Where I’ve been and GroupBy.org thoughts

It’s been a while since I’ve posted a blog post! In the meantime, I gave a new presentation at GroupBy.org. Check it out here  and find the slides/demos here. The presentation is up on YouTube and the transcript is available on the link, so it’s pretty easy to access. GroupBy conference was the biggest event I’ve ever been a part of, and it was such an incredible experience.

Preparing for The Perfect Index

I spent a long time preparing to give this presentation. I had three months to prepare but I didn’t start preparing until about four weeks out. This was a mistake. I knew what I wanted to say, but I procrastinated so much that I had to start rushing about a week before the conference. That’s when I really kicked it into gear and I quickly found that mornings were the best times to work. I was on-call for work so by the time it was the evening, my brain was fairly worn out. I’d wake up at 5 AM, run to my work computer and write the demos/slides until I had to leave.

Practice #1

The first time I gave this session was Wednesday, September 5th. I had volunteered to give the presentation for my team, to test what worked and what didn’t. I’m very grateful for their patience for this run, since it didn’t go smoothly. ZoomIt wasn’t zooming correctly on the second monitor and the presentation only lasted about 35 minutes. This was a big warning sign to me, that I needed to beef up the material to prepare for Friday.

Final prep

I spent the last couple days in a frenzy to complete the presentation. The hardest part of this was practicing the demos. I don’t mind practicing my presentation, but it can be pretty boring to run the same queries over and over and focusing on the same parts. When I practice talking through the presentation I don’t have a script, so I’ll change words between each practice.

Friday – the big day

It was finally Friday morning. I didn’t log into GroupBy or start up any distractions, I wanted to remain super focused on the goal. When I loaded into the conference and Brent started talking to me, I knew things were getting real. The first five minutes were scary. I have only done one remote presentation before, and it’s definitely a different type of challenge. Once I got into the flow of the presentation, I felt much more natural and the presentation flew by. Before I knew it, Daniel Hutmacher and I were talking about questions and the feedback in the SQL Community Slack Channel.

Post-session

I mentioned this during the presentation; the feedback I received from my session was incredible. I saw so many familiar names saying good things and I was riding the adrenaline from this presentation for another couple hours after my session. I’m incredibly grateful to hear the feedback. I want to thank several people who made this session and conference possibly.

Thank you

First, thank you Daniel for spending the time with me during my session, relaying questions and talking to me. It made it feel like a conversation. Second, thank you Brent Ozar for hosting the entire GroupBy event, for giving me feedback on this session abstract, and for taking the time to give me feedback after my session. Third, thank you to everyone who contributed to this session. My fellow DBA co-workers, Brian and Gerard, for sharing their thoughts and helping me pick the right terms. Finally, thank you to everyone who attended my session, either while it was running or afterwards. All of you have helped me give this session and it means the world to me.