SQLPASS Community Summit Preview

The SQLPASS Community Summit is one of the most exciting annual conferences for the SQL Server team. Bringing together thousands of professionals to talk about SQL Server is simply amazing. Last year I had the honor of standing on stage with Ted Kummert (Senior Vice President for the Business Platform Division @ Microsoft) during his keynote to demo an early prototype build of Application and Multi-Server Management. Standing in front of 2,500+ SQL Server fans is truly exhilarating.

For the past few months we’ve been working on our content for this year’s conference. The focus on SQL Server 2008 R2 will be intense, to say the least. One of the overriding themes this year is consolidation. In the sessions on consolidation we will be emphasizing the investments we’re making in R2 and Hyper-V. We have another session focusing on developing data-tier applications using Visual Studio 2010. 

In addition to the public break out sessions we conducting several private sessions. These private sessions are under NDA and include participants from the SQL Server MVP community as well as people representing companies part of the SQL Server Customer Advisory Network or SCAN. Over the past 5 years (my tenure with the SQL Server group) the emphasis on gathering customer feedback early in the development cycle has intensified.

These break out sessions provide a look into features on the plate for the next release. The sessions are a combination of PowerPoint slides and demos of early prototype builds. Participants are asked to fill out surveys to provide their input to our planning process. I can attest the feedback we receive in these sessions directly impacts the shape of features.

One of the absolute highlights for me, though, is interacting with you. Spending time hearing how you’re using the product, the challenges you face in your business, and how you see the industry changing are invaluable. Even though we may not be talking under NDA about future developments these conversations have a direct impact on the product. All of these data points are fed back into the planning process and impact the multitude of decisions we make throughout the development cycle.

This year I was asked again to participate in Ted’s keynote and I jumped at the opportunity to show off my team’s hard work. I’ll be demoing the latest (yet to be released CTP) build of SQL Server 2008 R2 along with the already release Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2. The demo is absolutely rocking. Ted’s keynote is packed with demos all of them extremely cool – although I think ours is the coolest of the lot. There’s one demo near the end that’s sure to bring the house down. I won’t give it away so you’ll just have to come to the keynote and see it for yourself. But I’m certain it’ll be picked up by the blogging & twitter communities.

If you see me @ the conference don’t hesitate to come up and say hi and bend my ear about what you do for a living, what you like about the product and what we can do to make you more efficient and effective in your job.