Voice of the DBA

Tag: career

  • Deciding to Submit to Conferences–#NewStarNovember

    I wrote about getting started last week, with invitations from others. I think the first time I actually made my own submission was to the Indy Tech Fest in 2007. At the time, Andy Warren and I were in SQL Saturday discussions about how things had gone the year before and we wanted to get some info on other events. John Magnabosco invited us to submit something to their event, so both Andy and I did.

    It wasn’t much of a submission, and I think John just accepted what I sent without thinking about it. However, at the same time, SQL Saturday #7 – Orlando was coming up and Andy wanted me to come down. This was their second event, so I also prepared a career based submission based my life and sent that in.

    That first talk in Indy was OK, but nothing special. The one in Orlando, however, was very exciting for me. I was nervous, especially as the room filled up. Eventually there was standing room only, with some people sitting down around the sides of the classroom. The session was OK from my perspective, but people really enjoyed it, I had a lot of questions, and some good reviews.

    That was in 2008 and it got me a little excited. I gained confidence and I submitted that session to two events in 2009 and got accepted. Then in 2010, I expanded my reach, submitting to more events and getting in 10 talks at 7 events.

    Since then, I’ve worked on my abstracts and submissions, getting advice from others and trying different things. I’ve also spent time recording and watching myself, taking feedback, and practicing more to become a better public speaker.

    I still get nervous at times, but delivering a good talk and having people give me positive feedback is exciting each time it happens.

    Part of a Series of #NewStarNovember posts. If you want to help promote new speakers, consider writing a post as well. Some ideas at the New Stars of Data.

     

  • Goal Progress for Oct 2022

    I set goals at the beginning of the year, and I’m tracking my progress in these updates during 2022.

    Another month of busy stuff. Prepping for the Data Community Summit and 3 travel trips. Gone from home for 11 days, though I was working on some of those.

    However, I re-focused a bit on things I need to do for grow myself. I did that with an eye on these goals, pushing myself a touch.

    I also bolded the places where I’ve done something.

    Grade: C-

    Here are the goals:

    Work

    I didn’t do much here with demos. Things have been changing a lot with work, and I’ve delayed some of this until tech settles slightly. Still on my list to do more here in Nov/Dec. I did read a bit and am finding Do Hard Things fascinating.

    • DP-900 – Passed
    • DP-300
      – Stated studying, practice tests around 80% correct, need to schedule
    • Demo with SQL Server – 20% – dev db set up, started on pipeline
    • Demo with PostgreSQL – 20% – Dev db set up
    • Demo with MySQL – 0%
    • Thanks for the Feedback – 100% – HIGHLY Recommended
    • Good Strategy/Bad Strategy – 100% – VERY interesting
    • Do Hard Things – 43% – HIGHLY RECOMMEND so far

    Personal

    I spent some time getting data into Google Sheets (sample data) and then hooking this to PBI Desktop. I haven’t tried to publish, but I managed to get this working-ish. Not sure if my auth will work in the cloud, but at least a few things are connected. I’m calling this 50% done.

    I am aiming to start getting this to some kids in Dec, once I can collect a few stats for this season.

    Added. Not tech, but I have been working on being a better volleyball coach. The book above is part of that, but I also signed up for some formal training. I started in Sept, but did get more coaching training done during my travels.

    • Link Google Sheets to Power BI – 50%
    • Create Report – 45%  – Minor updates to my report based on the Google Sheets data.
    • Create Dashboard – 30%  -Minor updates
    • Get people using it – 0%
    • Coaching Certification – 38%

    Community

    • Support the Colorado groups by speaking twice and helping get one event set up
      – 40%
      • CO Springs event set up and executed
      • Denver SQL Server SQL Saturday executed
    • Speak at 3 other community events (was user groups) outside of Colorado – 100%
      • Spoke at DBA Fundamentals group
      • Spoke at Toronto SSUG
      • Spoke at SQL Saturdays in Jacksonville, New Jersey, LA, Denver
        • Boston, Toronto in Oct
    • Support SQL Saturdays – Help get 10 events run in 2022
      – 100%

      • We have had 9 run this year and 9 more scheduled
      • In Oct, we had 5 events complete – Boston, Orlando, Memphis, Toronto, Richmond
    • Volunteer 4 days with Habitat – 0 days
      • Not happy about this still. I had hoped to go Sept 15, but they cancelled the build that day. Need to find another day, but it’s hard. They aren’t doing every Wed/Thur/fri, and travel is getting in the way.

