Tag: speaking

I just booked my tickets for New York City. I’m coming into the city on Sept 27, at 2pm, with just enough time to get to my hotel, drop my bags, and then hit Central Park for a run. I love to run, and Central Park is great. It’s on my list whenever I get back to the city.

SQL in the City is coming to New York City on Friday, Sept 28, 2012. It’s a free day of training from Red Gate Software, and I’m delivering two out of many SQL Server sessions there. Mine are one on database essentials, and one on preparing for disasters. In addition, Grant Fritchey (b | t) will deliver a few on development, we will have Red Gate developers talking about tools, and a few Friends of Red Gate will have sessions on development and administrative topics.

Red Gate is sponsoring a mini-tour of free training days across the US this fall. We did this last year in Los Angeles, and recently finished a two events in London. This is a chance to learn about topics that are important to SQL Server professionals, just like so many other one day conferences. We’ll feed you, provide coffee and snacks, and good conversation, knowledge, and debate on different ways to attack the challenges you face at work.

We’d love to have you attend. Registration is free, and I hope you’ll join us at the Concierge Convention Center in New York City on Sept 28. Come meet all of us, and please feel free to stop any of us and shake our hands.

You can even join me for a run in Central Park on Thursday night if you’re inclined. I’ll post details on Twitter once I figure out how quickly I can get there. I’m guessing I’ll be at the park around 4:30, SE side, but we’ll see.

I love New York, and my kids keep asking if they can come. I’ve been there many times, from road trips in college to taking my oldest to see a Broadway play one weekend. I’ve toured much of the city, and one fond memory is standing on the 80th floor of the World Trade Center in 2000, looking out over the Hudson. I wish I could take a kid and spend a few days there, but this is a quick trip, starting off the US SQL in the City tour.

Register today if you can come. I hope to shake your hand in New York.

This is part of my SQL in the City series, covering a few thoughts on the US tour.

It’s a wrap. Two days of SQL in the City are complete, and I’m back at home, almost feeling normal. I prefer short trips to the UK, but this one was extra hard since it was a conference schedule. For me that’s up at 6:30 to run and usually not getting back to my room until 10:00pm. Long days.

The event was great. If you haven’t been, or wonder what it’s about, SQL in the City is a day of training from Red Gate Software. We do have a track that talks about how to use our tools, but we have two tracks that are mostly technical information. Brad, Grant, and I do mention Red Gate tools, but we aren’t really there to focus on the tools. We’re there to talk about technical subjects and ideas.

Think SQL Saturday, but a bit more “posh” and sponsored by Red Gate Software. Not this posh:

This posh:

Once again this year the event was held at the Royal Society of Medicine in London. We had a tremendous number of people sign up, so we added a day and ran the same one day conference for two days. Friday was packed, with over 400 people coming to learn a few things about SQL Server.

A note for the US: We’re bringing this event to the US in September and October, touring 5 cities in two weeks. We’ll also be in Seattle on the Monday before the PASS Summit.

A note to the UK and Europe: Let us know if you enjoyed it, missed it, and want us to come next near. I’d like to do more of these if there is a demand.

One of our two joint-CEOs, Simon Galbraith, opened the event, giving a short keynote on building software. For those of you used to long-winded, marketing filled keynotes, take note. This was 10 minutes, about 10 slides, 3 laughs from the audience, and that’s it.

Then it was time to learn. I watched a session from two Red Gate employees, Dave Atkinson and David Simner, on Continuous Integration (CI). If you aren’t using CI in your software process, you should. They showed how this process works, and how it has helped them build software quicker, and more bug-free. A few of the Red Gate tools make this easier, but there are many ways to do it.

I’ve never used CI before since the last time I developed software in a team was almost a decade ago. I realize now that I was really missing something. There aren’t a lot of cool, new things that I think have come through our industry, but this is one of them. Read the white paper we have, and start learning more about Continuous Integration.

There were a number of other talks on database maintenance, writing T-SQL, and more. I did two, one on preparing for disasters and thinking about things ahead of time and one on Contained Databases and AlwaysOn in SQL Server 2012. Grant talked about Sandbox development and monitoring your servers with the ring buffer (an amusing talk with movie photo quizzes included).

This was a little more of a formal event than most SQL Saturdays. We recorded the event, and while the videos will only be available to attendees for the next few months, that does mean that if you missed a session, you can watch it.

We also had a very hard working staff, including product managers

developers

and quite a few people from all parts of the company.

Even more importantly, we had free refreshments at the end of the day. I remember because I was told more than a few times to mention this before my talks. Our 2012 Red Gate brew of Select Star beer (along with wine and soft drinks) was handed out at the end of the day.

We also had a nice happy hour with a few prizes. A SQL Toolbelt from Red Gate first, and then a ticket to the PASS Summit 2012. That one had quite a few people hurriedly filling out their evaluation forms.

This was a great time, and though it was hard and long for me to speak two days in a row, I enjoyed the trip. I got to run through Hyde Park (haven’t done that in 25 years) and Regents Park (never done that), and had the chance to meet a lot of people from the SQLServerCentral community, including a few I’ve corresponded with for years.

The US tour starts in September. The cities and dates are:

• New York City – Sept 28
• Austin – Oct 1
• San Francisco – Oct 3
• Chicago – Oct 5
• Boston – Oct 8
• Seattle – Nov 5

I’ll be at all of them, along with a crew from Red Gate and a few guest speakers from the local areas.

This is a great chance for free training, one that we think is worth a day of your time. Sign up today if you’ll be near one of the events, and I look forward to shaking hands with you if you attend.