I spoke at the Melbourne SQL Server Users Group on Monday, October 12, 2009. The group meets at lunch time the 2nd Monday of each month in downtown Melbourne. I spoke on Getting the Most Out of the SQL Server 2005/2008 Profiler. The group is hosted by Greg Low, and sponsored by SolidQ Australia.

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I just made a whirlwind trip to Newcastle to speak at the Newcastle Coders Group, on “Getting the Most Out of the SQL Server 2005/2008 Profiler”. I took a 3-hour train ride from Sydney to Newcastle in the afternoon, made my presentation at 6:00 PM, then returned to Sydney the following morning. I didn’t get much opportunity to see much of Newcastle, although the train ride went through part of the Australian Blue Mountains.

The group is run by volunteers Peter Drew, David Williams, Sharon Parry, and Stephen New, and meets the 1st Wednesday of each month at 6:00PM at Forsythes IT and Training. Peter was very helpful in helping make the arrangements for this trip.

One thing I learned new from my trip is that much of the sand that you find on the beaches of resorts in Hawaii actually comes from Newcastle. While I knew that Hawaii imported a lot of sand (because the islands aren’t old enough to have created much of its own), I didn’t know that Newcastle was one of the sources of the sand.

Tomorrow, I am off to the SQL Server Code Camp in Wagga Wagga.

On Friday, October 3, I spoke a second time at Perth, this time at the Perth SQL Server Users Group. My presentation was on “Introducing the SQL Server 2008 Performance Data Collector.”

Again, the event was hosted by Mitch Wheat, who is also the leader of the Perth .NET Users Group. After the presentation, Mitch, and several other attendees, took me to a local restaurant for dinner, where I got to learn more about what it is like to live in Australia, and to learn to speak a little “Australian”. Do you know the difference between “freshies” and a “salties”? Now I do.

On Saturday, I spent the entire day getting back to Sydney, and then spent Sunday off, taking a tour of the Sydney Harbor on an 1850’s style 3-mast sailing ship. Although it was cloudy and rainy when we went out for the 2-hour cruise, it still was a great way to see more of Sydney.

Next, I’m off to speak at the Newcastle Coders Group on Wednesday. I’ll be taking a train from Sydney, staying the night, and returning back to Sydney the following day. This weekend, I’ll be presenting at the SQL Down Under Code Camp in Wagga Wagga.

As the first stop of my five city speaking tour of Australia, I spoke at the Perth .NET Users Group on Thursday, October 1, 2009 on “How to Interpret SQL Server Graphical Execution Plans.

The group is run by Mitch Wheat, a Visual C# MVP (left in the photo), who helped me a lot with coordinating my down under speaking tour, and who is very active in the user group community.

The users group, which has been in existence for over five years, averages about 42 attendees each meeting, which are held the first Thursday of every month, at 5:30 PM at Excom Education, in downtown Perth. For more information on upcoming presentations, visit www.perthdotnet.org.

I’ve just began my 30-day tour of Australia and New Zealand, where I will be making 11 presentations in 9 different cities. I began my journey from my home, on the Big Island of Hawaii at 9:30 AM on Saturday, and arrived in Sydney at 8:30 PM on Sunday. Hawaii is located at -10 GMT, while Sydney is located at +10 GMT, a 20 hour time difference. It is not as bad as it seems, as we crossed the International Date time, so while, technically speaking, we are 20 hours apart, in effect, the time change was only 4 hours different.

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