Today at the PASS Data Community Summit in Seattle, Kimberly Tripp is doing the first-ever in-person community keynote. Here’s the abstract:

Over the 30+ years I’ve been working with SQL Server, I’ve seen an incredible amount of innovation and change. How do we keep up with so many changes and how do we know how and when to implement them when there are so many options? I’ve always said that my favorite thing about SQL Server is that you can solve virtually any problem – by knowing the RIGHT way to solve it. Each feature has options and tweaks that make it better suited for some scenarios and inappropriate for others. And that’s led us to the “it depends” response. However, “it depends” is NOT the answer, it’s just the beginning. The beginning of a process where you understand your goals, design your strategy / prototype, and apply the appropriate technology after you’ve defined your specifications. But how do you keep up with the innovation? How do you keep your team happy? Learning, Sharing, and Growing – these are the mainstays of a cohesive and productive team not to mention, the best way to leverage such a powerful platform.

I’ll be live-blogging the keynote, sharing my thoughts about what happens. You can refresh the post to follow along – the most current notes will be at the bottom, so if you’re reading later, you can read through the recap as it happened.

7:55AM: Folks are trickling into the keynote room to the tunes of smoooooth jaaaaazzz again. This music is a perfect fit for the chill Friday. Attendance will be lower today as folks start to travel home.

8:02AM: Steve Jones took the stage to talk about how Redgate wanted the 3rd day of the Summit to have a community keynote.

Watching @way0utwest welcome folks to the third day of the #PASSDataCommunitySummit. pic.twitter.com/5t4KJarxtJ

— Brent Ozar (@BrentO) November 18, 2022

8:06AM: Steve talked about how SQL Saturday grew from 1 event in 2007, to over 100 events a year in 2019. PASS acquired that brand several years ago, and then when Redgate acquired PASS, Redgate gave the SQLSaturday brand away to a non-profit 501.3c. Steve hopes to see more events in 2023.

8:07AM: Thanks to AWS for sponsoring the Day 3 Community Keynote.

8:08AM: KillaDBA (Homer McEwen) took the stage to sing his song Hug a DBA. I believe this is the first song in history to correctly use the word ‘tuple.’

Now @KillaDBA on the stage at #PassCommunityDataSummit to sing Hug a DBA. pic.twitter.com/8aGXSM2vEv

— Brent Ozar (@BrentO) November 18, 2022

8:11AM: Another one! His new song about SQL Server 2022. Dang, he’s fast with the words.

8:15AM: Steve Jones brought Kimberly Tripp onstage: “I started working with SQL Server when I was 2, and it’s been a fun 33 years.” I laughed out loud. Nicely done.

Industry icon @KimberlyLTripp taking the stage. #PassCommunityDataSummit pic.twitter.com/lPcMJzGQAD

— Brent Ozar (@BrentO) November 18, 2022

8:20AM: Kim brought Paul Randal onstage to help.

Kim’s Vanna White, @PaulRandal, joining onstage. #PassCommunityDataSummit pic.twitter.com/h4W6Pw9jcX

— Brent Ozar (@BrentO) November 18, 2022

8:21AM: Kim reviewed the history of SQL Server. In May 1989, SQL Server 1.0 for OS/2 was released. It was a single process that ran on a single thread.

8:22AM: Kim & Paul showed boxes of SQL Server 4.21 for Windows NT. It looks like Paul’s about to run the world’s worst used software auction onstage, hahaha.

8:24AM: Kim did a show of hands of people who started with SQL Server 6.5, and a lot of hands went up. (Me too.) She talked about how it’s amazing that so many of us have stuck with the same product over the years, and she said it might be due to the quality of the community.

8:30AM: Kim said circa 2019, Twitter was handling 500 million tweets a day, and email was handling 294 billion emails a day. (Most of which on both platforms was spam, heh.) In 2021, Google was handling about 8 billion searches per day.

8:34AM: In Kim’s survey of the community, 48% said they always use a search engine, and another 46% frequently use search engines. We kinda take that for granted now, but when us old people got started in databases, that simply wasn’t an option.

8:43AM: Kim covered a lot of changes in hardware, storage, and the data we’ve handled over the last 30 years. Her message is that big data isn’t a fad: it’s the same as it’s always been. It just keeps growing.

8:48AM: The SQL Server storage engine was rewritten in 7.0, and most of the basic design ideas (like 8KB pages) have lasted 20 years. Kim pointed out that even though there are new storage structures (In-Memory OLTP, columnstore), most of the time, the 20 year old stuff is still the most appropriate.

8:53AM: Kim said that when the folks in the audience chose a career, they chose wisely. Data is growing, the field is growing, businesses are realizing its worth. Kim said that on Career Builder right now, 13,073 jobs show up for Database Administrator.

8:56AM: “There’s enough work out there for all of us.” Kim encouraged everyone to learn, share, and grow in the community.

9:03AM: Kim gave everyone homework. Grab the title slide from every session they attended, create 1-2 slides with highlights in their own words from each session, and present that to their manager and their team. Great idea, because it proves the ROI of sending people to a conference, and helps you get budgetary approval for next year.

And hopefully I’ll see YOU here next year, dear reader! Off to the Community Zone to hang out with folks.