Hello friends,

I was a first timer at PASS Summit 2014. I have outlined the whole experience here. Summit14 was my first international conference. Attending it was a pleasure and I thank my ex-employer, S&P Capital IQ (McGrawHill Financials) for giving me the wonderful opportunity. This changed my career and took my experience to a new level. It is close to a year after this and I have already made my plans for attending PASS Summit 2015.

There are three international conferences of SQL Server across the world. With doors opening for my first one at PASS Summit 2014, I got a chance to speak at SQLBits XIV conference in March 2015 in London. This was my first international speaking experience. Then came the most awaited conference for me and the whole Asia SQL community. A dream the SQLServerGeeks team had for a couple of years. It turned into reality with support of international speakers and the whole SQL community and specially Microsoft. And I always feel lucky to be part of the SQLServerGeeks team and organize one of the three international SQL conferences across the globe.

Being part of all three conferences, I had observed and followed few advices I got when I was attending the PASS Summit 2014. There is internet for resources and knowledge. These conferences are for building your network and making strong relations. A once in a life time opportunity to meet the experts and friends and make it a life changing experience. I travelled the advised path and I would like to share my experience through this journey.

Being a first timer is no different than being alumni at these conferences. You always meet new people and there is always advances in the technology to discuss. I have blogged about my day to day meet and greet with everyone. But, what changed after the PASS Summit 2014 is the story I have to share. With the inspiration from Brent Ozar’s post, I took the first step and submitted my session for SQLBits XIV. Speaking at the international conference is a wonderful feeling. But even more exciting was meeting many of the personalities I met at PASS Summit again at SQLBits was awesome. And to add, most of them recognized me from the PASS Summit.

This personal connect is what should be built at these conferences. This helped in my communications to the speakers across the globe when I was handling the speaker management for SQLServerGeeks Annual Summit 2015. The journey would not have been smooth for me through SSGAS2015 without the connect with the experts and the boost in confidence to communicate with them.

So, the advice I got from a person who I will not name – Attend PASS Summit to Connect. Share. Learn. Yes, the tag line of PASS. Do exactly what it says and it will make perfect sense to maximize what you can make out of the conference.

 

Happy Networking, 
Manu

Follow me on Twitter
Follow me on FaceBook
Connect with me on Linked In