The PASS Summit is now behind us and it was both an exciting and exhausting week of learning from some of the best and brightest people in the SQL Server community. Not only did I pick up a number of new skills that I know will make me a better DBA, I have number of new tools to add to my toolkit and some new practices that I’m going to look into implementing into our daily operations. It was also nice bonus to learn that many of the things I already have on my TODO list are similar to what others have successfully implemented on their own work and their environments. Obviously I’ve been on right track, if not always, at least most of the time 🙂

Unfortunately the long days (I pretty much had sessions running from 8AM to 6PM almost every day) and the time difference to back home made me hit the sack rather early every evening. Because of this I missed some of the evening networking activities and the opportunities to better explore Seattle. The only official social event I did attend to was the Community Appreciation party held in the EMP Museum and even then our groups was back at the hotel by 10PM. That museum was awesome though, especially for a nerd like me! If you’re ever in Seattle, I encourage you to check it out.

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It’s been three hectic days of learning more about SQL Server in Seattle and we’re now in the first day of the main event. Both the monday and tuesday were reserved for the day long pre-conference sessions. Mine were “Performance Troubleshooting Using Waits and Latches” by Paul Randal from SQLSkills and “Everything You Never Wanted to Know about Extended Events” by Erin Stellato and Jonathan Kehayias, also from SQLSkills. Both sessions were top quality and I left them with a bunch of new ideas and added knowledge. To quickly list the best takeout from each session:

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