The PASS High

Last week several thousand technical professionals got together in Seattle. The primary goal of this conference was to Connect, Share and Learn about SQL Server. I have no doubt that goal was reached for most if not all the attendees.

Many of us old timers of the PASS Summit call the feeling as we are leaving the conference the PASS High. Going to a conference like PASS rejuvenates you with ideas and plans for what you want to do with your environments when you get back home. So the question is how do you keep that going? When you get back to work on Monday you may have millions of things that you want to change and the reality is that you may not be able to change all of them quickly.

My first suggestion is to make a list of all the items you want to change/research. This doesn’t have to be a detailed plan of all the steps for making the change just a simple list. For Example,

1. Create a policy to check file growth settings on Db’s

2. Verify location and size of Tempdb for performance reasons.

3. Check for any Primary Keys set as a GUID(Really bad idea)

Another aspect of the PASS conference besides what you have learned is the networking and the relationships you have built. How do you keep that going? First and foremost you should reach out to those you have met and send them an email. Mention won’t you spoke about and hope to hear from them again in the future.

I would suggest creating a twitter account if you don’t already have one to keep up with the community. The most important step is to head to Brent Ozar’s Blog and pick up the simple Twitter book. This is a must to getting started on Twitter. Much of the SQL Community communicates and operates through Twitter. This doesn’t mean you have to watch it 24 hours a day but being aware of things you can do with twitter is important. Like using the #SQLHelp hash tag. While you are working on the list you made above you can use #sqlhelp to get assistance with things you may have forgotten at the conference.

I would also suggest seeking out your Local SQL Server Chapter. You can find a list and map here at the PASS Website. It’s always surprising to me how many times I’ve met someone from my local community at PASS but have yet to see them at a local user group. Attending the Local user group is a great way to keep the PASS High going and meet with others in your area that can help you with problems in the future.

If you’re like me and feel sentimental and sappy and enjoy looking through pictures of the summit and all the fun times we had. You can do a search on Flickr for the Sqlpass tag. I’ve also included all the photos from the summit on my Flickr stream at www.flickr.com\asylumphoto . Feel free to stop by and remember all the good times. If you want full sizes of any of the pictures please email me and I will happily get them for you. If you would like to use them on a blog post that’s fine as well as long as you link back to the original picture.

Hopefully you can keep your PASS High going until the next PASS Summit!