Voice of the DBA

Tag: speaking

  • Fun at SQL Bits

    Last week was the eleventh SQL Bits conference and it was a fun time in Nottingham. I traveled over to the Red Gate offices for a few days before driving to Nottingham for the event. This is my second SQL Bits and it’s one of my favorite conferences. It’s a little bigger than most SQL Saturdays, with more amenities, but it’s a low cost and it retains the charm, casual atmosphere and fun that many of the larger events have lost. Spouses and children typically have little problem attending with the data professionals, and the less formal proceedings seem to make this as much of a social event as a professional one.

    The format is a little different from many events in that there are paid days (a nominal fee for a conference event) and a free day. You can attend part of all of the conference, and all of the sessions are filmed and available online. The event moves around the UK, and I’ve been to the Liverpool, and now, Nottingham, events. The East Mindlands Conference Center was a very nice facility, nice conference rooms and facilities, one of the better venues I’ve seen. The highlight of the event was the Friday night social, with a medieval theme. It was very surprising how many people participated.  I had expected the organizers to dress up:

     

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    However I was surprised to see many others, including the Red Gate staff

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    And dozens of others. As I was leaving the Red Gate office on Thursday, someone gave me a bag and told me to wear it. I hadn’t checked it until Friday afternoon, and I was a good sport in just putting it on.

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    I had fun walking around throughout the evening, seeing the various costumes, some of which were amazing. The Lego costume was really stunning. I’m not even sure how I’d make that one. I haven’t seen a picture yet (and forgot to take one), but it was incredible.

    You can see more pictures here or check out the Facebook page.

    I delivered my Searching Binary Data talk, and it went well (I think). I also attended Matijah Lah‘s talk on semantic statistics and learned a few things. I saw an amazing advanced DR/HA talk from Christian Bolton, and a few more interesting sessions. I also marked a few more to watch later.

    I love most events, but typically the smaller ones, however I am looking forward to the chance to come back.

     

  • SQL Saturday #175–Fargo

    One of the goals early on with SQL Saturday was to spread them far and wide. Andy Warren and I used to chat about how long it would be before we had 12 events in a year, or one event a month, or an event in every state. Karla Landrum (b | t) has made many of those milestones come true and is working hard to try and get an event in every state in the US, as well as in as many countries around the world as possible.

    SQL Saturday #175 comes to Fargo, North Dakota, on Saturday, April 27, 2013. The first event in this state, and also my first time visiting the state. I’ll be heading out Friday morning, and seeing what Fargo has to offer that day before talking on Saturday. I may just have to see the Wood Chipper.

    My talk is The Encryption Primer, but there are some other great choices if you’re looking to increase your SQL Server knowledge. The schedule is up and includes these:

    • Aaron King giving you a complete BI solution in an hour.
    • Powershell from Jim Dorame
    • Dimentional Modeling from Jason Horner
    • Indexing from Jes Borland
    • T-SQL from Kathi Kellenberger
    • and more

    Lots of great sessions, and it should be fun.

    If you’re close to Fargo, consider registering and joining us at the first North Dakota SQL Saturday.

  • Customizing SSMS–Results

    This is a short series on some customizations in SSMS to make it visually more appealing.

    As a presenter, I’ve learned how to change the way Management Studio (SSMS) looks to make it easier for people to see the screen on a projector. I had wrongly assumed that so many people knew many of these tricks, which is a poor attitude on my part. That should be especially apparent as I saw a presentation recently where the speaker didn’t know how to make things easier to see.

    In a previous post I talked about changing the query font size. In this post we’ll look at result sizes.

    The Defaults

    This is what I see, and it’s not easy to read.

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    The results are much smaller than the query itself. How can we change this and make things easier to read?

    I wrote about one way: using results to text. This works well, but it isn’t the best solution for everyone, and you still want to change the size of your results. The technique I’ll show you works for that as well.

    Customization

    If you go to the Tools | Options menu, in the Fonts tab as I showed in the last post, you’ll find there’s a drop down titled “Show settings for:” at the top. If you select Grid results, you can change the font settings.

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    The default is 8, and I usually up that a bit.

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    Once that is done, you click OK, and get this note:

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    Make sure your tabs are saved, since you need to restart SSMS. Once you do, your results will be much easier to read.

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    Note that in the drop down for settings, there is an item for “Results to text”. If you change that, your text results will be larger.

  • T-SQL Tuesday #41 – I Love Presenting

    tsqltuesday.jpgThis edition of the T-SQL Tuesday blog party isn’t a technical one. Hosted by Bob Pusateri, this one is timely for me. Bob invites us all to write about how we came to love presentating. That’s good timing as I’m actually giving two sessions at the SQL Intersection conference today.

    T-SQL Tuesday is the monthly blog party, on the second Tuesday of the month. If you’d like to host, contact Adam Machanic(@AdamMachanic).

    I’m Scared

    That’s actually how I felt the first time I had to stand up in front of the class in school and give some sort of report. I can’t tell you when the first time I did it, but I do know that all through high school, and even college, I was scared to be in front of people, palms sweaty, bowels rumbling, and cheeks flushed. I couldn’t imagine voluntarily choosing to stand in front of people and talk about anything. Even talking to a group of 10 people at a party in college made me nervous.

    I Need Money

    College is expensive. When I went through college it was a fraction of the cost today, but it was still expensive. To help out my family, I worked almost full-time to cover my living expenses. The most efficient way to do that was to work in the restaurant business. I learned to cook, clean, and wait on tables. I never had to really speak to a group larger than 8 people, but I was constantly meeting new people and talking to them every night.

    One summer, while home working at a local hotel, our bartender called in sick. I volunteered to jump in, did a good job, and spent the rest of my college career mixing drinks. Around this time the movie Cocktail was released, and many of my fellow workers learned to toss and spin bottles, myself included. It was a little like being on stage in front of groups of people, and over the next few years, much of my shyness in front of strangers disappeared.

    Watch and Learn

    I worked hard early in my technology career to learn as much as possible. I read books, magazines, trade articles, and more, trying to learn as much as I could about the various pieces of technology in my companies. I also attended lots of talks at user groups and MSDN local events. I watched many speakers talk about subjects that I had read about, and worked with myself. I learned lots of things, but more and more I realized that I knew much of what speakers were presenting. I started to think that I could present as well as others. I gained confidence from watching others validate my knowledge.

    Eventually I started SQLServerCentral and there was a year when the founders wanted to do some joint presentations. Brian Knight and I had a debate about identities v GUIDs. It was my first time speaking at the PASS Summit and it wasn’t so bad. We had a lively debate, some input form Microsoft in the audience, and I realized presenting wasn’t so bad. I didn’t jump right in, but a couple years later I was asked to do a short presentation at a local user group and accepted. Fortunately for me this was a small group, and I ended up presenting for 15 minutes while seated a a conference table. Much like being in a corporate meeting, I felt the same mix of nervousness and confidence, but sitting down helped me.

    Over the years I’ve had some good and bad presentations, but I’ve tried to learn from what has worked well and from what other presenters have done. I have written about presenting and tried to help others. These days I’m fairly comfortable talking in front of groups. I know I’ll make mistakes, and that someone in the audience might know more than I do. I know I’ll stumble over sentences. However I move on and don’t worry about those issues. I try to learn from them, but I don’t view them as failures.

    Today I love presenting about various topics. I speak on SQL Server and professional development topics 10-15 times a year. I usually end up giving 25-35 talks, often on 8-10 topics a year. It’s fun, and I really enjoy the chance to teach people something or help them improve their careers.