Voice of the DBA

Tag: speaking

  • Presentations that are Easy on the Eyes

    Recently I was at a conference and was struggling to see some Visual Studio code on the large screen. As I age, I find myself trying to sit in the front of most talks if I need to see the screen. In this talk, the speaker was using the default dark theme in VS, and it was hard to read the C# code. It often doesn’t matter if I can’t read code, after all, I’m not coding during the talk, but I do like to try and follow along as the person is talking.

    I’ve had the same issues with presentation templates. Some companies seem determined to stand out with a colored template for their event, and as they try to differentiate themselves, some will invariably use darker colors for a background. I’ve run into more than a few of these where they look fantastic on a monitor but are barely readable on a projector.

    A few days later I ran across a post from Aaron Bertrand on using dark settings for SSMS. At first I thought that was a bad idea, and I debated this with a few people. I even asked a quick Twitter poll, with most people responding they preferred a light template, but only a few people responded. I decided to seek a little wider audience and see what others think.

    What colors are easier for you to see when someone presents? Do you prefer lighter backgrounds or darker ones? I know we all want higher contrast between the foreground and background, but as we add in code coloring and other elements, what do you prefer when you’re watching something on a screen larger than a monitor?

    I do need to experiment a bit, and as Aaron suggested, blog about my settings. Mostly so that I have a copy of them that I can easily find on new VMs and machines. I don’t think dark backgrounds are better on projectors, but I haven’t really experimented. Let me know what you think, and perhaps I’ll have a whole new look for you later in the year as I present in the fall.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcast

    Listen to the MP3 Audio ( 3.1MB) podcast or subscribe to the feed at iTunes and Libsyn.

  • A Busy Few Years

    Last week on Twitter, a friend mentioned they were submitting to the PASS Summit and went through their previous speaking engagements. This person noted they had done over 40 talks in the last few years, which is a lot. I do more, but it’s part of my job. Ten talks a year in your spare time is quite a bit, and kudos to anyone that does that.

    I have a Speaking CV page, but I decided to load a bit of data into a database, where it should be but isn’t. With time constraints, I only loaded 2015-2017 into the db, but I’ll get the rest loaded at some point.

    In any case, I decided to run a few metrics and see where I stand.

    2017-05-19 15_41_39-SQLQuery2.sql - (local)_SQL2016.sandbox (PLATO_Steve (63))_ - Microsoft SQL Serv

    2017-05-19 15_44_16-SQLQuery2.sql - (local)_SQL2016.sandbox (PLATO_Steve (63))_ - Microsoft SQL Serv

    2017-05-19 15_44_59-SQLQuery2.sql - (local)_SQL2016.sandbox (PLATO_Steve (63))_ - Microsoft SQL Serv

    2017-05-19 15_45_38-SQLQuery2.sql - (local)_SQL2016.sandbox (PLATO_Steve (63))_ - Microsoft SQL Serv

    It’s been a busy few years.

  • La La Land Speaking at SQL Saturday #640

    I love LA. In many ways, it’s a fun city to visit, and I love taking a few minutes, even just a 10-20 minute walk along the boardwalk on some beach. I’ve looked forward to quite a few trips to LA in my life, and I often take advantage of offers to go back when I can. This was my last trip in 2015 to Huntington Beach.

    Photo Apr 09, 1 35 53 PM

    There are a few SQL Saturday events in LA, and the latest is #640 at the Microsoft Center in LA proper. I’m honored to have been accepted and am looking forward to the trip in June.

    I’ll be presenting my Continuous Integration for Databases talk, looking at how we can build a CI pipeline for our database code in an hour. We’ll go into detail with what CI means and the general process. I’ll use a few tools, but there are many ways to setup CI, so I don’t recommend one over the other.

    I’m redoing this talk for another event, and I’ll end up with a subset of that work for this event, but hopefully I’ll show you a few things that will help you in your daily work and improve your database code.

    There are lots of other great sessions, and this is a free day of training in LA, so pass the word and I’ll see you June 10.

  • VS Live–Austin

    VSLive Austin started yesterday with pre-cons, but the keynote kicks off today. I’ll miss it as I’m flying this afternoon to the event. Sad smile It’s been a busy month, and I needed Monday at home.

    However, I’ll be there presenting Wednesday and Thursday, and hopefully slipping into a few sessions as well to see the non-Microsoft look at building software. This is one of those fun conferences, with the chance to see SQL, .Net, and Cloud talks all at the same event.

    Hopefully I’ll get the chance to see a few of you at the event, and please feel free to stop me and shake hands at VS Live.