Thanks to everyone that attended my sessions today at VS Live. I have my slides and code available for download at the VS Live site and here.
The Serverless Azure Database – PPT zip
Adding Graph Structures to Your Database
It’s the second Tuesday of the month and it’s time for T-SQL Tuesday. This one is hosted at my request by a good friend, Kevin Kline. Kevin has been a large part of the #sqlfamily as a speaker, teacher, educator, friend, and driving force for PASS and the annual Summit conference.
This invitation is asking about a conference or event that changed your life, that created an opportunity, or just changed your life. Career, other otherwise. It’s a great topic, and it’s one reason that I am running SQL Saturday. Events and interactions with others can change your life. It did for me, and for many others.
This year always stands out as a reminder of Prince (RIP). However, it was also the first year I lived in Denver. I moved out with my wife and two kids to work at a financial services firm. That summer I saw an advertisement for a new professional group, the Professional Association for SQL Server. They were having a conference that October in Chicago. I asked my boss to go, they agreed, and I made arrangements.
Two things stand out to me. First, my wife, sister-in-law, and toddler son came. We went to the last baseball game of the year at Comisky Park. My wife and SIL also smoked cigars with me in the hotel bar. A memorable fun trip for me.
The second thing that stands out is that I met Kalen Delaney there. I’d read her Inside SQL Server book and watched her talk. Afterwards I went up to the stage and asked a question and shook her hand. An exciting moment for a young data professional at the time, and one that spurred greater interest in learning more about SQL Server and becoming a better DBA. I’ve also been honored to know Kalen and meet her at many events around the world since.
That event kick started me from being just a DBA to being someone that wanted to be involved with the community, that believed I could speak in front of people and teach them things, and I could help my career by attending other events.
Most years I attend 10-20 conferences and speak at them. I may attend a few others and not speak, and I usually have a few internal or Redgate run events. I’ve very lucky, and I enjoy getting to visit interesting places in the world as a part of my job.
While I pick up technical bits and might get an idea for how to solve a problem in code, the most valuable parts of conferences are talking with other people and networking. Yes, networking, which is really just shaking a hand and answering a question. Or shaking a hand and asking a question. Or even commiserating with someone next to me about how some technology doesn’t work. Sometimes those last conversations are the most memorable and enjoyable.
This networking is incredible and I’m amazed how I hear about different opportunities. Even before I ran SQL Server Central, talking to people at events drove my career forward.
Whether you go to a user group meeting, a local SQL Saturday, or a larger paid conference like the PASS Data Community Summit or SQL Bits, if you make an effort to chat with people, interact, and take notes, I think you’ll find it as invaluable to your technology career as I have.
The last thing I’d note is that I run SQL Saturday as an independent, US charitable 501.c.3 corporation, independent of Redgate. I’ve found user groups to be great, but hard to manage every month. When Brian, Andy, and I set up SQL Saturday, we did so to bring local conferences to people whose employers might not pay to send them to Ignite, the PASS Summit, or other expensive conferences.
I would love to see more SQL Saturdays in more places in the US. It’s not that hard to run one, and you don’t even have to speak in front of a crowd. If you’re interested, ping me at admin@sqlsaturday.com.
I was honored to attend the first SQL Saturday in New Jersey last weekend. I consulted with and helped the organizers get the event going and executed. I made a few notes and got some pictures, some of which I’ve added to the SQL Saturday Instagram account.
I’ve broken this down into a few areas, no particular order, but those things that occurred to me.
Lots of travel concerns and questions in July 2022. A fellow speaker had a flight delayed hours and arrived late at night a couple days before the event. Another had planned to leave late Sat and had two flights cancelled that night and one the next morning. Hopefully they made it the next day.
I fly United, and both Denver and Newark are hubs. My flight left on time and arrived early on Friday. Everything was smooth. The return was similar, slightly late leaving, but made it back on time.
Getting around the Newark area, in Iselin and other towns was mostly with rides for me. I got a taxi in from the airport, which was slightly pricey. A fuel surcharge added. I used Uber to get from my hotel to the event, and then a speaker gave me a ride to the airport Sat night. All in all, this was a smooth trip for me.
No upgrades, but hub->hub flights usually have lots of people with more status than me. I did grab a shot as we got to NJ, with NYC in the distant background. I love flying into some cities, and the NJ/NY area is one.
Note: I didn’t check a bag, and recommend you avoid that if you can for the current times.
Many events do a speaker event the night before. It’s not required, and I don’t think any events should feel they need to pay for dinner. That being said, it’s nice, and we all met at the Kona Grill, which was a nice mix of a variety of foods, including sushi.
