PASS Summit 2009 was great, Thanks!

Last week was great! Why? Because I attended PASS Summit 2009 in Seattle!
Here are my top 5 reasons that made the conference well worthy for me:

The conference was packed with great speakers and sessions. I got to attend just few ones as I spent some time as volunteer in the Ask the Expert Lounge and the Birds of a Feather Lunch. For that reason, I am ordering the PASS 2009 Summit DVD with all sessions this week.

A good chunk of Microsoft team members from the products that are important for me were there too. They were there not only to serve as speakers, but to hang out with the attendees, answer their questions and gather feedback from them about the product. In my case, I made quite few contacts with team members of the products that I am currently using (or planning to use): Visual Studio team, SSIS, PowerPivot (code name Gemini) and SQL Azure.

I got to meet lot of great people, including peers, Microsoft developers, PASS directors, and a new group of fellow MVPs. So many people, that I will not attempt to list them here!

My geek side got re-energized with new ideas and a list of new things to explore, that would not have been in my radar if I hadn’t attended the conference. E.g. the latest improvements in Power Pivot for Excel and SharePoint and the new face Performance Point got inside of SharePoint just to mention a couple.

Lastly, I had a lot of fun. The conference organizers and sponsors know how to go the extra mile to make sure the fun does not end after the last session each day, and came up with parties and gatherings that served as the perfect stage for networking.

For these and much more, let me say thanks to all the people that made possible such event.

PASS, Thanks so much, and see you again next year!