This weekend I had the good fortune to not just attend but also present at SQLSaturday #54 down in Salt Lake City, Utah.

Thursday night Nuurdygirl (blog|twitter), DorkDog and I got in the car and started the long drive down from Seattle to Salt Lake. DorkDog is Dorky

14 hours, one wrong turn and 900 miles later we arrived with plenty of time to spare before the speaker dinner which consisted of a little food and a lot of louds laughs.

I was able to get a good nights sleep and found myself up nice and early to get to the event. The cloudy skies saw the speakers and volunteers arrive where Pat Wright (blog|twitter) had coffee and bagels waiting (along with donuts for the speakers, cos we’re special).

While the crowds arrived I hung out with some of the other speakers; Denny Cherry (blog|twitter), TJay Belt (blog|twitter), Bill Pearson (twitter), Randy Knight (twitter) and Jason Brimhall (blog|twitter).

All too soon it was time for my first session “Backup & Restore Basics”. I was surprised and pleased at the size of the turn out. The group I was presenting to was very engaged and asked some great questions. Other than fat fingering a CTRL-R and some good natured joshing from Pat and Jason in the peanut gallery things went very smoothly. I did learn one important thing…when presenting make sure you have copious amounts of water on hand as the thirst kicks in big time.

My session over I decided to sit in and watch Denny Cherry at work. If you’ve never seen Denny present I’d highly recommend attending a session sometime. There’s no particular session you need attend, you’ll find yourself learning something and being massively entertained along the way (just be aware, he’s not always ever pc).

While the attendees munched on lunch pizza I did final preparation for my other session of the day “Be Safe Out There: Ship Those Logs”. There were far less people in this session and fewer questions so I was able to breeze through this very quickly and left folks with a couple of minutes break before heading into their next sessions.

The remainder of the day saw me hanging out with the other speakers, finally getting some lunch (thanks Pat) and laughing a great deal.

I’d really like to thank Jason for saving us from someone who shall just be known as SQLStalker, and acknowledge TJay for apologizing to the poor woman who found herself in SQLStalkers sights.

The end of the day found me absolutely exhausted and I was out cold asleep by 9pm. This wasn’t all bad though as I was well rested to take the long drive back home on Sunday.

All in all it was a great event, I got to meet some awesome people and felt good about my presentations.

A HUGE thanks to Pat and TJay for organizing this event. They are already looking towards putting on another SQLSaturday event in September next year. I know that I’ll be there, hopefully you can make it too.