Voice of the DBA

Tag: travel

  • Back to #SQLSat Louisville

    Next week is SQL Saturday #729 – Lousiville and I’m making the trip. This will be my third or fourth trip there, and I’m looking forward to the trip. It’s a nice town, I can visit some family, and lots of #sqlfamily friends will be there.

    This is the 10th event, which is very exciting. Lots of props to John Morehouse, Chris Yates, Mala Mahadevan, and everyone setting the event up. Amazing to see another city get to their tenth event.

    The schedule is up, and there are some great sessions. I’m doing my encryption and security session, but I wonder if I’ll have many people coming. I’m up against Randy Knight’s deadlock session, William Wolf’s T-SQL session and a Linux talk from Dave Walden plus others.

    In fact, lots of tough choices. Each time slot has at least 2 or 3 sessions I’d like to see, and I’ve got tough choices to make.

    If you’re in the area, this is a fun event and the chance to learn some new things about SQL Server. Register today and come spend the day talking about the data platform.

  • Off to SQL in the City 2018

    I’m off today on a plane, flying to the UK for this Wednesday’s SQL in the City broadcast. This is our first event of 2018, and I’m excited. We’ll be talking GDPR and security, not the most exciting of topics, but we also have some cool new products to show off. I’m excited to see what people think of the work that our development teams have been doing.

    I’m also doing the keynote, which is both a little exciting and scary. Usually Simon Galbraith, founder and CEO does these, but for some reason I’ve been picked this time. I hope you enjoy what I have to say, and hopefully I don’t mess things up.

    I’ll also be showing you some improvements to SQL Clone with integrated data masking. This is a very well thought out product, which will really help many of you prepare databases for development and test without exposing sensitive data.

    Register today and I’ll see you, or rather, you’ll see me on Wednesday.

  • The Travel Review

    I got a note from United this week that summarized my travel for 2017. I’ve been feeling a bit itchy as I haven’t had any trips scheduled for 2018 so far. Strange for me, but looking over the summary, I’m glad.

    Last year I flew 44 times with United, for 81k miles. I had 25 domestic flights and 19 international ones. That’s kind of crazy. Of course, outside of Denver, London is my most visited location.

    For hotels, I logged 26 stays with Hilton that totaled 62 nights. That was low because I got stuck in a few other hotels at events early in the year. Plus I think I had 8 or 9 Air BnB nights. A lot of time away from home.

    I’m a numbers person, so it’s neat to see the summaries from the services I use.

    The one big number for me that shows me I traveled too much? Total workouts for the year: 265. That’s way too low.

  • 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.