It finally happened.... I slept in until after 5am! Of course I still only got about 4.5 hours sleep. Unfortunately having slept in means I had no time to hit the gym. Instead I did a couple work things, finished my blog for Day 2 and then headed to breakfast. I wasn't ready in time to hit the vendor supplied hot breakfast so I went to the Hilton Seattle hotel lobby and asked where the hotel breakfast was served. They said "well, that depends.... what room are you in?". I gave my room number and after a couple of clicks I was informed "you were given access to the executive lounge! Take the elevator to the top floor and you will find a hot breakfast waiting for you." My friend, Chris Sommer, said "You just hit the breakfast lottery!" and he wasn't wrong. I enjoyed a very nice hot breakfast that was one of the better "free hot breakfasts" that I've had in a hotel and the view of Seattle from the top of the building was awesome.
Time to Conference
I headed to the conference by picking up my pre-order of Summit swag. I am the proud owner of a couple of shirts, 3 pairs of socks, and a coffee mug. I'm totally PASS-geeking out! I'm a PASS fan girl and now the whole world will know. Pardon me while I go tweet that... ha!
The keynote was packed full of great new offerings in SQL Server 2019. One of my most favorite parts of the keynote was when they presented SQL Server 2019 Enhanced PolyBase. I am working on an innovation project at work with Mongo Mike and we are already in a deep dive of this technology. It was a great feeling to be ahead of the game. I love that my employer encourages and supports our desire to innovate.
The audience had a lot of passion on the topic so the speaker lost some time while trying to reel the audience back in. I did enjoy the session despite the sales pitch portion.
My second session was a disappointment. I attended "The Case for Change: Identifying and remedying Bad Code". I was very excited headed into this session as I thought I was going to learn tips and tricks on rewriting queries. Instead it was a session on learning how to install and configure Adam Mechanic's sp_who_is_active. The tool is useful, but there was no mention of this in the abstract. I'm already familiar with this tool and didn't need yet another session dedicated to the topic. I actually walked out because it was not good use of my time.
My final session of the day was a half day session "Getting Started with Practical Performance Monitoring". This session is by far my favorite so far. Andrew Kelly did a great job showing the audience a multitude of ways to troubleshoot performance issues using DMVs, perfmon, extended events and more. There was so much information here I will need to watch the session recording once it's available so I can take better notes and start diving in. I am very excited by the knowledge I gained here!
After Hours
The evening started with the Exhibitor Reception. I was able to walk around and talk to the Summit's many sponsors and collect some stickers while enjoying some complementary beverages and snacks.
After the Reception I headed over to the SentryOne VIP Party at Loulay Kitchen and Bar. This open bar event was a perfect way to wrap up the half way point of the conference. Loulay is located within a Hotel (next to mine) so there was no real travel involved to get there and back. I was able to chat with a few different folks while enjoying a mule or two and then retire early (10:30pm).
My continuous lack of sleep caught up with me today so I look forward to getting extra sleep and rejuvenating myself for the final two days!
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