t have to figure out how to get the day off work. They also let me speak on a topic I had already presented four times earlier in the year so I didn’t have to do much to prepare.
Yesterday’s event turned out to be very high energy and well organized. The only noticeable glitch was running out of coffee mid-morning. They also had some nice refreshments and great prizes including dozens of books and a couple of X-Boxes. The attendees I spoke with were very excited about the presentations they attended.
At one point while sitting in the speaker room, I realized that I was in the presence of some true geeks. Many of the speakers were well beyond the bleeding edge, pushing the technologies they work with past known limits or working with pre-released software.
In 2009 I am planning to do much less speaking and more writing. I would be glad to speak at this event again next year and am already thinking about possible topics.
