This fall is the DevConnections SQL Server Connections conference in Las Vegas again. It’s at the Bellagio, setting for one of my favorite movies, Ocean’s 11. It’s a smaller conference this time, and SQLServerCentral only has 4 slots for the event. Both Grant Fritchey and myself will be speaking on the Monday. At least I think we will. The schedule isn’t out, but that’s what I was told.

I haven’t decided, but I’d like to try for a tweetup/meetup one night there, perhaps in front of the famous fountains. It would be neat to see a few SQL Server people at the spot shown at the end of the movie.

In any case, I’m heading back to Las Vegas. I enjoy visiting, and am looking forward to wandering around a bit.

I’ve also got a lot of work to do. I have two sessions, one on binary data search in SQL Server, using the Integrated Full Text Search, and another on Policy Based Management. Both interesting topics to me, and areas where I’ve done some work, but I have to dig in over the next month or two and build a couple great presentations.

If there is anything you want to learn about these topics, let me know. I haven’t quite decided where I’m going to focus, other than what’s in the abstracts. I have some room to speak in a few areas, but I’ve learned time goes away quickly when you’re presenting, so I need to be sure I’m focused.

Hopefully I’ll meet some of you at the event. SQL Server Connections is a neat conference, one where you have the chance to learn a lot in a bunch of different areas. With 8 other conferences co-located, I always find a few sessions outside the SQL world that I find very interesting. A lot of the private cloud, SVVM, and related topics I’ve seen talked about recently were things I saw at the last Connections event in March. I expect there will be a lot of Windows 2012 stuff in the fall, just in time for you to plan for the 2013 budgets.

Check out the event, and think about joining me in Las Vegas. It’s a good place for an event, easy to get to, and there are lots of activities to join in outside of the conference.