Voice of the DBA

Tag: speaking

  • My SQL Server Travels in 2018

    It’s the end of the year, and I’m looking back at the events and travels I’ve had this year. I keep a list of travels on my blog for speaking as a kind of Speaking CV, and United (my primary airline) provides me with a summary of travel each year.

    Since I’m planning and looking forward to 2019, I thought I’d recap a few of my travels.

    New Events and Places

    Every year I try to visit some new places and events, getting the chance to meet new people and learn about events and places. There are so many to see and attend that this is a never ending goal, but that’s part of the fun.

    New places I visited this year: Cork, Pittsburgh, Nashville, Jacksonville (personal), and Hong Kong (personal).

    New Events for me: ISACA Ireland, Music City Tech, Microsoft Inspire, SQL Sat Pittsburgh, Certified InfoSec.

    I did a few new virtual talks, even though I don’t really enjoy these. I like feedback from in person talks but the Milwaukee and Queensland user groups got me to speak.

    Revisiting Fond Memories

    I was lucky enough to get to revisit a number of places this year. Of those, I enjoyed getting to do some live SQL in the City events, in addition to the streamed ones. I did 4 of each, so a good SQL in the City year.

    It was also great to get back to Baton Rouge, Louisville, Los Angeles, Colorado Springs, Boulder, Oslo, and Cambridge for events. Those are some of my favorite places for SQL events and I’ve been at all of them 3 or more times.

    I was also luck to spend a few days in Washington DC and New York City, two amazing places in the US.

    Of course, as usual, London was the most visited destination. 6 times in 2018, and probably close to 40 trips there in my life.

    Missed Out

    I missed out on SQL Bits in 2018, the first time in quite a few years. Unfortunately this conflicted with other commitments at home, and will again in 2019. Hopefully that will change in 2020.

    I also skipped the VS Live, Dev Connections, Ignite, Build, and SQL Intersection events. I’ve enjoyed those over the years, but this wasn’t the time to go, and next year might not be either. We’ll see what happens.

    All in all it was a great year speaking, and with travel that was manageable. Hopefully that continues in 2019.

  • The Year in Review Webinar–Dec 18

    Join me for our Year in Review Webinar next week, Dec 18, at 4pm GMT. I’ll be joining Kendra and Grant to talk through what happened this year, and make a few predictions for 2019.

    It should be fun, festive, maybe a bit silly, but a good break in your day.

    You can register here.

  • Webinar: What We Learned at the PASS Summit

    Join me tomorrow for a webinar from Redgate Software.You can register for our webinar today at 10am EST here.

    Kendra Little and I join Grant Fritchey, the President of PASS, to discuss some highlights from last week’s PASS Summit.

    Register today and join us tomorrow.

  • A Busy Summit

    I’m only at the PASS Summit for two days, but they will be busy. If you’re at the event and want to find me, here’s my schedule. If you do see me, please feel free to say hi. If I can’t stop to chat for long, it’s because I’m likely late for something, but I do want to shake hands.

    Thursday

    Lunch: I’ll arrive mid morning and get myself checked in. I don’t know if I’ll be in the lunch area, but I’ll likely stop by the Redgate booth.

    1:30-3:00 – Branding Yourself for a Dream Job, Rm 612. I’ve done this at the Summit before, and a number of other events, but people like it, so I got picked to do it again. I’ll talk about some practical ways to brand yourself and take control of your career.

    3:00-6:00 – I’ll likely go to a few sessions or meet friends, but I should be around the expo area part of the time.

    Dinner with friends later and an early night for me.

    Friday

    Early morning will be final rehearsal and prep for me. I’ll do some early in the week, but I like to practice my timing again, especially for my second session.

    11:00-12:30 – Adopting a Compliant Database DevOps Process, Room 606. I did a version of this last year and people really liked it, so I’m back again. I’ll talk process and how you can do DevOps in the database, and will show demos, but really this is a process talk. The details of the demos don’t matter, but you get to see changes flowing through the system with a few taps of a finger.

    Lunch – Expo hall for me.

    15:30-17:00 – Minimizing the Impact of Data Breaches in Dev and Test Databases, Room 604. A higher level talk, mostly aimed at convincing you to be more careful with data. No real demos here, mostly just a talk that looks at how and why you need to protect data.

    17:15 – I’m off, heading to the airport. As I mentioned, a short summit for me.