Fresh off a wonderful weekend of #sqlfamily and data community time at Data in Devon in Exeter, England last weekend, I find myself in northeast Florida this weekend as opposed to southwest England. I’ll be presenting two sessions at SQL Saturday Jacksonville and spending a bit of time at the SQL Clinic as well. I was fortunate enough to be selected to speak here last year as well and it’s always fun to fun to come an event for the second year running – plus it allowed me to give this post a title that kinda sorta rhymes!
It means a lot to speak here in Jacksonville for a couple of reasons. Considering that I have never lived in the Jacksonville area, it’s a place that’s been oddly significant at a couple of points in my life. My wife and I went to Ponte Vedra Beach on our honeymoon and spent a wonderful few days in this area. Then, my first job as a data consultant was at Pragmatic Works, which is headquartered in metro Jacksonville. In fact, the first Pragmatic Works holiday party that my wife and I attended gave us a chance to head back for a quick lunch visit to the resort where we honeymooned and take the picture below that shows two things: 1) I have a beautiful and photogenic wife and 2) I am really not very good at taking selfies.
Anyhow, I am guessing you did not click on this post to see pictures of me, you clicked through to get information on my sessions at SQL Saturday Jacksonville. My first session is at 10:15 in the Gamoor room (4-1705) and it’s entitled Azure-d Availability: Scaling SQL Server to the Cloud. This is a relatively new session of mine but I’ve received some good feedback so I’m looking forward to presenting it here in Florida tomorrow.
My second session is at 12:45 in the Fondor room (51-1209) and, in another bit of Jacksonville-related nostalgia for me, this session began life as the very first webinar and very first SQL Saturday talk that I ever delivered. The session is called Top 5 Tips to Keep Always On AGs Humming and Users Happy and it will help anybody who is learning how to administer Always On Availability Groups or anybody who needs a refresher on some of the ways AGs can bite you if you don’t feed and care for them properly. This session has changed a lot over the years, as I like to think I’ve gotten a little better at this speaking thing, but I’m always a little bit extra excited to deliver this session.
I’ll wrap up my day at the SQL Clinic from 1:45 – 2:15 so feel free to drop by there if you have questions about anything from my sessions or just any SQL Server or Microsoft Data Platform-related questions. I’m really thankful to be a part of this wonderful weekend of friends and #sqlfamily – register here if you’d like to be a part of it!