PASS Summit 2011 Day 1 – Keynote Live Blog

Welcome to PASS Summit 2011 Day 1!!   Be sure to get your very own copy of the hot-off-the-presses MVP Deep Dives 2 today at the PASS bookstore and hit the author signing 1-1:30pm in the Expo Hall (or, if you’re playing along at home, from Manning.com)  Sales benefit Operation Smile.

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Today’s keynote with Ted Kummert “The New World of Data” starts at 8:15am EDT. Click here to watch today’s keynote live. For information on today’s keynote, see the SQLPASS.org page on Keynotes.

 In Brent Ozar’s (blog, Twitter) blog Guessing the SQL Server Denali Release Date, he half-predicted, half-fretted: 

This might be a tough year to be a keynote speaker: Denali’s been in the hands of the public for a while, so it’s tough to do a big feature unveil when it’s not news…. My fear is that Microsoft will say, “Since we’ve got nothing to announce around SQL Server, let’s go all in with Azure,” and bombard us with SQL Azure keynotes [, which] won’t lead to huge rounds of applause at the PASS Summit. 

 Okay, let’s see if he was right…

7:56am Twenty minutes to go!

8:06 Seats are filling up prety quickly to the dulcet tones of “Wheel in the Sky”, and pictures of 2011 Summit attendees up on the big screens.  You can really feel the tension build, as folks remember past year’s opening keynote entertainment. *shudder*

 8:11 David DeWit just dropped by the blogger’s table to say hi to us all.  Awesomesauce! His slide deck, he says, will be up on his site tomorrow afternoon.

 8:15 Beginning with videos of PASS veterans and first timers talking about community.

8:23 PASS President Rushabh Mehta (www.twitter.com/Rushabhmehta)  Welcome. “THIS right here, is community”. He’s introducing the PASS Executive Committee, BOD, and founding partners.  Allen Kinsel (www.twitter.com/sqlinsaneo) appears to have cheered for himself. New to the board this year are global advisors – Rob Farley (rob_farley) (Australia), raoul illyes (Nordic), and james rowland-jones (UK).  There will be a board meet and greet on Friday

8:28 Goals: There’s a goal of 1 million training hours provided to the community, and right now we stand at 430k of volunteer-led training.  Goal to grow from our current 80k to 250k members, and from 1 global region to 5. “We already have a very successful region in Germany…” PASS encompasses lots of events: 24HOP, SQL Saturday, PASS SQL Rally, PASS Chapte, Summit, and Virtual Chapter.  Also SQLServerFAQ and SQLBits internationally.

8:31 Largest event in the world dedicated to SQL Server and BI, put together entirely by our peers (community members). It’s a cool thought!  He’s got a slide up about streaming and sharing on Twitter with #sqlpass…it’s got a five by ten grid of Twitter icons, and the entire blogger’s table stopped typing for a moment, looking for our own icons.

8:35 Listing words used for PASS Summit, he lists “Summer camp” and “SQL Awesomesauce”, unintentionally giving me an easter-egg style plug from the main stage. Bake sure you stop in to the SQLCAT and CS rooms to talk to Microsoft brainiacs, and ditto for Expert Pods (which features Microsoft engineers and MVPs…like me and Sean!)

 8:37 There’s a big emphasis this year on networking and community – PASS is focusing especially on a good solid welcome and integration for first timers.  Good call!  Also good call on specifically naming some of the special events this week, like the Women in Technology luncheon. Shoutouts to the premiere sponsors Microsoft and Dell.

 8:39 THE MVP DEEP DIVES 2 BOOK RELEASE HERE!!! We’ll be having author signings today and Friday.

 Please fill out session evaluations, either on paper on online (www.sqlpass.org/SessionEval)

 8:41 Okay, it’s KEYNOTING TIME!! Sr. Vice President of Microsoft Ted Kummert is onstage now.  “SQL Server is the most widely adopted database product on the planet, full stop.”  We’re going to talk about Denali and “our vision going forward”. He promised us demos and exciting announcements.  Good, we like demos and exciting announcements.

8:47 He’s placing an emphasis on choice, and consistent platform across choices (here comparing SQL PDW/Appliances, SQL Server traditional, and Azure products).

8:50 Denali has “cloud on your terms” on a 3-point list of highlights. I suppose that means privatized cloud or cloudy-cloud.

8:51 Announcing that Denali is now named SQL Server 2012, and that it will release int he first half of next year.  Get ahold of CTP3 now!  (Grant Fritchey, sitting next to me, pointed out the sound of all the keyboards around us suddenly going into overdrive.)  JDanton on Twitter: “Less applause on that non committal release date of q1 or q2 2012.” 

Brent Ozar on Twitter: “When a product is ‘Under $20’, it’s not $9.95. When a product comes out in ‘1st half of 2012’, you can bet it’s not February.”

