Last weekend Damu Venkatsesan and I made the short trip to Nashville for SQL Saturday #272. It’s the closest event to Atlanta this year (so far…) and we are trying to get to as many SQL events as possible to promote the Healthcare SQL VC.

The day started off on bad note with a dead battery. That couldn’t keep us away from the event, but did cause us to be a little later than we wanted. The location was easy to find and plenty of parking so no trouble once we got the car started.

Despite the late start we were able to catch a full day of sessions and they had a very good assortment of speakers. A few of the highlights for me were Allen White’s “Automate Your ETL Infrastructure with SSIS and PowerShell” and Joey D’Antoni’s “In-Memory Columnstore Indexes–Make Your Data Warehouse Fly”. I plan on implementing both of these into future projects. All of the sessions I attended were well done.

A few quick notes about Nashville:

• The space was almost perfect for an event like this, especially the room sizes. They didn’t give a crowded or empty feeling in any of the rooms I was in.
• Nice line up of sponsors. Pretty diverse mix too.
• Lots of Atlanta speakers were there. I’m sure we’ll see them again at #285.
• Big bonus for having great SQL Saturday swag – a pint glass. Nice!

The attendance seemed to be pretty good and everyone I spoke to enjoyed themselves. The organizers should be pretty happy with the outcome.