Wow. Just wow. I’m totally humbled to say that my sp_Blitz® session and my AlwaysOn Availability Groups session were both voted among the best ten sessions at the PASS Summit 2012 conference.

The sp_Blitz® session felt like the best session I’d ever presented in my life. The room was jam packed full of people with great energy:

And there were over 100 people in the overflow room watching me on video, too. I had no idea there was even an overflow room until halfway into the presentation. One of the in-person attendees said, “@RonDBA would like to ask a question via Twitter from the overflow room.” Me: “The what?”

I took risks on both of ’em: sp_Blitz® was 100% demos (which are always prone to unplanned explosions), and my AlwaysOn session was all slides (which is prone to complaints about a lack of demos). To mitigate those risks, I put a hell of a lot of time into testing my demos, and I tried to bring a lot of life to my slides. For 2013, I’m thinking about new ways to take risks and bring surprises.

This makes four years in a row that I’ve been in the top 10 sessions, and I have a theory about this. I think I get good feedback because I attract the right kind of attendees – people who want to have fun while they learn.

Thanks to you, it’s just as much fun on this side of the podium.