One year on and I find myself in a similar situation to last year only this time I’m not in Boulder, Colorado I’m in Corpus Christi, Texas. The other constant is that I’m lucky enough to be able to attend SQLBits 9 in Liverpool the day after I get back to the UK.
It’s nice to see that the north of England is hosting SQLBits again, I’m sure Liverpool will be a great location for the event. I’m also happy that this time I will be attending with a good friend Tony Williams (@twith2sugars on Twitter)
In terms of topics I’m hoping I can attend a lot of the performance tuning and monitoring talks around the Development and DBA tracks as I know I’ll be able to put those skills to work right away. In particular I’d like to be able to get some real world examples of using PowerShell with SQL Server.
As well as refreshing topics I feel comfortable with I like the fact that I can go sit in on BI talk and get some more exposure to SSIS and Data Warehousing. One of the most interesting talks at SQLBits 7 was on BI, a real eye opener.
The biggest problem is choosing between the great sessions in each time groups, it’s always hard as I wish I could attend two at once. Also I’m going to miss not being able to see Brent Ozar or Buck Woody present again (they were at SQLBits 7 in York). After reading their blogs for so long it was good to see both of them present, but it allows me to see some new people offer their style of presenting which is always good.
Lastly I hope this year I hope I can win something in the prize giveaway they have, a nice PCI-E SSD card would be nice!