Hello, THWACKworld!
My name is Chrystal Taylor or ChrystalT here on Thwack. I am the Managed Services Team Lead for Loop1 Systems and have been a Thwack member and Thwack MVP since 2011. I actually cut my teeth on the IT world and monitoring in general with SolarWinds back in 2011. Everything was new to me, having come from retail and only with an avid gaming background, and I was (and still am) eager to soak up all of the knowledge! I am a SolarWinds fan girl and really love when I get to assist clients with getting the most out of their SolarWinds products. My very favorite thing to do is customize things or find a way to do things that maybe haven’t been done before or even I just haven’t done before. I have attended every THWACKcamp virtually since its inception and last year was able to attend in person for the first time. That experience was so fun and made my brain happy to communicate with SolarWinds staff and the other MVPs in attendance.
I am looking forward to every session again this year and find value in every session, even being a veteran SolarWinds admin. I never fail to learn something new or just think about something in a different way from these sessions between the Head Geeks, guest speakers, and the chat during the session. I will be watching all the sessions at some point and attending as many as I can, so look for me in the chat!
One of the sessions that I am most looking forward to is The Seven Samurai of SQL Server Data Protection with Thomas LaRock and Karen Lopez. That session intrigues me for multiple reasons. I never like to pass up an opportunity to hear Thomas LaRock speak, or read his tweets, and SQL server is a fun interest of mine. Not only is it helpful for me to know as much as I can about it to support the backend of SolarWinds Orion but writing SQL queries is one of the most fun things for me to do. In addition to that, security is such a hot button topic and I feel finding ways to secure our data is of paramount importance and can only help us support our monitoring platform better. I am very interested to hear what Karen Lopez is going to add to the conversation working with so many large environments and programs as well. It should be a fun and interesting discussion!
The Seven Samurai of SQL Server Data Protection airs on October 18th at 12 PM CT! 
To see the full schedule of sessions, register here.
