PASS Summit 2015 Wrap-Up

I had a beyond amazing week at SQL Saturday Portland and PASS Summit, but now it's back to reality. Time to catch up on sleep, return to the daily grind of work, and enjoy the comforts of home. Gotta sort through all those photos, start counting down the 51 weeks until the next Summit (PASS has a countdown clock up on their site!) and start thinking about which sessions to submit when the call for speakers opens in a few short months.

In past years I've given a play-by-play of things I did, but there's so much that goes on that week that writing it up properly would be way too long of a post. I'll keep it simpler this time around and stick to just a few thoughts.

An annual milestone

PASS Summit is one of my milestones of the year. It automatically triggers thinking back to the previous one and then realizing that another year has gone by and wow, I'm older. As I think about it, it's a lot like Christmas: something I look forward to all year where I get to have a wonderful time with family. Yes, it's #sqlfamily instead of blood relatives, but there's also the bonus of not having to take that family photo where Grandma makes everyone stand in the exact same spot every year. (I'm not kidding, we have these going back to 1990.)

Great advice: sleep when you get home

As attendees in one session were told: "If you're going back to your hotel at 6pm, you're doing it wrong. Hotels are for basic hygiene and *some* sleep. Other than that, get out, do things, and meet people." I didn't hear that advice my first year, but I'm so glad I had already met so many people on Twitter before I arrived 4 years ago. By the time I got to Seattle, I already had plenty of contacts that knew better than to let me get a good night's sleep!

Wifi connections

In the past, wifi at the summit hasn't been all that dependable. With 5000+ people, most of whom are carrying multiple devices, it's not hard to understand why. This year, however, it was rock solid. I got kicked off the network exactly once, and I'm pretty sure it was my own fault. Whatever PASS did to make things so reliable this time, thank you very much!

Non-wifi connections

Connect. Share. Learn. This has been PASS' motto for quite a while. We do it all year long in chapter meetings, SQL Saturdays, virtual chapters, and on social media. What makes the summit special to me is that it's so much bigger than any of those things, and no computer is necessary. You can meet people in person. Shake their hand. Give them a hug. Give them a really big hug if you haven't seen them in a while. There's amazing learning to be had in the sessions, but for me the real learning has always taken place outside of presentations. Getting to know people. Finding out what they enjoy doing when they're not working. Making new friendships and strengthening existing ones. It always amazes me how much we all have in common, regardless of what we do or where we come from. I took my own advice more this year than ever before. Yes, that means I spent less time attending sessions and more time connecting with people. I couldn't be happier with the outcome.

Try something new

As many ways as PASS Summit is the same every year, I try to make it different each time as well. Last year was my first time taking the #sqltrain from Portland to Seattle, an add-on that was so much fun I didn't have to think twice about doing it again. This time around I did a few new things, including attending different types of sessions. Hardcore SQL Server internals porn is great, and while I still got my fix in that department, I also attended some professional development and business intelligence sessions. I got to see how handsome and witty Mark Vaillancourt is when presenting, and as an added bonus his movie-themed session used my favorite clip from The Wizard of Oz.

I also got outside of my comfort zone this year and was more of an active participant in SQL Karaoke instead of just being a member of the audience. This took some careful prodding, but I'm glad I was persuaded. (I'll be even more glad if no evidence of this ever surfaces…)

No regrets

Of course there's no regrets. In all honesty, the only regret I've ever had in terms of PASS Summit is not attending sooner. I wish this could be my 6th or 7th year instead of my 4th. But I know there's plenty of people who haven't been to one, let alone four. I'm extremely fortunate in that sense.

The perfect photo

I'm always searching for the single perfect photo to sum up an event or era of my life. My 2013 PASS Summit Wrap-Up used what I consider to be the perfect picture representing my high school years: a huge group of my friends getting together in my parents' basement. I've always loved getting people together to have a good time. PASS Summit is way more people, and a lot of times you'll find us in a much larger basement, but the essence is the same.

More often than not, the perfect photo isn't a group shot. Group photos contain lots of stories, but don't really tell a story. My favorite photo from all 5 years of college marching band is a seemingly random picture taken by my father 11 years ago this weekend. It's of my best friend from college and I playing in the stands. It's a cold November day, but you'd never know that by looking at the bandos. The sun perfectly captures the reddish Illini orange of our capes, as well as a few of the flaws of our uniform. My gloves are on my shoulder because pockets were difficult to get to. Her cape is reinforced with a safety pin because they were too heavy for buttons alone to support. Campus buildings can be seen off in the distance, and the football game is nowhere to be found. (The Fighting Illini weren't all that great that year…or any year after my first, for that matter.)

A perfect photo for this or any year's PASS Summit? I'm not sure I have one. There's so many things going on with so many wonderful people. Also, perfect photos tend to become more apparent after-the-fact. This is a chapter of my life that's still ongoing, with plenty more people to meet, experiences to share, and memories to make. In that sense, I hope this perfect photo hasn't been taken yet.