If these wouldn't have happened

Ten things that had changed my life dramatically.

1. A back injury when I was in 11th grade that kept my away from playing Volley Ball. If I would have continued playing, who knows I would have end up screwing my academics. With help of the injury, I made a better score in 12th Grade and got admitted to one of the best engineering colleges in Tamilnadu.

2. A playful college life that left me among millions of people searching for IT job. But, it was this place that gave me friends for life time.

3. My first job in Covansys, I was moved to Covansys Bangalore along with the entire batch of Freshers and placed in PeopleSoft project. Thanks to the management for putting me in Infrastructure Admin role. My first job was kind of Windows Admin/PeopleSoft DBA.

4. Things changed again forcing move to Quit Covansys and move to Chennai. Got a job in Hexaware, Chennai as PeopleSoft/SQL Server DBA in the internal systems Project. A role that I will remember for lifetime, it was here that I nurtured from an amateur Professional to an expert.

5. An unwanted argument that led me to decide on quitting Hexaware. Thanks to Lord, if this would not have happened I would have still been with Hexaware and would not have been what I am now.

6. Life @ CITIGROUP, a short-lived one but changed the most of my professional career. I have dreamt of being a Microsoft Valuable Professional, it was here that I made friendship with Vidhyasagar and Deepak, both of them are current MVPs to bring something out of us to become one of India's renowned SQL Server MVPs.

7. Help from my Schoolmate Vijay, who guided me to get H1B visa to USA. Again, a lifetime dream that was accomplished with some hurdles here and there.

8. My current job in ThomsonReuters. I am glad to work with expertise SQL Server team and with help of people around me here, I can assure that I would one day realize my dream of seeing me as Vice-President of Operations, IT for some company around this little world.

9. One that often disturbs me now and then, an unexpected surgery to my father that took him out of being in his usual activeness and one that keeps us bothering now and then.

10. Long-awaited one, my marriage as the famous saying goes "In the opinion of the world, marriage ends all, as it does in a comedy. The truth is precisely the opposite: it begins all". We are planning to make the beginning. At the end of road, we wish to hear "Better Half" related to us and Yes, It's "We Wish"

Thank You ALL for making SQL Data Camp @ Chennai a GRAND SUCCESS

Organizing an event is a tough job and making it a great success is toughest job. I hope, Chennai SQL Server User Group did what it makes to say SQL data camp a GRAND SUCCESS,
At this moment being the chairperson of the organizing committee, I would like to thank people who were involved in bringing success to the first ever day long SQL Server event in India.

Speakers:
I would like to thank all the speakers for accepting our invitation to deliver a session.

Pinal, travelling from Malaysia to Hyderabad and to Chennai only to make for this event and delivered two excellent sessions on indexing.

Madhu, Sudhir Mahendru and Basker Krishnamoorthy(members of Data Architecture Center of Expertise (DACoE) of Cognizant Technology Solutions) - This team was impressive in making clear to audience why DATA DESIGNING is so important to any application development lifecycle.

Venkatesan Prabhu, I have to make a special mention about him. He made great changes to his vacation calendar just to make for this event and was pleasant to have him travelling from Australia at the right time.

Raymond, from Doubletake software presented one of the most exciting sessions on high availability with Doubletake. I have never seen an UG giving one full session to a sponsor and we are proud of making our sponsor a part of our team.

Sponsors:
If speakers were driving the event throughout the day, it was our sponsors you were with us from the day we planned till this last moment bringing energy and enthusiasm among us. The following are the persons who drove us through success.

Blythe Morrow, Sujatha Metha, Sanj Gaddam of PASS.
Doubletake Software
Redgate software
Sql-articles.com
Jacob Sebastian of BeyondRelational.com

My User Group Colleagues - Vidhyasagar and Deepak:
These both, I have no words to thank them; I am New York and was instructing them to do what needs to be done. And these guys have accomplished more than what I asked them. They have always been part of my community journey and this one is next stepping stone for us. We together have set a new milestone of conducting an event for SQL Server and we will make sure we will better this one in future events.

User Group Members:
This group has been one of the most active SQL server user groups around India and the members have been most energetic lot. They are the one who bring us enthusiasm and energy for us to take steps forward.

Personally, I was so proud to hear from Pinal, Vidhyasagar and Deepak that there so many attendees wanting to meet and chat with me. I apologize for not turning to be there. But I will make sure that I will meet everyone when I am in India for vacation.

Nagesh, Selva and Senthil:
These three need a special mention here. They have no association with either this User Group or SQL Server but were kindhearted enough to help us from designing the Logos, website, arranging things, coordinating with vendors, loaning their personal car for shuttle and what not. Thank You guys. Without you we would have had tough time managing things around us.

I would once again take this opportunity to Thank everyone for making this event a GRAND SUCCESS.

If I would have missed someone, please apologize me.

Thank you All.

SQL Server 2008 R2 by MAY 2010

Microsoft has announced the SQL Server 2008 R2 will be released to manufacturing in May 2010. The official statement is in the link below.

http://blogs.technet.com/dataplatforminsider/archive/2010/01/19/sql-server-2008-r2-gets-an-official-date.aspx