For those of you who attended the SSWUG vConference a couple of weeks ago, hopefully you caught my sessions on Day 1. A good number of the attendees submitted evals, and I figured that I’d go ahead and share the scores with you.
The evals asked 5 questions, 4 are ratings Poor-Excellent (rated out of 5), and the fifth is a comments field. I’m not going to post all the comments as there were a lot, but I’ll post my favorites. (My responses to the comments if any are in blue.)
Over all the scores are pretty good. They are write around where they were for my PASS session back in November. The presentation skills score is a little lower than before, but I’m blaming the fact that it’s a prerecorded session so the normal feedback (which I really, really love) that you get during the session isn’t there when you are doing the recording.
My first session was my “Storage for the DBA” session. 39 people filled out the survey.
1. Please rate the speaker’s knowledge of the session topic. 4.8
2. Please rate the speaker’s presentation skills. 4.3
3. How well did the session description correspond to the actual session? 4.6
4. What is your overall evaluation of this session? 4.5
5. Comments:
Way more than I need, and bit above my head. – Yeah, it’s a hard core storage session. I’m thinking about making a more 200 level version of this, then a higher end 400-500 level version so that people can get their feet wet, then come back for more when they are ready.
After attending this session, I’m very excited about learning more about storage and what are the questions or statements I need to be making about storage for SQL Server. I would have liked the Denny to have given some links so I could learn more about storage. – I’ll see what links I can pull together from the various vendors so I can have one slide with stuff for each vendor as a lot of the more in depth stuff gets very vendor specific very quickly.
Did you say that the visio (sp) diagram can be link to a SAN directly to product the dash board type view of the currecnt (sp) state? – No it can’t be connected directly to the array, it has to be maintained separately. It provides a easier way to view the configuration of the array.
I wish he could have discussed iSCSI a bit since I know alot of shops have been sold that bill of goods and are struggling. – I have plans for an iSCSI specific session, I just need time to pull together an hours worth of material (or two) and decide how in depth to go. (Keep in mind I’ve been trying to put together a deck on redundant storage network design for about a year now.)
At first, I did not know what to make of the guy. He looked like a stoner, but then as the session went on, I really dug some of the points he made and he has helped me understand the SAN engineers at my company. – This is my favorite comment that I’ve ever received from any event that I’ve spoken at. I just had to share it.
add more visual aids/pictures. explain more terminology and explain/write out acronyms. its still a little high level for an intro to storage – More terminology? Damn, the deck already had 3 slides of terms. If I can break the presentation into two decks (scroll up a bit) I can do this. If anyone complains about to much terminology in the deck, I’ll point them your way. (Don’t worry, unless you tell me who you are the evals are anonymous.)
The second presentation was my Clustering 101 presentation. The numbers are surprisingly similar to the Storage session. For this session 24 people submitted reviews.
1. Please rate the speaker’s knowledge of the session topic. 4.8
2. Please rate the speaker’s presentation skills. 4.3
3. How well did the session description correspond to the actual session? 4.6
4. What is your overall evaluation of this session? 4.4
5. Comments:
The demon of demos ate the install, but not a problem at all. Excellent knowledge and ability to communicate. Could use some practice on basic presentation skills, but did not adversely effect the presentation.
The demo could have been a little better. Didn’t complete due to technical difficulties.
There were a few parts hard to follow like the software requirements. There are so many variables so it is understandable but maybe some kind of chart would work better to show this instead of the method used. Otherwise, very well done.
Thanks.
Good presentation for the time constraints. Not as deep as I would have liked, but this is a deep topic. Overall got my money’s worth. Whetted my appetite to learn more. Good job highligting the differences between SQL 2005 and SQL 2008. Denny, you are a hoot!
The third session was my “SQL Service Broker Advanced Performance Tips and Tricks” session. This session only had two people submit reviews, and only one comment was submitted.
1. Please rate the speaker’s knowledge of the session topic. 5.0
2. Please rate the speaker’s presentation skills. 3.5
3. How well did the session description correspond to the actual session? 5.0
4. What is your overall evaluation of this session? 4.5
5. Comments:
I appreciated seeing where what I’ve see in some books is not necessarily the best approach to certain aspects of using Service Broker.
See you at the next conference,
Denny
