PASS Summit 2003 - Day 4 - Mark's Big Mistake
I'm pretty upset with myself this morning. In just about 15 minutes, the general session for today will get started, and I'm not there. I made a bad choice a couple of months ago when I decided to register for only one day of the conference. At the time, I was trying to keep my primary client happy (and not forfeit a whole week's worth of income), and I decided that I would only go for one day and I'd work the rest of the week. I convinced myself that it's better than nothing (still true) and that I could cram everything I needed into one day (not true, especially when the session you are most looking forward to gets canceled or rescheduled to a different day). Oh sure, I could go register for the rest of the conference and attend, but I gave my word to my client that I'd be working for them these two days, and I'll keep it.
The good news is that I went for one day and got a LOT out of it. The sessions on Reporting Services were great, and Graz's session on Profiler was awesome! (More on that later). I took a lot of notes, made some new friends, renewed some friendships and had a fantastic time. The bad news is that even though I had blogged about it, I had really forgotten just how much fun and how valuable it was. So here I am, missing two more fun and valuable days. I'll go get a latte and start shifting my focus to the work ahead of me. And I'll plan better for next year, and attend the whole function, probably including one or two days of the pre-conference seminars. As for this year, I have a lot more material from just one day that I'll be writing about over the next few days, so stay tuned!