I don’t know anyone at Spotify, nor have I worked there. However when I see descriptions and explanations like this one of how they organize and build their culture, it makes me think they’re doing it right.
Autonomy is important, and it helps motivate people. I need to do more writing here, but for now, check out this video. About 13 minutes long, but interesting.
The Internet of Things is upon us. I’ve heard this term quite a bit recently, and certainly there’s been no shortage of new hardware items that are being onnected to the Internet. The last ten years have seen all sorts of products get IP addresses: mobile phones and cars, along with washing machines and refrigerators. Some have been silly attempts to make a connection to the Internet without a practical problem being solved, but some have been very interesting.
However I think we will truly start to see more and more devices created in the next decade. The advent of cheap hardware (Raspberry Pis and Arduinos as two examples) and the ability to construct new cases and programs (with 3D printing) will lead to many individuals, as well as companies, starting to build their own devices to capture data as sensors, or perform small tasks that we find handy.
Should we care? Yes. Many of these items will produce logs or other status information. Much of this data will be stored in databases. Perhaps in relational platforms like SQL Server, perhaps sampled and queried as a stream with much of the data discarded (using StreamInsight and SQL Server), perhaps stored in some NoSQL type platform (HDInsight/Hadoop, anyone?). For many of us that means more data to manage, new information to develop software against, new patterns to discover with creative queries.
It should also mean more work, probably more employment, and hopefully, more money.
Steve Jones
The Voice of the DBA Podcast
Listen to the MP3 Audio ( 1.9MB) podcast or subscribe to the feed at iTunes and Mevio . feed
The Voice of the DBA podcast features music by Everyday Jones. No relation, but I stumbled on to them and really like the music. Support this great duo at http://www.everydayjones.com.
It’s three days to the first SQL Saturday in Nevada, taking place this Saturday in Las Vegas. I’m looking forward to going, meeting new people, and seeing lots of friends. The speaker lineup is amazing and you can see them all for FREE.
Just register and make your way to Las Vegas this Saturday. Looking forward to seeing some of you this weekend.
I remember seeing the telepresense robot on The Big Bang Theory and thinking it was somewhat silly, and not a great substitute for a live person. The whole episode was a bit humorous and funny, with Sheldon attempting to prevent himself from befalling any harm by using the robot to substitute for him at work.
It’s amazing how your view of the world can change in a few years. The past three years have had me traveling 15+ times a year to various events to deliver presentations on a variety of topics. However I’m cancelling all future talks in 2014, at least for live travel.
The VGo telepresence robot has been offered to Red Gate on a trial basis for us to test it in a number of ways. We are looking to use this robot to allow us to reach more users and deliver more talks as well as perform consulting for some of our customers. We have worked with VGo to not only allow a broadcast presence of myself or a developer from Red Gate, but we have built a turnkey demonstration system.
With a custom shipping container holding the VGo and a Gigbyte BRIX mounted on it, anyone can easily unpack the robot in minute, unfolding it in a room, plug it into power, a microphone, and a video projector. It will automatically power up and log onto the Verizon network, where I can connect to it from home and reconfigure it for local networking. I can not only control the robot and address an audience (as well as hear them), I can also control the various VMs on the BRIX and demonstrate any SQL Server setup that suits the talk.
As you might guess, this will allow me to broadcast to SQL Saturday events every week as well as attend many other conferences. If things work well, Red Gate is looking to deploy a few of these for not only presentations, but also for consulting in helping our customers use our tools to build robust software delivery piplines. We can ship one to a customer and then work with them in a remote situation.
I’ve very excited about the entire pilot, mostly because it’s a joke on April 1. For now. Perhaps we’ll give this a try at some point.
Steve Jones
The Voice of the DBA Podcast
Listen to the MP3 Audio ( 2.9MB) podcast or subscribe to the feed at iTunes and Mevio . feed
The Voice of the DBA podcast features music by Everyday Jones. No relation, but I stumbled on to them and really like the music. Support this great duo at www.everydayjones.com.
