Voice of the DBA

Tag: speaking

  • Crossing Borders

    I’m about to cross a country border for the first time in almost two years. I last left the United States in December 2019. Today I’m flying to Belgium for Data Minds Connect and then to the UK for some work in the office.

    I’ll be in and out of touch for the next week as I adjust to travel, moving around, and a strange schedule. After being either in my home office or the Redgate Pasadena office for the last 22 months, I’m finally working and traveling to a different environment.

    Next week the blog will be quiet, other than coping tips, as I navigate a familiar, but somewhat forgotten world.

    Hopefully I have packed everything in my laptop bag, but if not, I’m sure I can purchase what I need.

    Glad to be back to traveling, even with restrictions and hassles.

  • A New Community Summit

    The PASS Summit has been an annual event for a lot of my career. I attended the first one in 1999 and most of the rest through the years. After last year’s virtual Summit, I was concerned that we wouldn’t have an annual event where the most, brightest, and friendliest data platform people came together. Redgate purchased the assets out of the PASS bankruptcy and has committed to future Summits. This year’s Summit is virtual, and more importantly…

    It’s free, and you can register today

    Free to attend the main conference, which means you have the opportunity to go to the largest Data Platform focused conference for no charge. Just ask your boss for a little time to learn, get inspired, and interact with your colleagues around the world.. There are still pre-cons that cost money (US$200), but all the proceeds go to the speakers. A great opportunity to learn from experts and support them at a cost you likely won’t see at a major event.

    I don’t love virtual events, and I do hope that we get back to live conferences, but I do like that everyone can come to the Summit this year without asking their employer, or their household, to fund the effort. Microsoft is a major sponsor and will keynote at the event, likely with some exciting SQL Server and data platform news coming. Lots of other sponsors will be there as well, which I’m pleased about because sponsors are an important part of events and user groups in our community.

    If you want to know what types of sessions are coming, the best of Summit 2020 is available for you to watch, again for no cost. This year there are three themes, Back to Basics, Reach for the Clouds, and Level Up. I’m glad for the cloud track as the cloud has continued to grow faster than I expected, with so many friends, customers, and clients looking to move portions of their data workloads into a cloud situation. I’m also glad to see the career advancement Level Up track becoming a place of focus, as actively managing your career is something I feel strongly about. Hopefully, I’ll get to deliver a session in that track. As of the time I’m writing this, I know I have one session, but not sure if the program is complete.

    While Kathi and Grant are managing the process, community volunteers are reviewing, rating, and making choices about sessions. That’s one thing I’m glad to see. There is a strong community effort in helping to program the conference. While I know paid professional staff organizes things and configures the platform (we contracted with a few people that have helped run the conference in the past), it’s the community that should really help decide which speakers and sessions they want to see. I’m hoping that some of the fun things like networking, the photo walk, and more are a part of the event.

    There’s no good reason to not attend the Summit this year. Unless you’re buried with a deadline the week of Nov 8, 2021, ask your boss for some time, register, and come join me in watching some sessions, chatting with old friends, making new ones, and getting excited about what you can do with data in 2021.

    Steve Jones

    Listen to the podcast at Libsyn, Stitcher, Spotify, or iTunes.

  • Register for the 2021 PASS Data Community Summit

    Registration for the 2021 PASS Data Community Summit opened today. This year’s event is virtual on November 8-12, and you can register for free.

    That’s right, free. No cost, just the time, which is something you might point out to your boss to get some time that week to attend.

    Join me and see my sessions, or any of the others that have been selected. There are plenty of great ones to choose from. Register today and I’ll see you online in November.

    2021_Speaking_Summit

  • Rejected for a Speaking Submission

    I got a speaking rejection today. Well, not today, but the day I wrote this.

    Not really a big deal, but it was interesting that the event organizer included a note that they had a lot of sessions, hard decisions, etc., and they hope I respect their decision on the schedule.

    I speak, or have spoke, a lot in my career. My speaking CV shows lots of events and sessions across the last decade. I had 20 sessions in 2020, a down year. The years from 2015-2020 have me delivering 197 sessions in those 6 years.

    This isn’t to brag, but show that I have had lots of success submitting to, and getting into many events across time. I’m semi-popular, though I honestly don’t think many people come to my sessions unless they like the topic.

    I don’t take rejections hard. It happens, and I know that my submission has to match up with what the organizers want from the event. Sometimes they might want me to speak because it helps with sponsorship or marketing, but mostly, they want sessions matching their idea of the event.

    I’m fine with that, and I wish them the best of luck with their event. As much as I might want to attend and speak somewhere, I wouldn’t complain because they made a different choice. That’s happened in the past, and it’s disappointing, but fine with me.

    I would love the chance to alter a session or change my submission to meet a conference agenda, but I also know this is asking a lot from organizers to work with speakers. A few of the larger conferences sometimes do this for certain people, but rarely for me.

    It’s hard to be rejected, whether for a speaking slot, a job, a date, a sports team, or anything else. It happens, however, and usually it’s not a personal decision. It’s often that the match isn’t there.

    If you get rejected, accept it, don’t complain, and submit to another event. Don’t get discouraged, but learn from it and move on.

    If you want feedback from submissions, drop me a note on Twitter. Happy to give my thoughts.