The Dublin events lightning talks were much anticipated after last year, and I am delighted to say did not disappoint. They were an eclectic collection of topics, much enjoyed by the audience.
They were started off by Niko Neugebauer who had a photoroll of famous speakers who started off life with very different paths, qualifications or lack thereof, making the point that it does not matter what has happened in your past, because today and tomorrow are yours to shape. Niko then demonstrated the speed and performance of SQL Professionals with his speedy dash to the airport, while his applause was still ringing.
Mark Broadbent then did a lightening talk on Always On, and Clustering. His talk somewhat resembled a magicians show, except that the box was invisible, his assistant (Me) did not get chopped in half, and he has highlighted the benefits of cloning red heads.
We then had Sladjan Kutijevac who showed an SSIS package he had written for importing complex excel spreadsheets for the local basketball teams he trains.His session also very effectively demonstrated the overcoming the difficulties of Extracting data from your computer, Transforming it into something visual that a projector can handle, and then Loading your audience with that information. Sladjan deserves a special mention for taking to the floor surrounded by people who speak for a living – one of the hardest things to do, and much appreciated by our committee, as it embodies the spirit of the event for us.
Following on from Sladjan, Kevin Kline presented on….Hmmm….Chocolate. The specifics of this talk may have been slightly lost on me, as my eyes tracked that bar of chocolate around the session, as Kevin slowly unwrapped it, eyed it up, and waved it around, before slowly starting to eat that bar, square by square. He may have been talking about tasting sugar for the first time, but WHO CARES about sugar, when you can race out and buy a bar of that AWESOME chocolate at the end of the session, and swallow it without chewing, because it is now all you can think of, focus on, and nearly taste by the end of his 5 minutes (It felt like an hour of torture and longing for that chocolate, to me).
Bob Duffy then demonstrated how the cream of the SQL community in Ireland secretly uses Microsoft Access. He built and deployed an entire web solution to manage our own SQL Saturday using Access and Sharepoint. The fact that he could do this in 5 minutes may worry a lot of consulting firms. Very few of us charge by the minute these days…
Matt Masson, our overall winner based on feedback, did the next session, and I have to say the word genius does not begin to describe this. I had verbal feedback from the audience after this session about how they are going away to look at Data Explorer – and others who are inspired to use this technology outside the workplace, as well as in it. The power of technology often becomes apparent in small ways, and Matts application, written for his gorgeous 4 year old son, on Skylanders spoke to the audience in a way its rare to see. As Niko said, tomorrow we can be whoever we want to be. Tomorrow, we all want our children to think we talk about Cats and play with Skylanders at work, while our colleagues realise, through this, that what we work with can impact everyone for the better.
Neil Hambly presented a session on how to break rules with SQL Server. Personally, I already thought Neil had broken all the rules by being such an awesome dancer, while being a SQL Guru, however, Neil showed us some rules that were definitely not made to be broken, and that his performance on the SQL floor is on a par with his performance on a dance floor, even if his databases may not be up to much as a result!
Our final speaker was Chris Testa-O’Neill who did a 5 minute Q&A on Certification. His first question was courtesy of Bob who asked if we’re going to get BI MCM, and what is up with the new MCSE. This got an interesting reaction from Chris, who seemed to feel like there was a plant in the audience(!?!). Some very useful discussion took place afterwards, and this probably helped a lot of people to better understand the new certification process. I was sort of disappointed that Chris didn’t burst into song at the end, as he is a very entertaining performer.
The audience were polled at the end of the session, and the results were as below:
Matt Masson, a resounding First Place
Niko Neugebauer, Second Place
Kevin Kline and Bob Duffy Joint Third Place
A huge thanks to all the speakers for this amazing session, on behalf of myself and my fellow SQL Saturday Dublin committee members – Bob, Inga, Marco, Neill and Sandra. A lot of work goes into the preparation, it is a huge success with the audience, and for many, makes the event.
Finally, a massive shout for all our sponsors – Fusion-IO, Microsoft, PASS, Redgate, EMC, Confio, SQL Sentry, Inspired, SpanishPoint, Ergo, Codec DSS, and Prodata, without whom we could not run these events.
