SSWUG Ultimate Virtual Conference

In a previous blog entry, I talked about the Virtual Conference being planned for the SQL Server Web Users Group ( http://www.sswug.org/ ). Well, the dates have been switched but I am still looking forward to the online conference. Now it is going to be on Nov 5th through 7th so if can recover quickly from the US Presidential election, you can attend the conference the day after. Previously, it was planned to have separate BI, SQL, Developers and Sharepoint conferences but now they have all been combined into one 3-day event. Over 120 sessions! Don't worry, all the sessions will be available online for review later on. Let's take a look at some of them.

Straight away I like the session on "Merge Replication" at 9:30am Eastern Time (US) on Wednesday 5th November 2008. Using HTTP for replication to remote devices is a great feature and I want to hear more about it. It will be led by Hilary Cotter in virtual "Room A". I can watch and listen from my home office. No airports, no hotels, no driving, just connect and learn. The next session I would like to attend, at 11:30am, will be "High Availability" with Jason Strate. Failover Clustering and Database Mirroring in SQL 2008 are hot topics. But I won't have to line up early to get a good seat in this session. No such thing as a bad seat or standing room only. Now what will I do between sessions or at lunch? Well, I can actually communicate with other attendees at the conference through chat and discuss the sessions. But equally, I could have lunch with my youngest daughter at her school. I don't think I will be able to do that when I attend the PASS 2008 Conference in Seattle later that month.

Next I'll attend "The Power of Reporting in SQL Server 2008" to learn more about this improved area of the product. I am also interested in the "Finding your Storage Bottlenecks with SQLIO" but I'll have to review that one later via the online recordings. "Virtualized Storage Pros & Cons" will be next on my list then I will have to call it a day even though there are many sessions still available that day. I'll leave those sessions to the West Coast folks and spend some time with my family.

And so it will go, over the 3 days. I am really excited to be able to attend two awesome SQL conferences in the same month. One "Virtual" conference and one "Physical" conference. I'll report back here on the experience.

But here's my question: why can't we sign up virtually to a physical conference? People in Seattle will want to attend in person but many of us would prefer to spare the cost, resources and time of needless travel. The great sessions are being recorded anyway, so why not allow a live remote audience? We can do it. That's the future. Conferences will be Conferences. How we attend will be our choice.

Cheers

Brian

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