Countdown to PASS Summit 2012 – 7 to Go – My First Summit Presentation

Seven days, one full week, until opening night at Summit 2012. Getting excited yet?

In my first post of the series where I discussed my first Summit, I mentioned that I also spoke at that conference. In 2007, I was accepted to speak on the fairly new XML Data Type Methods. I had been using them at XATA at the time, but found the documentation a bit lacking. As a result, I put together a presentation that reviewed the basics of using these methods. At the conference, I attended a session prior to mine that was a deep dive on these very same methods by Michael Rys (@SQLServerMike). Turns out Michael was on the project team at Microsoft at the time for the XML additions in SQL Server. I remember his session bringing up more than I had worked with at the time and giving me some good ideas. So, when I started my session and Michael showed up, I got a bit nervous. I made it through my first presentation at a national conference. Michael helped with a couple questions that came up during the session which was really cool. After the session, I caught Michael to ask how it went seeing he had a level 400 and I had a level 100 session on the same subject matter. He made the comment to me that I had covered the 80% use case while he had covered the 10% use case. Needless to say, I found it very encouraging and to this day enjoy speaking on the 80% use case more.

Who are some of your favorite speakers? Why do you frequent their sessions?