We had a great dinner and good conversation on all sorts of topics. Afterwards, a few of us went to get ice cream.
The group shot:
This SQL Saturday was hosted by Microsoft at their Iselin office. As expected, at 7am on a Saturday, the parking lot was deserted. The organizers were there setting up. One thing every event usually needs is coolers and drinks.
We started coffee brewing, but it was slow. Eventually we determined that the circuit on the table above couldn’t support the load of multiple pots. Fortunately, we moved a few to other spots.
Signs matter, so I took the job of setting up signs around the parking lots of direct people to the office. This is a large, 10 story building, and MS only has part of one floor.
I set up signs into the lots and then one in front of the building. I also taped a few on doors and walls.
I took a few pictures so I’d remember where the 7 or 8 signs were. These were generic SQL Saturday signs, from previous events. Always good to not put a year or location on these and save them. I remembered this job because even at 730a is was getting hot. When I took them down at 3pm, it was really hot. Probably 95F/35C.
The rooms were mostly set up as these are conference rooms that MS uses and there were projectors, seats, and plugs.
The speaker room had a few nice gifts for speakers. Not necessary, but appreciated. We each got a shirt of dry fit material
Also a soft cooler we can use in the hot summer
There were 4 rooms and a variety of different sessions. This is a smaller office, and attendance was limited to around 120. It seemed we had just over 100 people from the check-ins and there was no shortage of people walking around.
The were 4 or 5 vendors set up along the main hallway and plenty of engagement from attendees. It’s always good to see people interacting as vendors pay for a lot of the events and they usually have good solutions.
Lunch was sandwiches and sweet treats. Most of the food was eaten, except the sweets. There were a lot of them and I saw a few people take them away. There were three vendor sessions: Microsoft, Solarwinds, and AWS. All were well attended.
In the morning, I was preparing and talking with a few people. My session was before lunch, and it was well attended. About 40 people talking DevOps with me and we had some good discussions and questions.
After lunch I had a math class. Risk models in nuclear power and finance. The slide brought me back to University. This was presented by Dr. Yajuan Li, local professor, and while the nuclear power drew me in (I worked at a plant), but this was mostly about taking some models and applying them to determining which approach one would take towards a problem.
I’m not sure I completely get the approach, but I get the idea. This uses the Monte Carlo simulations to help a business decide what risk level they have based on their approach.
The last session for me was about finding a new job. Ray Kim (a friend), presented this one, and it’s a good one. I think a good portion of why people come to SQL Saturday is to grow their career. Often by learning new technical skills (or getting inspired to learn). However, the soft skills, the resumes, the interviews, networking, etc. are important.
Ray has taken his recent experiences in finding a job and produced a nice presentation to help you. He’s done this a few times and is presenting in Seattle in November. Worth an hour of your time to watch this one.
After a brief opening from Jean Joseph, and a couple minutes of my promoting SQL Saturday, Linda Zhang of Microsoft had the opening keynote.
She took a neat approach of talking about the history of SQL Server. She asked if people remember new features from old versions of SQL Server (2000, 2005, 2008, etc.) with a slide listing a few recent additions.
She gave out prizes to people who answered, and it was a fun engaging way to open the day.
The end of the day had Jamie Fox of Microsoft and Ed Pollack thanking people and drawing names from tickets for prizes. This was a lot of fun, as it always is with people winning a variety of things from the sponsors. One the parts of SQL Saturday that makes me smile a lot.
I sat and watched with Jean. We enjoyed the day, and I was very happy to be able to hang out with him. He’s quite the community person, having run two events this year. A virtual SQL Saturday in French for Haiti and now New Jersey. He also runs Future Data Driven, coming in September.
A little photobomb from his son on the right.
I miss these events, and I’m looking forward to a few more this year. Hopefully we’ll see SQL Saturday continue to grow in 2023 as well and come back to more cities and get data professionals together to grow our careers and skills.
The SQL Solutions Group asked me to do a webinar with them, which is still an honor for me. They’ve been working with various clients on DevOps development practices, and they sometimes ask my thoughts on an issue. I’ve known Randy and Scott for years, and it’s always good to chat with them.
The webinar is Wed, Jul 2, 2022, at 2pm EDT. You can register here.
This will be mostly a chat, with Scott and I talking about DevOps, some of the challenges and how we’ve seen development teams evolve. Come and ask your questions, as we don’t have a set format or a scripted agenda.
Voice of the DBA 