  • Life Organization

    For years, those of us in technology have often worked outside of the core working hours for the rest of our organization. Whether this is being on-call, staying late, or coming in when asked. It’s not uncommon for many developers and Ops staff to work 60, 70, or more hours to get things built/deployed/supported for our customers. Often we do this while juggling lots of tasks on a to-do list. While many things might be in a ticketing system, often I find there are tasks on a project plan, requests from team members, and other items which don’t fit neatly into a ticket. I’m juggling more than one to-do list.

    The line between work and personal life has often been blurred for me. I’ve taken work calls on the golf course, in an airport, late at night in my bathroom, while shopping with my wife, even at kid’s sporting events. I regret not pushing back more to a few managers early in my career, but I also recognize that I (and many of you) are sometimes in poor cultural situations and we don’t have a choice if we want to keep employed.

    A quick example of why I feel this way, and perhaps why some of you do. I had a boss paging me on a Friday night while I was at a comedy club with my wife. I walked outside to take the call during a break and was told that I wasn’t responding quickly enough to the page. The emergency? A test of how quickly I’d respond on a Friday night. Note that we were not a 24×7 business. After pushing back Friday night that I wasn’t answering any more pages that weekend, I was asked to resign on Monday. I was happy to do so.

    With the pandemic and many of us data professionals working from home, the line between work and personal life has blurred further. In many cases, our work isn’t bound by a clock, and we might easily move some work to personal time to take personal time during working hours. Trading an hour after a kid’s bedtime to work so that you can lunch with them during the day seems like a good thing all around.

    However, what I’m wondering today is how we start to manage and juggle all our tasks when we might not easily be able to separate all our time into work time and personal time? We might have work deliverables, which are already on multiple to-do lists. Our partner might ask us to handle some items around the house, we have scheduled events for kids or friends, or even ourselves. Perhaps we volunteer at the user group, a church, or another place and we have various deliverable items we’ve agreed to handle. On top of the myriad of tasks, some of these repeat regularly and might not have due dates.

    How do you handle keeping track of all the things in your life?

    I’ll admit I don’t do this well. I put most things with specific deadlines on a calendar as meetings. These include speaking engagements, travel, meetings, doctor’s appointments, and coaching events. If I need prep time, I’ll often schedule a few earlier meetings to either prep or remind myself I have something coming.

    For other To-do items, I sometimes put them on a list, but I find the lists growing out of control, and I don’t have a good handle on how to think about tracking UTV oil changes, vacation planning, getting a package to my daughter, fixing a fence post at the ranch, reaching out to a UG to speak, and more. I don’t have a good way to track, visualize, prioritize (or re-prioritize) these items in a busy life. I usually struggle to juggle two calendars, work and personal, as it is. In some sense, life is somehow out of control and chaotic, and I tackle things when I have time and think about an item. Or I respond to a crisis.

    Someone asked me how I keep organized, and I realized I’m not very organized. I do a good job with many things, but there are plenty of tasks that aren’t well organized. Fortunately, there isn’t a lot of need to have these items tightly scheduled, and like technical debt, I can let some of them go for days or weeks (or months).

    If you have ideas, suggestions, or you suffer from the same issues, I’d love to know what works for you, or just that you feel things are out of control in your life.

    Steve Jones

    Listen to the podcast at Libsyn, Stitcher, Spotify, or iTunes.

  • Getting Started Speaking – #NewStarNovember

    My journey might be somewhat unusual, but perhaps not.

    I started writing articles on the Internet at a few different places before I started SQL Server Central. There were other authors online, and one of them was also in Colorado. We became friends, and a few years later (after SSC started), he reached out to me and asked me to come speak at the local user group, which he was running.

    I accepted and then had to come up with things to say. I dug into the topic he’d requested, practiced a little (not enough), and was lucky enough that the meeting was small. About ten of us sat around a conference table and I talked about some things, no Power Point, just discussing some data topic.

    It was a rather inauspicious start, and I don’t think I did a good job. I didn’t really look to speak at other places until my co-founders at SQL Server Central asked me to join them at a few talks in different places. I got a few positive reviews and then started to send in my own submissions. Things worked out well and took off from there.

    The last ten years I’ve often looked for authors or fellow professionals that have good ideas, ask interesting questions, or might impress me during a casual chat. I often ask them to submit something to a user group or SQL Saturday and consider speaking. I know it’s not for everyone, but if I could give it a try, they could.

    Part of a Series of #NewStarNovember posts. If you want to help promote new speakers, consider writing a post as well.Some ideas at the New Stars of Data.