Daily Coping 21 Dec 2020

Posted on December 21, 2020 by way0utwest

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 see how many different people you can smile at today.

I often wave and smile at people when I drive around my neighborhood. I smile and wave at people in town, especially kids. I don’t seem to meet a lot of people these days, and with masks, I can’t always let someone know I’ve smiled or see if they smile back.

I can, however, count my smiles. On a recent day I had to go to the doctor and the grocery before heading home. I smiled at these people, some of whom responded, so I’m guessing they could tell I was smiling under my mask.

  • nurse admitting me into the facility
  • doctor examining me
  • 2nd nurse taking my blood
  • receptionist returning paperwork
  • employee walking into store
  • cashier
  • 3 family members

Not a huge total, but I managed to get 9 people today.

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Placing my Bid for SQLSaturday.com

Posted on December 18, 2020 by way0utwest

I’m making my bid. I don’t know this brand needs to continue, or that it will, but I’d like to hold this for posterity, at least in an interim basis.

Note: This is a personal bid, not associated with my employer, Redgate Software, or any other enterprise.

2020-12-18 14_38_36-Bid for SQLSaturday.com - Message (HTML)

Feel free to submit your own bid. I am hoping PASS is willing to return this brand to the founders.

Update: I have had numerous offers to help crowdsource the cost, which I appreciate. If you are willing to contribute, let me know. I would prefer to ask for equal shares from everyone if it comes to that.

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Speaker Guidance: Save Your Data

Posted on December 18, 2020 by way0utwest

The PASS organization (and likely SQL Saturday) are shutting down their sites on 15 Jan,  2021. This means that potentially lots of links and data will disappear.

There are people in the community saving some of the data, and images. I’m hoping to put some of those in an archive that will live on and remain accessible, but for speakers, the links to events are part of our living CV. It may be important for you to capture some of this.

I’ve got a few things for you to do, especially those of you that are Microsoft (or other) MVPs, or nominated. I have thoughts here on image schedules and your living CV.

Note that you might not care about this, or you might not be sure. However, once the data is gone, it’s gone, so you might want to get it now and decide on its value later.

Sections here:

Image Schedules

I should have done this years ago, as some events (like DevConnections), get rid of their site for particular events and only show the schedule for the next one. As a matter of fact, they’re done.

For SQL Saturdays, you can get the schedule for an event on their page. For example, I spoke at SQL Sat 997 – Salt Lake City. I can get the schedule from an image capture:

2020-12-18 12_02_12-SQLSaturday #997 - Salt Lake City 2020 _ Sessions _ Schedule

Or at the bottom, there is an export to PDF. I recommend you save these, then upload the image/pdf to someplace you can link to from your CV.

2020-12-18 12_03_18-SQLSaturday #997 - Salt Lake City 2020 _ Sessions _ Schedule

Going forward, I’d continue to do this, and even take pictures on a marquee when we get back to live events.

Speaking CV

I track lots of activity for my Microsoft MVP award, but I also keep a Speaking CV I can point to from my resume. For me, this is a static page on my WordPress blog that I update, but I separate things by year and include the events and links.

2020-12-18 12_05_35-Speaking CV _ Voice of the DBA — Mozilla Firefox

Typically I link to a schedule page for an event, but these will all be broken, or some of them.

2020-12-18 12_06_15-Speaking CV _ Voice of the DBA — Mozilla Firefox

One of my tasks this winter will be to go capture some of the visual evidence of these, if I can. That way I can preserve things.

One other note is that the first day back to work after I speak, I usually update this and ensure it’s current.

Preserving SQL Sat Data

For posterity, or maybe just for me, I was curious what activity I’d had. If I log into the PASS site, I can go to My SQL Saturday, and see the events where I submitted things. If you’re curious, go here, and then you know where to go save an image.

2020-12-18 12_10_27-PASS _ MYPASS

The footer gets in the way, but you can copy/paste and resort this all if you need to.

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An Experiment in Building Culture

Posted on December 18, 2020 by way0utwest

While I have found that some aspects of my job with Redgate improved with our move to remote work this year, I think others have deteriorated. I have spent lots of time over the years trying to build relationships with people in lots of different departments. This year, I’ve gotten lots of time and more communication with those I often work with, but the connections across groups have been limited. I have worried this is affecting the great culture at Redgate.

We have a group of people who spend time trying to deepen and strengthen team relationships. They have a budget each year and typically try to plan different types of activities for teams, departments, and groups inside the company. During the pandemic, we’ve had some competitions (quizzes, exercise goals, best picture), and they’ve been good, but for our end of year celebration, they really did a fantastic job.

First, I saw Kendra post a picture of her end of advent calendar. Interesting, but I wasn’t sure what I thought. Plenty of other Redgaters posted similar pictures, which intrigued me, as I hadn’t gotten anything.

Then I got a package with a note not to open anything before Dec 1. It contained my advent gifts, 24 boxes, and I spread them out on a table. I opened the first few myself before my family got interested. Day 3 was a mug, which my wife promptly grabbed, washed, and filled. Since then I’ve been looking forward to seeing what I get each day, with my gifts slightly different than what my UK colleagues are posting each day.

Each year we usually have a large award ceremony, fancy dinner, and dancing with partners and colleagues. We can’t do this year, which I had expected to be a big loss when each office gets the chance to celebrate together. We’re separated, but this gift was an excellent substitute. Some teams jointly together get to celebrate our individual moments of joy with co-workers, bringing us together in a unique way when we can’t be together as a group.

Culture is hard to build and maintain, but Redgate did a fantastic job, despite the challenges. Hopefully some of you find your organizations trying to do something that brings you together as well.

Steve Jones

Listen to the podcast at Libsyn, Stitcher or iTunes.

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