About a year ago I wrote this post: And so it Happened… about my first (and so far only) time I ended up with an empty room at a SQL Saturday. I’ve run into a few other speakers who have had the same experience, so that soothed the bruised ego a bit, but it still left a bit of a mark.

As a result, I set a goal of redeeming myself this year again at the Colorado Springs SQL Saturday. I figured it wouldn’t be that hard to exceed my turnout from last year.  So, I submitted several topics for them to select from and waited. Finally the day came, and I found that I had been selected to speak. There was only one problem. The topic in question was one that while I had submitted, and had a good outline for, I had not actually fully developed into a presentation and was a bit nervous about:
The very Model of a Modern Day Database. I thought it would be a good topic, I just had to develop it.  And of course like any good procrastinator I kept putting off the work. I mean I was making progress, but, well it was slow.

Fortunately, by Friday the 5th, I had run through a complete form of it and had worked out pretty much all the tweaks I wanted and had practiced it a few times to an empty room, you know, just in case of a repeat of last year. Seriously though, I do several run-throughs to make sure I get the timing right and I pretty much know what I was going to say. I’ll let readers in on a little secret, some of the parts of my presentations that look like they’re improvised or impromptu comments or replies, are often rehearsed.

So I felt pretty good going into Saturday.  Then, looking at the schedule, it struck me that my topic was on the System Databases, one of which is known as the TempDB (to my non-SQL readers, that’s a fairly critical database SQL Server uses as sort of a scratch pad) and that a session before lunch (mine was scheduled after lunch) was by Kalen Delany and was an entire hour on just the TempDB. I first heard Kalen speak at SQL Connections conference back in 2005 or so in Orlando and had read a few of her books. To say that she’s well known in the SQL Community and highly respected might be an understatement. Now the impostor syndrome was really starting to kick in! What could little ol’ me say about the TempDB in 15 minutes that would interest people after listening to her?

But then I realized, our topics had a slightly different focus, and while some of our advice was similar (put your TempDB on FAST drives), I covered things in a different way and there would still be something of interest to my attendees. And, it is not a competition after all. Honestly, my goal whenever I teach any topic is to reach at least one student or attendee. If I can get one person to walk away and say, “I learned something” or “That was worth it” I feel like I’ve won. This happened during a week-long cave rescue training course once. On the first day in the field I showed a student a fairly simple but not entirely obvious way to rig a rope. After explaining it to her she looked at me and said, “that’s worth the price of the course right there!”.  I glowed and joked I could now take the rest of the week off; I had achieved my goal.

Anyway, after lunch I was prepared. Lunch was scheduled for 12:30-1:45 and I was in the classroom by 1:40, all setup waiting for folks to show up. And sure enough two people showed up. I was happy. Perhaps not ecstatic, but at least happy I had an audience.  And then two more people showed up, put down their stuff and asked, “mind if we leave this here, we’ll be back.”  I said it was fine, but was a bit confused since the clock was saying 1:44 and I was wondering where they’d be going just before my session started.

But hey, four people, that was four more than last year, even if two weren’t in the room and one of the others admitted they weren’t really a DBA and wasn’t sure if the class was applicable to what they wanted to learn.

At that point, one of the original pair started to shuffle her papers and looked up and said, “you know, it’s weird, the schedule has a 15 minute break between lunch and the first afternoon session. This is supposed to start at 2:00 PM”  I looked and she was right.  As far as I can tell, when the organizers laid out the sessions, they put a 15 minute break between them, and simply did the same for after lunch. This explained why the second pair of people had left with the intent to come back. They wanted good seats for the 2:00 PM start.

Sure enough, by 2:00 PM the room was fairly full and I was off and running. I was in a smaller room than Kalen’s presentation, where she had 40 or more, I had perhaps a dozen. But I was happy and content. And, once it was over, both the room monitor and myself reminded folks to give feedback and this audience was great at that.

A word on feedback. The forms at SQL Saturdays tend to be fairly standard and I think I speak for most presenters when I say, that while it can be gratifying to get all 5s on the top of the form, it’s also kind of useless. But, when folks actually take time at the bottom of the form to give actual written feedback, that’s quite gratifying. This audience gave great written feedback.

I also appreciate feedback in person. At least one person came up afterwards to say, “That was really great, I bet you could do an hour on each System Database.”  So perhaps, I will do an hour presentation on the TempDB someday!

So, I feel redeemed. Due to a variety of reasons it’s unlikely I’ll bid to speak at Colorado Springs next  year, but I’d highly recommend it for anyone in the area. And, if you’re afraid that some other presenter might overshadow you because they’re better known or their topic is similar to yours, don’t despair. Seriously, there’s enough knowledge to go around and enough interest.