Vision going forward in 3 parts. “Any data, any size, anywhere”.  Ahh, I see you’re following the rule of three, Ted…good, we bloggers find this easy to follow.

Characteristics of Big Data – lots of it, or unstrctured web farms, or real time insight, etc. “Technically there’s no one size fits all.”

8:58  Microsoft will now be supporting Hadoop. “Coming soon, Apache Hadoop-based distribution for Windows Server and Windows Azure”.  Available today: “SQL Server/PDW connectdors for Apache Hadoop (TM)”.

9:01 ANNOUNCEMENT THE SECOND: Microsoft formed partnership with Horton Works recently (http://t.co/B7wlKCXJ); we’re getting Eric Baldeschwieler, CEO of hortonworks on the stage now. <polite applause> 

Jorge Segarra on Twitter: “‘#Hadoop is behind every clik. Over 45k computers are behind it.’ -Eric “Sleepytime” Baldeschwieler”  It’s true, I’m kinda drifting off…

So we’ve had (what I assume is) the exciting announcements. BRING ON THE DEMOS! Please? 

9:06 Activating New Types of Data: Denny Lee, Principal Program Manager <enthusiastic applause> “Are you guys ready for some demos?” YEAH!! “Not yet.” Awww…

Denny Lee’s a good, energetic presenter.  This one hive is transmitting thousands of tasks to a multinode cluster. 310 separate files distributed across the cluster. Is there an easier way to access this information (than the Hadoop for Windows console).
New Hive ODBC driver…just a few clicks and he’s pulling down data into a PowerPivot Excel Workbook.

Now I can download data EVERY day!!

Wes Brown (@SQLServerIO) on Twitter: “Hadoop is the big kid on this block, I know MS usually re-invents the wheel but not this time.”

HanSQL on Twitter: “Nice to see Microsoft giving unstructured data some love in #SQL2012”

 9:17 MOAR DEMOS! Tim Mallalieu and Nino Bice to talk SQL Azure Labs (Microsoft Codename “Data Explorer”) “We can’t classify all the world’s data, at least not right away…”  Yah, you don’t have a big enough datacenter, methinks.

Nic Cain on Twitter: “AZURE, IT’S EVERYWHERE. GET OVER IT PEOPLE AND IT’S ABOUT ALL WE CARE ABOUT.”
[Methinks some of us are a tad overAZUREsaturated.]

 We’re bored, and giggling our collective asses off at demo-related yogurt jokes on Twitter. Sorry, presenters, but you’ve unfortunately lost our interest, even though its a demo. 

Tim Ford on Twitter: “#SQLPass, you had me at Hadoop. But then I went away and took a nap.”

Steve Jones on Twitter: “is it just me or does it appear the Microsoft is talking around SQL Server 2012 and not trying to show anything in the procuct?” 
[Yeah, I’d like to see more, too.]

9:32, demo over. Time to focus again. Sorta. I hope.

9:36 Amir Netz, Technical Fellow (just promoted! Congratulations!), with “Unlock New Insights, Anywhere”.  This slide’s chart is titled “Movie genre evolutoin over time”, and I have the odd impression I’m back at college.

Kendra Little on Twitter: “Our current speaker @AmirNetz is the great speaker who last year called PowerPivot the ‘ENGINE OF THE DEVIL!'”

 “You never have to touch the keyboard.” Uhhh, who do you think you’re talking to? We’re pretty big fans of keyboard touching.

Wendy Pastrick on Twitter: “These demos, while intetesting, would be best suited to senior management.” [AGREED!!!]

A little actual editorializing by me, now: There’s a big problem with trying to write a presentation for such a big and varied audience such as this, and I do sympathise. But it doesn’t keep us from getting impatient when we spend ALL the time looking at pretty circles and making yogurt jokes instead of talking about cool engine improvements or T-SQL additions. This is something that (in my limited experience) PASS and other big conference keynote presenters get wrong consistently.

This is why Dr. DeWitt is such a big hit as a keynote speaker (okay, among MANY other reasons): he doesn’t talk down to us. He talks to us about cool ideas and solid concepts, and he walks us through the hard stuff. He’s a damn good presenter, not just in the sense of being entertaining, but in the planning and writing.

One more time: It’s very frustrating to come to a big technical conference filled with technical people and getting too much of a standard sales pitch feel to the demos.  Yes, show us that it’s shiny…we like shiny. Yes, show us that it’s simple…we often like simple. But you can’t stay there when you’re talking to 8,000 DBAs, devs, and Business Intelligence professionals.

9:58 Wrapup.

 

Thanks for joining me on this live blog!  I may post again later today, and we’ll regroup tomorrow for the Quentin Clark keynote tomorrow, which Ted just called “demo-rich”.

Happy days,
Jen McCown
http://www.midnightdba.com/Jen