Voice of the DBA

Category: Blog

  • Finding a SQL Saturday Board of Directors

    I wrote recently about looking for candidates and the criteria that I initially considered. I am happy to say quite a few people expressed interest, and my list of people grew quite a bit. I wanted to disclose a bit about the process that I am following and take any feedback on my direction.

    As a disclosure, no one else at Redgate is under consideration for the items below, though I am talking with a few others that can give me advice and thoughts on the process. It’s a good check for my thoughts, while respecting the privacy of people involved.

    BTW, if you are one of the people I’ve contacted, make sure you reply to my email.

    Advisors

    The first thing I started to think about as I went through the list is that this is really, really, really hard. There are amazing people already out there helping the community, with tremendous passion. They are also diverse, in many ways.

    Trying to decide on a list of 8 is very hard. I also am self-aware enough to know that I have my own internal biases and thoughts. I might not see something others will.

    As a result, I decided to put together a list of advisors that can glance at my short list and let me know if they see anything wrong. I am not asking them for votes, but really to point out where they think I might not be adhering to my own guidelines, aware enough of diversity, or making a mistake based on my own ignorance.

    As with other parts of this process, I am not disclosing names, as these individuals have a right to privacy, and I do not wish to expose them to any trolling or harsh judgment on the Internet. I know, this might not be perfect, but this is a semi-messy process at this point.

    At this point, I have 4 people that have agreed to help and a few other requests outstanding.

    I will also make final decisions, so mistakes are my fault.

    Previous Pass Leadership

    One of the things I am not doing here is replacing PASS. This is an effort to restart SQL Saturdays, learning from the last few years. There are also legal considerations with the insolvency of PASS and NDAs.

    I am not looking to include anyone on this board that served on the board of PASS in the last 3 years. Many of those people may look to be a part of this effort in the future, and I would welcome their interest, but for now this is an attempt to make a clean break with the recent past, and return to something more like the aims and goals of SQL Saturday during its origins.

    Candidates

    My initial list of 24 got cut down to about 18 at first, with several people declining because of personal reasons. My post also generated a dozen more, and I got recommendations from some people I contacted.

    I sent out 33 initial interest notes. As of now, I have 12 people that are on the super short list that expressed interest. A few dropped out, and a few are busy at the moment. A few gave me more names.

    My initial outreach was pointing them to my previous post. A follow-up in email contained this message:

    “Thanks for your interest in the SQL Saturday foundation. For lack of a better name right now, I’ll stick with SSF.

    This is my initial view of what I want candidates to think about and commit to.

    My vision is a BoD that meets a few times a year, has legal and fiduciary obligations to the non profit (though no personal, legal, or financial liability). The meetings initially are likely to be more email and debate/discussion. I hope to have close to 100% of the discussion publicly published, except where legalities might cause an issue. So you’d have to express thoughts and opinions strongly.

    I am not looking for someone to agree with me or think like me, but for diverse thoughts on how to improve/grow/advance the SQL Saturday brand and franchise. My thought is that we will aim for an initial term of 1 year, but I would prefer not everyone leave at the same time, so the board will have to decide to potentially extend some people to 18-24 months so there is some continuity from board to board.

    If you are still interested, let me know. I’m not publicly disclosing candidates right now for their own privacy. At some point, I will need to make a decision and reduce the list to 8 people and announce their names. I also don’t intend to disclose those I haven’t chosen, unless they wish to.

    Steve”

    To those that replied positively, I’m adding them to the super short list. Those that haven’t, need to do so or they will be dropped.

    I expect that I will get more responses in the coming days, and maybe this post will get a few people to think or respond.

    Decisions

    While I to need to work with people, I do not want them to defer to me or agree with me just because it is me or I’m leading this effort. In fact, I am thinking a little more heavily about those people that have disagreed with me in the past. We need debate and discourse, in a civil manner, but we need people that think differently and come to rough consensus, not unanimous agreement. I think unanimity often leads to some blind spots.

    I am thinking about diversity, about geography and gender and ethnicity, as well as how people have struck me as thoughtful, with some insight and consideration.

    I am going to give people a week to respond. I know some might be on vacation, might need to think for a day or two, and I would still like more names outside the US/UK/ANZ world. Not that I need more choices, or want them, but because I think I should get more, and this should be a hard decision.

    Timeline

    I have no set timeline right now. I am waiting on some legal things to finalize, and really cannot move too far forward for now. However, I know that having a board ready is important, so that we can get events moving up and running.

