Was at #sqlpass last week. Great conference/trainings, and people. Hopefully I will go next year (I am planning on it!) General thoughts/overview..
1. Should have done pre/post cons
2. Drink more water (funny thing is, no water during refreshment breaks? just juice/coffee/soda)
3. Leave room in your luggage for schwag
4. Bring more business cards.
5. Introduce yourself to more people
6. Realize that the level #’s on the courses aren’t always indicative of the content.
7. Go to sessions with ambiguous titles, they are usually the new stuff/undercover stuff
8. The Daily Grill (restaurant attached to the Sheraton) is the most expensive place in the world
9. Plan flights with more time in between if connecting. We missed our connecting flight because of delays.
10. Put the thing on your door from Sheraton to not upkeep your room, you get 5 $ coupon a day
11. Wifi sucks, use your 3G or EVFO/Mifi or whatever
12. They keynotes each day can be hit or miss, but still make sure to go to all of them.
13. Leave sessions 2 min early if you want to get a good seat at a highly anticipated next session
14. Take the back stairs from level 6 to level 4 instead of the escalator for a shortcut
15. “game” gameworks – my team knows what I mean 🙂
16. Bush Garden is small. But you can still rock #sqlkaraoke . Just don’t sit on the couch in the bathroom.
17. You can walk pretty much anywhere (Pike St, Space Needle, etc)
18. Go talk to vendors, but don’t let them suck you in. Stick mainly to the PASS area and Microsoft area (at least that is what I think)
19. Try to take advantage of the games and contests held throughout (Foursquare, Vendor check ins, Wheel of SQL) but don’t let it consume you.
20. If you go into a session that you find boring or not relevant, don’t feel afraid to leave and go to another – the sooner the better.
21. Order the DVD’s
22. Take advantage of BOF luncheon.
23. Follow the twitter stream .. #sqlpass
24. Tweet your encounters and info
25. Blog about it after 🙂
So much more to talk about, I will try to decompress it all and throw up a few posts, but yeah, well worth it, so much information and people and just thinking outside the box, and it just gets you to think and become motivated. Great time!
Steve Novoselac's Blog 