Tech-ED Ahmedabad 2009 – Event Summary
For those of you who are eager to know what happened with Tech-Ed event in Ahmedabad, here is a quick summary. Pinal has written a very detailed version in his blog site.
Tech-ED Ahmedabad was a great event and was very successful from all the aspects. Over 200 people turned in from various parts of the state. There were also a number of people who came from far-off places like Mumbai and Delhi. We really appreciate their enthusiasm towards technology.
Registration
Busy registration desk!
Most people arrived at the venue much ahead of the time. We were surprised to see people who arrived at the venue as early as 2-3 hours prior to the event schedule. Aryaman Desai and his Event Management team did a wonderful job by making all the required arrangements to make everyone comfortable.
Fortunately, we managed to move to a larger conference room in the hotel, to accommodate the unexpected number of people who walked in to attend TechED.
Kick-Start
Microsoft Student Partner, Dipen Shah introducing PASS.
Microsoft Student Partner Dipen Shah kept the attendees ‘involved’ till the sessions began. He started with a ‘technology quizz’ and then moved to a Q&A session and then a community discussion where Pinal, Jacob and other attendees participated and shared their views on various topics.
Dipen did a wonderful introduction of Tech-ED and explained what user groups are. He gave an overview of PASS, PASS activities and PASS summit.
Keynote
Keynote by Pinal
Pinal started the Keynote and took the audience over the history of Windows. He showed images of Windows starting from the first version to the recent version, Windows 7. He then went over the history of SQL Server, quickly explained highlights of each version.
Keynote by Jacob
I spoke about the current and future data storage and management requirements and explained that SQL Server is fully equipped to handle it. We briefly examined the new features of SQL Server 2008, especially FILESTREAM and SPATIAL support.
SQL Server Best Practices by Pinal Dave
Right after the Keynote and a short break, we started with the sessions. Pinal started with ‘SQL Server Best Practices’, one of his favorite subjects.
I have attended his presentation on ‘SQL server best practices’ a number of times in the past (we do travel and present sessions together). However, every time I attend his session, I find a completely new and interesting set of ‘tips, tricks and best practices’ in his presentation. The examples were real-life and were easy to understand and it was one of the best SQL Server sessions I have attended so far.
Pinal’s session on ‘SQL Server Best Practices’
Logical Query Execution Flow by Jacob Sebastian
My session was all about the logical query execution plan and we examined a number of common mistakes, questions, misunderstandings and performance problems. A detailed examination of the logical query execution flow answered all those questions, solved the problems and clarified some of the common mistakes and misunderstandings.
Logical Query Execution Flow by Jacob
“The Art of XSD – SQL Server XML Schema Collections”
Pinal was very excited about my recent book, “The art of XSD” and he always wanted to have a printed copy. Fortunately, I got a few printed copies right before the Tech-ED event and I gifted him a copy of the book at the end of my presentation.
Pinal receiving a copy of ‘The Art of XSD’ from Jacob
TSQL Challenges Winner Certificate
Many of you must be aware of the series of puzzles that we run at www.tsqlchallenges.com. Pinal is one of the winners and I handed over a printed certificate to him during the event.
Pinal receiving ‘TSQL Challenges Winner award’ from Jacob
A few people you should know
Pinal and Kaushal Parik, ASP.NET MVP
Kaushal Parik is an ASP.NET MVP from Ahmedabad. He is working as a Senior Software Engineer in Gateway Technolabs Pvt. Ltd. He has 4+ years of hands-on experience on .NET Technologies and has developed projects based on .NET and Microsoft server technologies like Commerce Server and BizTalk Server. He spends a lot of time helping the communities on Microsoft technologies. He blogs at http://dotnetslackers.com/community/blogs/kaushalparik/.
Pinal and Ritesh Shah
Ritesh Shah runs a website http://www.sqlhub.com/ and has written a number of technical articles. He is working as a Project Lead and DBA at a leading IT company. He has got over 9 years of experience.
Pinal, Aryaman Desai and Jacob
Aryaman Desai is one of the key persons who contributed quite a lot for the success of this event. His firm, ‘Arya Events’ took care of the event management. His team did a wonderful job by making sure that everything was well planned, executed and managed. While everyone would expect from an event management company to manage the planned activities, Arya Events is exceptional, as they could handle anything that would happen ‘unplanned’ and ‘unexpected.
Thank you!
I would like to thank everyone for their enthusiasm and support to make this event very successful.