Voice of the DBA

Author: way0utwest

  • Speakers: Rehearsals Help

    Today was a rehearsal day. Actually the last 2-3 days of work have been split between rehearsing talks that I’m giving at SQL in the City this week, and handling the other daily work I need to do. With an extra load of family chores this week, I’ve had some long days.

    I have quite a load this Friday as I have 4 talks to give.

    • One I’ve given 10 or 15 times, and I just need to review.
    • One I gave earlier this year, but it’s been rewritten with about half new content.
    • One is brand new, never delivered
    • One is a joint presentation, of which I have few parts, but I do need to be ready for those parts.

    When I work on presentations, I go through the deck, build demos, practice things, maybe go back and forth a few times as I find the flow between the items is not smooth. By the time I’m ready for a full hour practice, I’ve usually been through all demos and the slides a dozen or so times.

    The Whole Enchilada

    However going through everything in one shot is important. Your timing matters, and your smoothness in transitioning between talking, demos, and even the various elements you deal with on the screen. When I see a presenter struggle to find a setting or a button on the screen, I’m think they haven’t practiced enough, especially the whole talk.

    It’s very easy to work on parts of the talk, maybe even all parts, separately and assume you can pull them together. When you do this, however, you tend to gloss over mistakes and tell yourself that you’ll fix things the next time. At some point the next time is the actual presentation to an audience, and that’s not the right time to deliver the entire talk the first time.

    I usually set aside an hour, and actually go through the talk from end to end. I may do this silently, running through the words I want to use in my head so that my family doesn’t think I’ve gone insane, talking to myself. I’ve learned if that’s the case, I’m usually talking 15-20% faster than if I actually had to voice the words. It’s quicker to practice this way, and I’ll do this a few times. I even do this on airplanes when I’m traveling to events.

    However there’s nothing quite like delivering the talk out loud, in real time. I usually do this by myself, with the door closed so as not to frighten the children with my arm waving and pacing. I open my mobile phone’s stopwatch application, start it, and keep an eye on it as I run through the slides, talk, and demos in real time.

    A Sigh of Relief

    Today was a full practice day for 2 talks, but with a twist. One of those, the brand new talk, was one I had to give on a conference call to a few people at Red Gate. This was partially to let the project managers know what I was demoing, but also as a backup in case something happened and I wasn’t able to deliver the talk.

    After about 20 minutes of Livemeeting issues, I finally was online and ready to go. I was short of time, so I ended up going through the synopsis of each slide, and then running through most of the demos, skipping a few items where my virtual machine was acting up. It wasn’t the best run-through, but it was complete.

    When I was done, it was nice to hear the people on the other end complement the talk and content. It’s always a little worrisome for me with a new talk, since I’m never sure how well people might receive the content. A sigh of relief today that people liked the talks.

    Recordings

    One of the things I did recently to practice a talk was to record myself. Using Camtasia, I delivered the entire talk to myself, recording the session. I was able to review it later, look for spots where the content did not flow together, as well as speaking issues (um, err, etc).

    I found that to be very helpful in terms of delivering a better talk, and building confidence in the material. I found that after recording myself, reviewing the talk, and incorporating my own critique into the talk, it went much smoother than expected in front of a live audience.

    Practice

    If you plan on delivering a talk, practice it beforehand. The whole talk, in real time. It will help you prepare and you will be surprised how much it might reduce your anxiety.

  • The Best Programmers

    Keeping the best programmers is always a challenge.
    Keeping the best programmers is always a challenge.

    Are you one of the best people at your job? If you are, then do you experience some of these feelings and look to move on?

    • Frustration
    • Boredom
    • Lack of a challenge

    Or have you settled into a routine that you like and can live with? If it’s the latter, you might not really be one of the really talented people. Read this piece on How to Keep Your Best Programmers. I found it interesting that it looks at the motivations and reasons why very talented people might not like a job and move on. I think it’s mostly correct, though it’s not necessarily talent that determines whether people stay or go.

