Last Saturday was the SQL Saturday #189 Costa Rica event and what an awesome event! Thanks to everyone who helped make this such a great event; the organizers, the sponsors, the attendees and the speakers. Being well into April, it was quite a shock to come back to Minnesota and receive another 9 inches of snow. I should have stayed in Costa Rica a bit longer. 😀

Friday night the group went out to a restaurant called Mirador Tiquicia in Escazu. It was a bit of a drive and up a very steep hill, but it was worth it! At the top it had an amazing view of the entire city of San Jose. Here is a glimpse of the view with my wife and I.

For dinner we had a delicious buffet of traditaional Costa Rican food. Then, traditional Costa Rican dancers performed in the middle of the restaurant. What a great night!

On Saturday, it was time for the big event. There were 320 registered, and 257 who attended. The conference took place at the Aurola Holiday Inn in San Jose. Here you can see Eduardo Castro making the welcome announcements. In this picture he’s introducing the speakers for the day. I’m on the bottom of this slide.

My 2 sessions were in the afternoon so I mingled and attended the morning sessions. Then it was off to lunch which was on an upper floor of the hotel. Again, we were treated to a nice view of San Jose and a great lunch. Here are some pictures of San Jose from the dinning area.

After a short break, it was then time to get to work. Here is me getting ready for my first session.

I first presented on Master Data Services, and then on Data Quality Services. Thank you to everyone who attended my sessions and for being such a great crowd. The questions were good and hopefully everyone left knowing a bit more about MDS and DQS.

I had such a great time and met so many fun people; Eduardo Castro, Kenneth Ureña (Thanks for the coffee it was awesome!), Joaquin Zuñiga, Kevin Boles, Luis Carlos Diaz, Alex Vargas, Jesus Gil, Russell Fustino, and many others! Latin America has a great SQL Server community. Thank you for letting me be a part of this event. Hopefully I’ll be able to attend again next year!