Voice of the DBA

Tag: speaking

  • Speaking in 2017

    I’m done. No more trips (and no more time) to hit any events this year. As I wrote recently, I’m doing less in 2018, so this review might be quite short next year.

    In any case, I thought I’d look back at how speaking went in 2017. I have a speaking CV where I track all my events, so I can get the numbers easily from there. By the numbers, 2017 was:

    • 18 total events
    • 34 total talks
    • 15 unique talks
    • 5 SQL Saturdays (not a lot)
    • 5 virtual events (3 from Redgate)
    • 4 new events for me
    • 4 countries in which I delivered talks (1 new)

    Overall a long year for me. Those 18 events resulted in a lot of trips and about 80 nights in hotels. I had some work engagements as well, but most trips involved speaking somewhere.

    I am saddened that I didn’t present at any user groups this year, which is something that hasn’t happened in awhile. Hopefully I’ll do better next year at getting to a few user groups.

    One thing here is that I discounted some of the Redgate DevOps webinars that we do monthly. I probably did 5 or 6 of those, but I’m not really presenting in most of these, mostly hosting, so I left those out.

    Oh, and 1 Habitat for Humanity talk to add to this list Winking smile

  • Join Me Online Next Week for SQL in the City

    It’s one week to SQL in the City 2017, once again streamed. I’ll be traveling this weekend to the Redgate office and getting setup. After two days of rehearsing, I’ll be ready for the live broadcast Dec 13.

    Here’s a quick promo video as well:

    Once again, we’ll be covering a number of topics that you will be interested in such as code analysis, performance counters, Database DevOps, and more. Perhaps a topic that most of us need to learn more about is data protection and privacy. We’ll have a bit to discuss here as well. This is a topic that is important for us as GDPR will take effect in 2018 and will impact us, as well as many of you.

    You can see the full schedule, which is going to be broadcast twice. A lunch show for Europe and an evening show (for me) for the afternoon in the US. We’ll be live both times, so tune in and bring your

    A long day for me, though I hope to get out to the gym between the shows. We’ll see as I’m sure I’ll have a few meetings with product groups as well.

    Register today and I’ll see you online next week. Brings lots of questions and we’ll do our best to give you the answers you need to improve your database development.

  • SQL in the City 2017

    It’s almost time for SQL in the City 2017, coming Dec 13, live from Cambridge, UK. I’ll be traveling over to England for the event, and you can stream it to your office live. Once again, we’ll be presenting the conference twice, 11am and 6pm (both GMT), and you can pick the times that work best for you.

    We’ve got a variety of sessions scheduled, and you can tune in to ask questions live, which we’ll try to answer. The full schedule is on the site, but here’s a few sessions you may want to fit in:

    • Keynote  – Data Privacy and DevOps
    • Why code standards are important and how code analysis can help
    • From DBA to DevOps hero – rapid database provisioning with SQL Clone
    • What SQL Server performance metrics should you monitor?
    • Extend DevOps to the database by automating your deployments

    We’ve been working hard at Redgate to improve our tools and build new ones that will need the needs that many organizations will have as GDPR takes effect next year. And, as always, we’re trying to save developer time with all our tools.

    Take a training day to learn a bit about privacy, security, DevOps, code analysis and more. We’ll show how Redgate can help solve some of your issues along with  plenty of good general information.

    Hope to see you online, Dec 13.

  • One More Trip and Down for the Count

    The last month has been a rough one for me, with lots of travel. I was on trips for 4 out of the last 5 weeks, and the week I was home I had a remote presentation to do. Travel can be hard enough, but add in the need to continue to manage the day job as well as prepare and practice for presentations, and it’s a long stretch.

    Fortunately, I have a month off. Or nearly so. I have one last trip in December, and then I’m done for the foreseeable future. I have nothing scheduled in Q1 for travel, and I’d like to keep it that way. Apart from trip to visit the Redgate offices and a few customers, I’ll likely take quite a bit of 208 off from speaking at conferences. I’ve done a lot the last couple years and I need a break.

    Plus there are other projects with Redgate and SQLServerCentral I’d like to tackle, not the least of which is upgrading our infrastructure from SQL 2008/WS2003.

    I’ll still aim to get to a few new events next year, and I do appreciate the invitations. You’re always welcome to ask, but understand I’ll do less. I’d like to visit some new places, and Pittsburgh is tops on my list for now.

    It’s been a pleasure seeing and meeting so many of you the last few years. I hope you’ve enjoyed my talks, and I’ll certainly continue to do more in the future, just at a slower pace.