I am pleased to announce Confio is a SQL Excursions sponsor

Posted on April 29, 2011 by mrdenny

I am please to announce that Confio has come on board as a sponsor for our Napa SQL Excursion.  If you don’t know Confio, and you haven’t tried their Ignite monitoring software for SQL Server then you really should.  It provides a great way to get a look into your systems from the top down, especially if you have SQL Server running under VMware as Ignite can help you compare the metrics from the host, guest, and instance so you can see exactly at which level your performance problem is happening.

We are thrilled to have Confio on board as a sponsor for our first Excursion.  We can’t wait to see what goodies they are sending for our attendees.

Denny

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Registration for our Napa SQL Excursion is open

Posted on April 27, 2011 by mrdenny

We are pleased to announce that registration for the first SQL Excursion is open.   There will be sessions on September 22-23 and September 24th will be an optional all-day wine tour which will have a small additional cost based on the number of people that sign up.

We are working on a two day wine tour available for attendee’s guests for a nominal fee. Once prices have been locked in, we will open registration up and make a formal announcement regarding this add-on event on the mailing list and the blog.

The hotel which we will be hosting our event is the Embassy Suites Napa Valley, which is a beautiful Tuscan style hotel with California redwoods growing at one end of the courtyard and a very large pond which is home to several swans, ducks and turtles (we’ve posted some pictures of the hotel in a Facebook photo album).  Your hotel suite includes complimentary breakfast for you and your spouse (even if they don’t register for the wine tour).

We’ve got some great dinner events planned which we’ll be announcing the details of later on once we’ve confirmed sponsors for the dinners.

The rates for the hotel are $189 a night for Wednesday and Thursday, and $289 a night for Friday and Saturday.  These rates are severely discounted off of the normal rates for September in Napa.  If you would like to arrive early or stay later, the hotel is extended the discounted rates for three days in either direction.  To register for this discounted rate you can call 1-800-EMBASSY and use the group name “SQL Excursions” (I would recommend spelling out “SQL”) or use the hotel’s website using “SQL” as the “Group/Convention Code”.  Pre-payment of the hotel rooms is not required when you reserve your suite.

We recommend using Evans, Inc. (http://evanstransportation.com/) for airport transportation to and from the Oakland and San Francisco International Airports. Fares range from $29-$45 per person, one way depending on the airport you fly into.  If you choose to rent a car, the Embassy Suites has complementary parking for all hotel guests.

The schedule, so far, looks like this.

8am-9am Breakfast for you and your guest
9am-noon Sessions with Denny and Tom (there will be a break)
Noon-1:30pm Lunch with a wine tasting and wine lesson
1:30pm-5pm Sessions with Denny and Tom (there will be a break)
5pm-6pm Open bar hotel reception
6:30pm-10pm-ish Some sort of sponsored dinner event (We hope)

The cost for all this is only $799.  However if you register early, we are offering early bird discounts.

Register Before: Registration Amount:
May 1st, 2011 $699
May 15th, 2011 $749
After May 15th $799

To sign up visit http://sqlexcursions.com/napa-2011-sign-up and fill out the short registration form.

We look forward to seeing you at the first SQL Excursion.

Denny

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How SQL Excursions came to be

Posted on April 18, 2011 by mrdenny

Every company has a story about how they got started.  Some are interesting, some are surprisingly standard.  Here’s how the company known as SQL Excursions came to be.

Back in November 2010 Kris (twitter) and I were having dinner (at California Pizza Kitchen I think) and talking about PASS and other training ideas.  Kris had said that she had an idea for some a SQL training company, where we would have a couple of presenters giving presentations in a fun boutique area like Napa, CA.  Somewhere the attendees could bring these spouses along and where the spouses would want to go (lets be honest, PASS isn’t what most of our spouses think of when they think family vacation).  The basic idea was that the geeks would go off during the day for sessions, and the spouses would then go off and do something else during the day, and everyone would get together at night for some sort of group event, with a big social event on the third day.

Needless to say, I liked the idea, and we ran with it. We thought about who we could bring in to help run the training side of things, eventually choosing Tom LaRock (blog | twitter) as being the perfect guy to run things with. Tom had been wanting to combine training with a getaway destination since taking a cruise back in 2008 but had not been able to execute on his idea. Tom loved our idea of combining training with wine tasting in Napa (I’m pretty sure that I’ve got an email somewhere where we called the idea “brilliant”).

While the timing was not right to bring Tom on as a partner we still wanted him to participate as a speaker. Tom threw out the idea of the name “SQL Excursions” as this was the name of the idea he was kicking around a while back but had not been able to execute on.  If you haven’t figured it out yet Kris and Tom are the brains of the operation, while I’m just the pretty face and the big mouth.

The name worked pretty well, and it really described where we wanted to go with the events (now called Excursions).  Conveniently Tom already owned the website, so we installed WordPress on it, setup the email addresses and Kris and I got started on everything else that needed to be done to get our first Excursion up and running.

There will be another blog post in a week or so as we should have dates and the location nailed down.  Kris and I are taking a short overnight trip to Napa to check out possible locations for the first Excursion training to make sure that the hotel and venue meet our requirements.

We are all really looking forward to putting this first Excursion together; we are all sure that it is going to be a lot of fun.  See you in Napa.

Denny

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Heading to Napa to check out hotels for our first excursion

Posted on April 11, 2011 by mrdenny

Next week Kris and I will be heading up to Napa (it’s a tough job I know, but someone has to do it) to check out hotels and pick the hotel that our first Excursion will be held at, and to nail down the dates with the hotel.  Shortly after we get back home we are hoping to be able to announce the dates and location of our first Excursion.