    I think most people find these same frustrations or issues with their jobs. Whether you’re a guru level programmer, or a basic beginner, if you perceive an inversion of meritocracy (or you are bored, or you don’t enjoy the job), you’ll look to leave. Whether you can is another thing completely.

    Many of us have various levels of responsibility, to our families, creditors, or even ourselves. Those responsibilities may cause us to rethink the problems with our current job, and appreciate the security of just having a job. This is especially true in today’s world where loyalty is in short supply from employers, and many of us know that the next position may not be more stable in terms of employment for the foreseeable future. As the saying goes, the devil you know is better than the devil you don’t.

    That’s the crux of the issue. A job is a job. I’ve found that to be true across many positions over the years. Some I enjoy more, but ultimately there are always tasks or duties in every position that are drudgery. They are just work. As long as you understand that, and appreciate the challenging and interesting things about your job, you’ll be fine. It’s also why I place more importance on the other staff than I do on the job responsibilities. It’s much easier to put up with a boring or annoying job if the people are interesting than it is to put up with a great job when the people suck.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcasts

    We publish three versions of the podcast each day for you to enjoy.

  • Losing Data

    We hate losing data as professionals. We should not make the simple mistakes that make it easier for this to happen.
    We hate losing data as professionals. We should not make the simple mistakes that make it easier for this to happen.

    Most of us that work as data professionals hate the idea of losing data. When the developer calls and says his test database is gone and backups were never set up, we may shrug our shoulders and offer to help next time, but we feel bad. We will try everything we can do to recover the data, usually going out of our way to give it our best effort.

    We will lose data. There will be situations that are out of our control, and we have to accept that. However we should try not to make the easy mistakes ourselves that might cause data loss. I ran across a short piece on Five Sure Ways to Lose Data and I agree with the items, but I think there are a few more things we should watch out for.

    One of the easiest mistakes to make to forget is to set up backups. Too often we implement new databases under time pressure, dealing with software that is dropped in our laps at the last minute. Security permissions are never documented and during the frustration of just getting something deployed, we may forget to set up a backup system, intending to do it next week.

    Don’t do that. Get backups set up immediately. It’s quick, it’s easy, and you should have some automated process or script ready. As soon as you complete backups, invite yourself to a meeting to set up monitoring in the next day or two. That’s one of the other easy things to fix: ensuring your backup schemes are working by monitoring your servers. Your monitoring should include alerts for DBCC checks and high severity errors in addition to backups at a minimum. Automating this, or using a tool, are the best things you can do.

    There are lots of other things we might ignore that can cause data loss, but if you get your backups working, you should be able to recover from most any situation.

    Steve Jones

    Voice of the DBA Podcasts

    The podcasts will return tomorrow.

  • SQL in the City Goes Mobile

    sitc_e.jpgThis week is the kickoff of the third year of SQL in the City from Red Gate. As we have the other years, we start 2013 off in London, and I’ll be leaving Wednesday on a quick trip across the water to speak. I’m looking forward to seeing lots of familiar faces and a few new ones as well. These events are always fun and well run by the staff from Red Gate. We have a new venue this year, the Congress Centre in the West End as well, which means more Underground map reading and memories for me as I make my way across the city from Heathrow. I lived just off Bayswater Road for a semester in college and it’s always nice to wander around the area and look for familiar landmarks.

    We’ve gone mobile this year, so if you’re coming to the event, check out our app at http://m.twoppy.com/sitc-ldn/, It’s a great way to get information on the event and follow along with what’s happening. I don’t know how much I’ll be tweeting this year since I’ve got four talks scheduled, but I’ll get a few in here and there.

    The event is full, so if you aren’t coming, please cancel and allow someone from the waiting list to take your place.

    If you’re in the US, our fall our will kick off in California in October and make it’s way across the US for 2 additional dates. You can get more information at the SQL in the City site.

    See you in London.