I’ll apologize upfront, not every blog post is mind-shattering and deep. This is one such lightweight one.

Once again I’ll be heading to a SQL Saturday, this time in Washington DC. I actually had two to choose from, one in Providence Rhode Island and this one. Mostly because I have friends in DC from the days I worked there, I choose to submit some sessions to present in DC.

Submitting presentations is always a bit nerve-wracking for me. You feel confident you’ve got a good session and you hope it is what what the organizers want. I’m not really sure how many SQL Saturdays I submitted sessions to before I was finally selected for my first one in NYC. My topic then (and still one I still present from time to time) was “Tips that Saved my Bacon.” I even made bacon cookies to hand out. (Never again, they didn’t come out great.) I knew I was off to a good start when I saw Micron Technologies handing out t-shirts with a bacon motif and even a scent of bacon. Must be kismet.

I get to my room, I get setup, I’m all set. I’m a bit excited and waited for the people to pour in and fill the room. Ok, then I waited for anyone to walk into the room. Finally some people showed up. Great, first hurdle cleared, I had an audience. Not as large as I had hoped with which to share my amazing wisdom, but an adequate one nonetheless.

Before I started, a question, from a woman I believe who was Muslim, “what is bacon?” Of course, with pork being harām to most observant Muslims, she may have never even encountered it. But I realized too, I had a bigger issue. She didn’t understand the idiom!  I was really off to a great start now.  I did the best to explain both what it was and the idiom.  She seemed satisfied. And then we were off.

Fortunately I sort of had a plant in the audience; a friend of mine who was attending who had wanted to hear my talk.  He claims he got a lot out of it.  I hope so.

Since then I’ve given that talk several times and fortunately had better turnouts and better results.

After that I’ve had pretty good luck in getting selected to speak, but sometimes you still get the rejection. I had previously put in to speak at DC at least twice before and turned down both time. You take it in stride and try to not take it personally.

So, again, this year I put in to speak at DC. I submitted three different possible presentations, hoping at least one would be accepted.

The final date for submissions came and went. And nothing. Then I saw they had reopened the period for submissions. This didn’t instill hope in me getting selected.

And still nothing. Oh well, I decided I’d go to SQL Saturday DC anyway, just to attend and to see my friends in DC.

Then I was at the RedGate After Party at Pass Summit and Chris Hyde walked up to me and said, “Congratulations. I really wanted to see your talk in DC, but apparently we’re presenting at the same time.” So, I had to go through my emails and find the one from DC. (That day I had a system that was giving me some warning messages, so I had to sort through about 100 messages to find the one from SQL Saturday DC, hence why I had originally missed it.)

But, as Chris didn’t say WHICH of my presentations he was going to miss, I pulled out my phone, logged into the site. And lo and behold, I discovered I wasn’t presenting just once, but TWICE! I was completely shocked. And… now in a wee bit of trouble.

You see my talk on Who’s flying the plane? What IT can learn from plane crashes, is one of my favorites and one I’ve given multiple times before (and the one apparently Chris will miss). But, my 2nd talk Presently Presenting…. Presenting was one that had hadn’t quite fully written. Ok, I had the outline in my head, but hadn’t written it at all! I generally do NOT recommend this style of doing things. I really like to present at a smaller group first (say my local user group) but I figured this was a good way to give me a kick in the pants and get the talk written. And I was right. The presentation is written, I’ve run through it a few times (and will run through it a few times more before Saturday) and I’m quite happy with it at this point.

So, this coming Saturday, I’ll be giving not just one, but two talks at SQL Saturday in DC. If you’re reading this and already signed up, I’d love to see you there. If we know each other, of course say hi. If we don’t, introduce yourself. I always enjoy meeting new folks.

And if you haven’t signed up, there is unfortunately a wait-list, but you can still add your name to it and if folks cancel, get in.

So, I hope to see you there!

P.S. I’ll give one piece of advice that’ll be in my talk on presenting. If you DO get turned down, don’t take it personally. Take it with grace. SQL Saturday organizers face a lot of challenges in picking presenters and are often overwhelmed with the number of submissions. Trying to argue with them or worse calling them names or getting upset with them is a sure fire way to guarantee you do NOT get selected in the future. And, organizers talk to each other. You do NOT want to get tagged with being “that person”. If you get turned down, don’t take it personally and move on.