    I am hoping to start cutting down the list next week (22 Mar) and trying to get to 12-15. I have had to make personnel decisions before, and I have found it helpful to do this in stages, rather than all at once, so that is what I’m doing.

    I welcome thoughts, comments, and criticisms of this process. It will help me ensure I am not making too many mistakes.

  • Daily Coping 18 Mar 2021

    I started to add a daily coping tip to the SQLServerCentral newsletter and to the Community Circle, which is helping me deal with the issues in the world. I’m adding my responses for each day here. All my coping tips are under this tag. 

    Today’s tip is to stay fully present while drinking your cup of coffee or tea.

    I usually make coffee in the morning and go to work. Often I’m in a meeting or doing some work while I’m sipping. I might catch up on some recorded video stuff from work, but usually I’m distracted from my coffee. If it’s a slow start to the day, I might read a bit.

    When I saw this tip, I decided to have a cup and do nothing. I poured one, walked to the window, and looked out at the world. I tried to observe, be present, and think about what I see, and not work or any other issue.

    A minor form of meditation, but a nice one.

  • Summarizing a Script with SQL Prompt

    I have never used this feature, but someone was asking for feedback on Prompt, and I noticed  this in the menu: Summarize script.

    prompt_summary_a

    I had guessed that it might look at the code and give me some outline, which is what it does, but I wasn’t sure how it might work. I decided to try it on a few scripts.

    I had a demo script for a customer, and I ran it there. I got what I expected, an ordering of various operations.

    2021-03-12 08_10_22-SQLQuery1.sql - ARISTOTLE.sandbox (ARISTOTLE_Steve (65))_ - Microsoft SQL Server

    Useful in some sense. I can see I cleaned up the CREATE with the DROP. However, I could also see that easily if I looked at the script. Depending on length, this might be helpful to remind me or let me see if I’ve dropped all the code I expected.

    I picked a longer script from some of the Advent of Code stuff I’ve been slowly working on. In this one, there is some looping, as it’s a looping type of problem (to me). In this case, I see something more complex.

    2021-03-12 08_14_16-day3.sql - ARISTOTLE.AdventofCode (ARISTOTLE_Steve (57)) - Microsoft SQL Server

    Not a lot of information from the SELECTs, but I do see some looping. The actual code is a bunch of math changes, and I could have used SET, which might have helped here. This let’s me see that the code is more of a procedural construct, which looks like this:

    2021-03-12 08_14_51-day3.sql - ARISTOTLE.AdventofCode (ARISTOTLE_Steve (57)) - Microsoft SQL Server

    What about other types of code? I looked at a CTE, which wasn’t that helpful. I can’t see the base tables here, which isn’t useful.

    2021-03-12 08_16_26-SQLQuery1.sql - ARISTOTLE.sandbox (ARISTOTLE_Steve (61)) - Microsoft SQL Server

    However, in AdventureWorks, there is a procedure that shows me a TRY CATCH. In a long set of code, this might help me make sure I’ve actually included the CATCH, among other things.

    2021-03-12 08_17_41-SQLQuery5.sql - ARISTOTLE_SQL2017.AdventureWorks2017 (ARISTOTLE_Steve (61)) - Mi

    I’m not sure how useful this feature is, but it’s now in my mind to try a few times and see what I think. What is the outline and structure of my code.

    If you have other ideas, I’m sure Redgate would appreciate suggestions. Otherwise, give it a try and let me know if it works.

    If you don’t have SQL Prompt, it’s an amazing developer productivity tool, and we now offer it as a subscription, so you can try it for a bit longer than than evaluation without committing.

  • Daily Coping 17 Mar 2021

    I started to add a daily coping tip to the SQLServerCentral newsletter and to the Community Circle, which is helping me deal with the issues in the world. I’m adding my responses for each day here. All my coping tips are under this tag. 

    Today’s tip is to get outside and notice how the weather feels on your face.

    While I live on a ranch, there are days that I don’t really go outside. I might work most of the day and then get in the car to go to the gym, but I sometimes forget to step outside.

    However, this is Colorado, and we are blessed with amazing weather the vast majority of the time. We have over 300 sunny days a year, and that’s a big part of why I moved here.

    Last weekend we had a big snowstorm. While it wasn’t what many could call the best weather, it was nice to go outside, even in some wind, and feel the weather. A cold winter day, snow falling, not miserable, but a refreshing day.

    I could feel flakes drop on my cheeks, the wind chilling me where skin wasn’t covered up, but warm inside a coat, ski pants, hat, and gloves. My lungs opened up, I breathed hard while walking around and feeding some hay.

    A good day to be alive.