On Web Camp and Convention Facilities
I attended the Web Camp in Redmond last Friday at the Microsoft Conference Center. It was a really nice setup in the room with rows of tables (plenty of space between them) and long power strips so every attendee could plug-in their laptop. The week before that, I attended SQLSaturday, also at a Microsoft facility, and it had rows of tables setup and plenty of in-floor outlets. Maybe this is just to be expected at Microsoft…it makes sense that of the events that will be held at a Microsoft facility, it is likely that a large portion of the attendees will have laptops with them. I sure wish the Washington State Convention Center, which is the recent and next location for the PASS Community Summit had a setup like this.
Sure I know that you can’t fit as many people into a room if you set it up with tables, but there are several attendees who are there with laptops open, taking notes and following along, and it sure would be nice. Maybe there is a way the rooms could be configured with chairs-only rows on one side and tables on the other, if it’s not possible to do all tables. Or find some other way to divide the room into sections. Even if you don’t have a laptop, it is nice to have a table to put your notepad on to take notes. At the very least, I would like to see convention centers have more in-floor outlets so that if you’re not going to give me a table, you at least don’t force me to vie for one of the few seats on the outside aisle near a real wall that does have an outlet in it, and then lay out my power cord in a trip hazard. Make it easier (and safer) for everyone.
While at WebCamp, I mentioned my Entity Framework 4 / Profiler conundrum to James Senior (@jsenior) and he asked me to send him an email follow-up which I have done, so hopefully he can find out what is going on with this. It strikes me as really odd that I get correct results in a SQL 2000 instance, but wrong results in a SQL 2008 R2 instance. I wonder what’s different.