Here’s how the sign up process will work.  A blog post will go out, which will be emailed out in advance to everyone who has signed up for our mailing list (there’s a pretty good reason right there to sign up) .  The blog post will have a sign up form with a few questions in it.  The first 15 people that sign up with that form will be the attendees.  Everyone else that signs up will be put on the waiting list in case people back out.  Shortly after the announcement of the Excursion goes out, I’ll be posting a survey which lists the potential topics, so that people can vote on them.  Once the votes have been tallied, we’ll announce what the full session schedule will look like.

Denny

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There will be a SQL Rockstar among us for our first excursion

Posted on April 7, 2011 by mrdenny

With as much fanfare as I can muster, I’m pleased to announce that our first excursion will have an awesome guest speaker. You know him as a Microsoft MVP, SQL PASS board member, Database Administrator for Confio, and my good friend Thomas LaRock (blog | twitter). Tom has been gracious enough to accept our offer as a speaker at our first excursion later this year.  And with that Tom, and hopefully his wonderful wife Suzanne (blog | twitter), will be joining us for the first excursion.

A little about Tom

Tom has been in the IT industry for over ten years and a database Thomas LaRockprofessional since 2002. He’s worked with several database platforms (Informix, Oracle, Sybase, Microsoft) as well as several development platforms (C++, PowerBuilder, Microsoft .NET). His current role is focused on providing a quality performance monitoring tool for multiple platforms (MSSQL, Sybase, Oracle, and DB2).

He is a SQL Server MVP, having first received the honor back in 2009 and again in 2010.  He is also the author of DBA Survivor: Become a Rock Star DBA. The book is designed to give a junior to mid-level DBA a better understanding of what skills are needed in order to survive (and thrive) in their career.  He also serves on the Board of Directors for the Professional Association for SQL Server, an independent, not-for-profit association, dedicated to supporting, educating, and promoting the Microsoft SQL Server community members.

Thanks Tom

I’d like to thank Tom for agreeing to be the first speaker at our first SQL excursion as we test out this concept.

In the next couple of weeks we’ll be announcing our first excursion and getting the sign up process rolling along.  I just couldn’t wait to announce that Tom was going to be the first speaker at the upcoming excursion.

Watch this space, for more exciting information in the weeks to come.

Denny

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Be sure to sign up for the SQL Excursions Insiders mailing list

Posted on April 6, 2011 by mrdenny

Signing up for our SQL Excursions Insiders mailing list does come with some perks, the most important of which will be that you’ll get early announcements about our upcoming Excursions, giving you the ability to sign up for the Excursions before anyone else even knows about them.  Given how few seats there will be on each Excursion, this early access could come in handy.

So be sure to sign up today.  You can use the form here, or on the menu on the right at the bottom.


Name:  
 

Denny

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And our first sponsor for our first SQL Excursion is … Murach Books

Posted on March 23, 2011 by mrdenny

I’m pleased to announce that we have our first sponsor for our first (yet to be announced) SQL Excursion. Murach Books will be sending over books from their catalog for our attendees. Their catalog is a little smaller than some publishers, but the books that they are top notch titles. They also have some programming books which relate directly to SQL Server and database programming, hopefully I can grab some of them for our attendees as well.

Either way, I’m thrilled that we were able to get a sponsor signed on so quickly after we announced the company, and before we even have the dates nailed down and announced. I am really hoping that I can send out a few more of these posts before our first Excursion is announced.

Thanks again to Murach Books!
Denny

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Future SQL Excursion locations

Posted on March 17, 2011 by mrdenny

Ever since we announced SQL Excursions, people have been bringing up a LOT of really great ideas on where we could hold a future excursion.  So far these have been coming through email, Twitter, phone calls, etc.  In order to put them all in one place, I’m putting this post together so that there’s always somewhere to submit ideas.

While we can’t guarantee that we’ll be able to hold a SQL Excursion where you suggest, we want to hear your suggestions and we will do what we can to hold them in as many locations as possible bringing this unique training to as many people and places as we can.  Please put your suggestions in the comments of this blog post and we’ll see what we can do.

Denny

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Announcing SQL Excursions!

Posted on March 9, 2011 by mrdenny

After months of planning, I’m proud to announce the launch of SQL Excursions.  Founded by Microsoft MVP and Microsoft Certified Master Denny Cherry, SQL Excursions is designed to provide fun, educational SQL Server training events.  The excursions will be held in beautiful locations across the US (and eventually world wide). Each excursion will also have social events for the session attendees as well as spouses, partners, guests, etc. so that they can come to the excursion and not be bored by the technical sessions.

Each excursion will have top notch speakers, typically Microsoft MVPs and/or Microsoft Certified Master recipients.  As each excursion is announced the speaker and session outline will be posted as well.  What will make this training different from other kinds of training is that while a basic outline will be posted with what the speakers are planning on speaking about, the exact content will be voted on by you, the session attendees.  This will ensure that the you receive the sessions that will be of the most use to you in your day to day work life.

Our typical excursion will be a two day focused event with around 16 hours of sessions over the course of the two days, with plenty of socializing after the formal sessions are over.  The third (optional) day will be a full social day with speakers, guests, sponsors, etc. all out having a great time together.

We are currently planning an excursion for the September time frame, in Napa, California.  We haven’t nailed down a date yet, but as soon as we have one set it will be announced.  As soon as we have the date selected, and the prices set, we’ll have a sign up form posted as well.

In additional to posting information about our excursions here, be sure to check out our Facebook page as well as our Twitter account @SQLExcursions.  You can also join our news letter via the sign up form at the bottom right of the blog’s home page (don’t worry, we wouldn’t ever give your email address out to anyone).

Thanks, and I look forward to great times ahead!

Denny

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Great new info coming soon…

Posted on February 16, 2011 by mrdenny

Keep an eye on this space, for some awesome information coming soon.

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