SQLSaturday #337 Oregon was a great event, and I’m so happy I could be there and help out as a volunteer! Arnie, Paul, Vern, Sopheap, Rob, Theresa and everyone else who spent time working on this event, thank you so much. There were 52 volunteers helping out at this event. 52! That’s amazing. I hope you had a great time and I look forward to seeing you again next year!
Isn’t this one of the coolest name badges you’ve seen? Staff, speakers and volunteers all had name badges like this. Each group had a different color with their own pictures and text on it. The QR code takes you to a website where you can get in touch with the person. They were laminated and the same on both sides, so you didn’t have to worry about it flipping over. You didn’t have to worry about people not seeing it either, because it was large and very visible. I may have to borrow a few ideas from this name badge for our next SQLSaturday 🤓
You’ve worked for days, weeks, maybe even months on your session. You’ve rehearsed, rehearsed, rehearsed, triple-checked every single demo, memorized ZoomIt keyboard shortcuts and timed your presentation. You have all your programs open and ready, cleared all personal information from your start screen and turned off notifications. You’ve brought power, USB hub, adapters to HDMI and VGA, mouse, wireless presenter with laser pointer, tablet with stopwatch, water, swag for attendees and even notes on paper so you won’t forget the things you don’t have in your slides. The room is full of people staring at you. You’re all set and ready to present.
…and then your computer won’t connect to the projector.
Your computer does not want to connect to the project with your HDMI adapter. Your computer does not want to connect to the projector with your VGA adapter. Your computer does not want to allow remote connections even when you’ve told it to. Your computer is all “yes, I do in fact notice I’m connected to a second screen, but I’d prefer some personal time right now, thanks”.
HELP! PANIC!
What would you do? Have you been in the same kind of situation? What did you do?
A few weeks ago I received the news that I had been nominated as an Outstanding PASS Volunteer for October 2014, and I’m so happy I can finally share my excitement! It’s hard to find the right words, but this truly means a lot to me. I’m deeply thankful, proud and honored that someone took time out of their busy schedule to nominate me.
Exactly one year ago I wrote a post called A shy first-timer at PASS Summit 2013. I wrote about my hopes for 2014, and at the time they were just hopes and dreams that some day, some day I would be able to give something back to this great community. At the time I thought I was dreaming big, but never in my wildest dreams could I have imagined that I would do so much in a year that I would be nominated for an outstanding volunteer award.
Getting involved in the PASS and SQL Server community changed my life. It gave me something meaningful to do, and along the way I have visited new places, made new friends and accomplished things I thought I couldn’t do. I have grown so much as a person this year, and it wouldn’t have happened without PASS events and all the wonderful volunteers who gave me the chance to help out.
Thank you, thank you, thank you, I look forward to seeing you soon at another event! 😊
I was honored to be selected as a speaker for SQLSaturday #341 in Porto, Portugal this weekend, and I had such a great time that I hope to come back next year for SQLSaturday Lisbon or SQLSaturday Porto.
First of all I want to say a huge thank you to everyone who organized and volunteered at this event. You guys did an amazing job and I hope you finally got some sleep after working around the clock for a week! Niko, Paulo, Ivan, Rui, André, Pedro, Vitor, Quilson and Nuno - thank you. I also want to thank Ines for being our photographer, she was running around everywhere all day taking pictures and filming. I can’t wait to see the result! 😃
SQLSaturday #341 Porto Speakers and Organizers
This was a very special and memorable weekend for me. It was my first trip to Portugal and the first time I was selected as a speaker for a SQLSaturday other than my own event. It was a very different experience being there as a speaker compared to being an attendee, volunteer or organizer. As an attendee and volunteer I want to learn as much as possible and help out where needed, as an organizer I’m in the middle of a crazy whirlwind trying to remember everything I need to do, and as a speaker I have one main goal: that the attendees in my session will learn something they can start using in their projects right away.
Spoiler alert! Column editing is super simple in Notepad++ 🤓 All you have to do is press the Alt key while selecting text. You can use either Alt+Mouse Dragging or Alt+Shift+Arrows. This works perfectly on text that is already aligned. But what if your text is not formatted as columns already? You can quickly fix that by using the TextFX plugin.
