SQLBits 7 Summary

So another SQLBits is over… One of my jobs this time was to write the emails that got sent out every week and in them I used plenty of marketing phrases like “this will be the biggest and best SQLBits ever”. But it really was the biggest and best SQLBits ever this time, honest! Not just in terms of attendance – we had 528 people attend over the three days – and in terms of the amazing speaker talent we attracted from outside the UK (Buck Woody, Brent Ozar, Rob Farley, Joe Chang, Jonathan Kehayias, the SQLCat guys, Brad McGehee, André Kamman, Maciej Pilecki, Klaus Aschenbrenner, Sacha Lorenz, Raoul Illyés, Ramesh Meyyappan – hopefully I’ve not forgotten anyone, and thanks for coming over for us), but in terms of the sheer number of people who came up to me and told me they were having a great time. I certainly had loads of fun.

If you weren’t there and you’re wondering what you missed, Jamie Thomson did a sterling job with his video camera on Friday capturing the spirit of the event. You can see all his work here:
http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=01617594AB55E450

However I thought I’d link direct to one I appear in:

If you’re wondering about the headgear, it’s because the event took place in York which has a lot of Viking history. And yes, we’ve already been informed several times that Vikings didn’t really have horns on their helmets.

All that remains for me to do is to say thank you to all of my friends on the SQLBits committee: Simon Sabin, Martin Bell, James Rowland-Jones, Allan Mitchell, Darren Green, Chris Testa-O’Neill, Tim Kent and Christian Bolton. We’ll have to do it again sometime… but not too soon!