Voice of the DBA

Tag: speaking

  • Don’t Forget the Database–Slides and Resources

    I delivered a talk this past week at Agile West called “Don’t Forget the Database”

    Slides posted here:  DontForgetTheDatabase.pptx

    This is based on code and the app in my ZeroDowntime repo.

  • A Quick Trip to Agile West

    Redgate is sponsoring Agile West this year, and the marketing team asked me to give a talk on database DevOps technologies.

    I have a keynote talk, called Don’t Forget the Database, that I’ll be delivering on Wednesday. This covers some of the challenges of why the database is harder than software, but doesn’t need to be. I show some demos of zero downtime deployments as a part of this talk.

    Likely I’ll record the demo and talk over it, as I have seen that technique work well and it keeps me from fumbling around.

    My wife is coming with me. This is a quick Tues-Thur trip for me, and easy. Las Vegas is about an hour flight for me, and I only have a few commitments, so this is a chance for the two of us to see a show or two and get out of town for a short break.

    I’m lucky that some of my business travel allows my wife to come around, and it’s worth the expense to bring her and make the trip more enjoyable. That makes it easy for me to handle the 20-30 trips a year I make.

    If you’re at the show, stop by the Redgate booth or my talk and say hi.

  • Denver Dev Days

    I’m going to attend the Denver Dev Days 2023 in June. I submitted a few sessions and got two picked. I’ll be doing these talks:

    • Blogging for the Tech Professional
    • Architecting Zero Downtime Database Deployments

    These are both sessions I enjoy.

    If you’re in the Denver area, this is a fun developer learning event at the Microsoft office in the Tech Center. You can get more information here: Denver Dev Days 2023. Hope to see you there.

  • Branding Yourself for a Dream Job – Houston SQL Server User Group

    I delivered a presentation for the Houston SQL Server User Group tonight, virtually from Colorado. I’d love to go down, but couldn’t do it today.

    The slides for the talk are here: BrandingDreamJob.pptx

    I had fun and thanks to the Houston group and Paresh for having me.

    A few interesting questions:

    Should you use your real name on Slack (or Twitter/etc.)

    There is no right or wrong answer here. For me, I want to tie together my efforts, so if I help people on Twitter, I want to link my resume/profile to my Twitter account. It’s why I keep way0utwest and try to get that on new platforms. My profile says “Steve Jones”.

    You can do what you want.

    What about using ChatGPT to write blogs?

    A great comment here from Paresh. I think this is a good way to get started and maybe sketch out a post. I would recommend this, though I think this needs to grow and improve.

    However.

    You don’t know if ChatGPT synthesized sentences and paragraphs from other information, which is what we all do. You also don’t know if it copied paragraphs verbatim from somewhere.

    My advice if you use this is plan on editing the result and making it your own.

    How do we network virtually?

    I’ve networked and built friendships online for years. In the SQL Server Central forums and similar places. Sometimes real time chat, sometimes asynchronous posts. However it works.

    If you can get to know people with messaging or posts on a platform, that’s great. If you come to a virtual group meeting, or even a company meeting, early, you can spend a few minutes in chat or live chatting with them. Ask a question, share something, solicit an opinion, or comment on something.

    In busy chats, or even aloud, you might @ someone or address them. In chat, @Steve, that was an interesting comment. Aloud, “Steve, have you ever used automatic seeing in an AG?”