Voice of the DBA

Tag: travel

  • Across the Water Again

    I’m in the UK again, for my second trip this year. This time I have no commitments for speaking or presenting anything. I’m in town for a Marketing get-together and our internal Level Up conference. Nice to be here without being responsible for anything, which is rare.

    It’s a relatively quick trip for me. No Mrs. way0utwest Sad smile, but I was traveling last week and next week I take time away to head to Orlando and AAU Girls National Volleyball Championships, so this is slotted around those items.

    It’s a relatively busy week, so no sure there will be any blogging for now, but if I come up with something interesting and have some time, I might. I’m focusing on taking a physical paper notebook and pen and trying to do most of my thinking and learning that way.

  • A Quick Trip to Agile West

    Redgate is sponsoring Agile West this year, and the marketing team asked me to give a talk on database DevOps technologies.

    I have a keynote talk, called Don’t Forget the Database, that I’ll be delivering on Wednesday. This covers some of the challenges of why the database is harder than software, but doesn’t need to be. I show some demos of zero downtime deployments as a part of this talk.

    Likely I’ll record the demo and talk over it, as I have seen that technique work well and it keeps me from fumbling around.

    My wife is coming with me. This is a quick Tues-Thur trip for me, and easy. Las Vegas is about an hour flight for me, and I only have a few commitments, so this is a chance for the two of us to see a show or two and get out of town for a short break.

    I’m lucky that some of my business travel allows my wife to come around, and it’s worth the expense to bring her and make the trip more enjoyable. That makes it easy for me to handle the 20-30 trips a year I make.

    If you’re at the show, stop by the Redgate booth or my talk and say hi.

  • Leveling Up for Sales and Marketing

    I’m heading to Austin today for Redgate’s internal Level Up conference. This is designed to help employees improve their skills in some way. The original ones focused on technology skills, but they have grown to include other business skills. A nice writeup from 2019 is here.

    This has traditionally been in Cambridge, UK, but last year we had an event in Austin. I couldn’t attend because of other commitments, and have actually never been to Level Up. Fortunately for me, there are actually a few events this year:

    • Level Up Sales and Marketing, US – May 2023, Austin
    • Level Up Sales and Marketing, UK – June 2023, Cambridge
    • Level Up Technical, UK – July, Cambridge

    This year, I’ll get to attend the first two, though not likely the third. I’d like to hit the technical talks, but I also have a lot of other trips and travel, so I have to pick and choose.

    I’m not speaking here. I speak a lot, and this is a chance for others to share their knowledge. I have offered to mentor and support others, and I ran a presentations tips and tricks session recently. Actually, I may do that in a few other places and record it.

    Having an internal conference isn’t cheap or easy, but it is a neat way to build bonds in the company and tailor training to what you need. I’ve been asked to speak at a few other companies’ conferences, and I’ve always enjoyed it.

  • Off to the 2023 Microsoft MVP Summit

    I’m off today to Seattle, Redmond actually, and the Microsoft MVP Summit. This is an annual conference Microsoft has run for their MVPs, allowing them to interact and learn from the developers for various products.

    I am a Microsoft Data Platform MVP, which means that I’ll mostly be seeing sessions and talking with the developers for SQL Server, Azure SQL, Synapse, etc. All the Data Platform stuff.

    The entire event is under NDA, so I can’t discuss anything that happens or what I will learn. At least not this week. A lot of this will come out from under NDA in the next few months, and this event gets me the chance to work with some things before they become public.

    It’s also the chance to get to know the developers and product managers better. I’ve become good friends with some over the years, and I look forward to the chance to not only learn from them, but share a meal or drink at some point this week.

    A quick trip, out today, back Thursday. Just in time to meet the tractor guy Friday.