Flashback: When My Session Was Voted In Top 10 at Teched North America 2014

Now Microsoft Ignite, formerly Teched, is one of my favorites tech events that I love to attend. And it is an icing on the cake if I get a speaking opportunity. I have spoken at multiple Techeds over the years, thanks to the track owners who believed that I can offer valuable content to the delegates. Some of my Teched session videos are here.

But Teched North America in 2014 at Orlando was a big surprise for me. My session was voted in Top 10 sessions at Teched that year out of some 600+ sessions. Yeah, it was a big deal for me and I cherish this. Let’s be honest, there are legends out there, just not from SQL Server world, but also from almost all other technologies. Teched is a multi-tech event where Microsoft would showcase the latest and the best across all its product lines. So entering in the top 10 list amongst all the legendry speakers, I was of course, extremely happy. My session was on the last day, second last session. Now, this was by no means a good slot to be in. Again, the best speakers get the best slots and rightly so. Therefore, I had to settle with what I got. I knew I had good content to talk about and some crisp demos, but I always knew from past experience that I may not have enough people in the room.

My session was on Resource Governor IO. Title being, “Mind Your IO: Resource Governor Shows You How”. The session had some crisp demos based on new enhancement in SQL Server 2014, the capability to govern IO via Resource Governor. The room was sparsely filled, I had less than 50 people. The best part, none left until the end. Sometimes it does not matter how many people you get in your session, what matters is how many leave during your session 😉 – I could see that each attendee was keenly interested in that topic and that is why they probably came to the session or else the conference was anyway coming to a close. Thankfully, my demos went very well. It was a bit unpredictable. If you are a speaker, you would know how important it is to get your demos right. And that is it – the high score I got was because the demos went well, the room tech manager told me that I was quite audible with a bold voice and that worked for me, the session was well-paced, crisp and succinct.

You can watch the session on SQLMaestros YouTube channel or Microsoft’s Channel 9.

Thanks for reading.