Voice of the DBA

Tag: speaking

  • Blogging for the Tech Professional at Denver Dev Days

    For those that attended my talk at Denver Dev Days, here are the slides: BloggingFortheTechPro.pptx

    A couple interesting questions that I need to add to the deck.

    What do you recommend for a student? (or someone early in their career)

    This could also apply to someone changing careers or fields. If you don’t have experience, does blogging help?

    It does. A blog is your portfolio and it’s a good way to showcase what you are learning, have learned, what you are interested in. This gives you some way to show “experience” even if you don’t have any.

    Build a project, explain how you learned something, document your journey. I might think about a wider set of topics rather than deeper on one here, as it’s hard to know what you want to do early in your journey. It’s also a time when you don’t want to limit opportunities, so showcase a lot of different things you’ve worked on.

    How do I get better at blogging?

    Build a network of people you trust. Let them see drafts, get feedback, and incorporate the feedback into your writing. I would do that in two different ways:

    1. Am I correct in my technical details? To do this, get quality feedback from a subject matter expert. Think senior skilled person evaluating your work here.
    2. Am I explaining things well? Get feedback from anyone on spelling, phrasing, grammar, and flow. Think English teacher feedback here.

    How do I justify the time to blog when I’m busy at work?

    This is an investment in your career. Doctors, lawyers, accountants, etc. need to work on their careers outside of work. Chefs, mechanics, plumbers do this as well.

    Technical people can do this. Take 15-30 minutes a week to do this. Over time, it’s a great way to add richness to your resume and stand out from others.

    Do you blog at work?

    In general, I make notes and sketches of things at work. 3-5 sentences, some bullet points. Then I would spend time outside of work fleshing out my posts. For examples of how long I spend on things, check out the SQL New Blogger series. If you’re starting out, double my times for yourself.

  • 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.