Voice of the DBA

Tag: syndicated

  • The Mentoring Experiment – Closing Thoughts

    Andy wrote a post today called The End of the Mentoring Experiment, which is something we’ve talked about for some time. In fitting with the decision, and perhaps justifying it further, we decided to do this a few months back, but as with many things, we haven’t gotten to it until today.

    I remember when we started this, and we were very excited and interested. The first cycle of matches, using 8 people we hand picked, consumed a lot of time, and while it was successful, it was difficult to scale. We continued on a couple other cycles, trying to tweak to process a bit, but never found a way to manage this effectively, given other parts of our lives, and were never quite comfortable with automating too much of the experiment away.

    We also struggled with the idea of accidently making some mistake, breaking someone’s privacy, or causing harm to another’s career or life. Andy wrote a few things about this, and it made sense to us.

    We do believe in mentoring, and I hope that those of you looking to grow your careers take time to look for mentors. If you need advice or want help, ask. There are lots of people that will probably give you a little time. It’s not a sign of weakness to need or want a mentor. It’s a sign of maturity.

    For those of you with some experience, keep an eye out for someone that might ask for help, or maybe just seem to be lost. Tread lightly, and carefully, but offer to be a sounding board if they’d like one. You can really make a difference in someone’s career with a little effort.

  • Grant for President

    Grant Fritchey is running for the PASS board. He’s not running for President, though I’m not sure why he shouldn’t be able to. The board makes decisions as a group and the President isn’t necessarily more or less powerful than other members. However the President can be the face of PASS and present an image that motivates others. Grant would be great here, and I’d like to see the President elected directly at some point in the future, without the nonsensical requirements they serve for multiple terms before then.

    However that’s a separate discussion. In the next week, the election will take place and I’m voting for Grant. I’ve known him a long time, I’ve watched him work with the community, and I think he might be able to create some change in the organization.

    For far too long, I think PASS has been stuck in a bureaucracy that acts out of fear rather than leadership, and I’d like to see that change. I wouldn’t blame any past or present board members as I think many of them are fine community members, but I think the organization has systemic problems that create issues. I’ll cease ranting about that, and no, I’m not going to attempt change myself. I did once, but I have neither the time nor inclination to fight those battles right now.

    I’m voting for Grant. You can make your own decisions, but I am choosing Grant because he’s can create change. I’ll also vote for JRJ for the same reason. I think James has worked to create, and implement change, and I’d like to see him do more, especially in non-US areas.

    I’m not sure who else I’d vote for, though I like both Wendy and Sri. I’m not sure what they’ve done, and I’d certainly like to get more information. That’s one of my complaints from all board members, is that they disclose too little information to the community.

    However you vote, please take a minute and vote. We have an amazing community, and the more you participate, the better it gets.

    Disclosure: Both Grant and I work for Red Gate Software, so take that for what it means to you. We’re also on the DBA Team together 😉

  • Back from DevConnections

    I spent a few days at DevConnections this week and really enjoyed the conference. The location was Aria in Las Vegas, where I’ve never been, but it was a new, really nice hotel and there was one amazing thing:

    The wi-fi worked.

    Not on and off, pretty much the entire time I was sitting in sessions, I had access from my devices. I think that was the first time this worked for me at a conference. Congrats to DevConnections and Aria.

    The conference itself was short for me, with too many other commitments for presentations and talks, I had to cut short my time there. Tues afternoon – Thur morning, which mean I saw a couple talks on Tues, only one on Wed, and gave two Wed.

    That’s disappointing. There were other things I wanted to see, and I wish I had the chance to do more. I’ll be looking to schedule less trips next year as more and more I am finding myself picking up things from really interesting sessions.

    One of the great things about DevConnections is that I can get a variety of knowledge from the event. I watched a session on Azure diagnostics, as I’m curious how to actually track the performance and issues of your application. I still hope to port some (or all) of SQLServerCentral to Azure, so understanding the telemetry is something I’d like to have.

    From there, I went to an interesting logical query processing talk from Itzik Ben-Gan, which I really enjoyed.  If you get the chance to see Mr. Ben-Gan talk, you should take it.

    That’s hard to do at many events, where we often have the focus on one technology. There’s nothing wrong with that, and we have some amazing events in the SQL Server community. However there are times that I want to learn a bit more about development, Sharepoint, Azure, or something else. DevConnections gives you the chance to do so, as does DevIntersection/SQLIntersection (coming in November).

    If you wear multiple hats, think about coming to one of these conferences in the future.

  • DevConnections 2014

    It’s time for Devconnections again, and I’m back in Las Vegas for the conference. This is a great conference if you work with a variety of Microsoft technologies, or want to learn about something in addition to SQL Server. We have some great SQL Server talks, but if you want to pop over and learn some Sharepoint, ASP, Visual Studio, or more, check out the schedule.

    If you’re not here, consider coming to DevConnections next year.