Voice of the DBA

Tag: travel

  • 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.

  • The BBQ Crawl at SQL Saturday #300

    This weekend is SQL Saturday #300 in Kansas City. I’ll be traveling Friday for the event, hoping to arrive in time to go on the pre-event barbeque crawl that the organizers set up every year. It’s hard to believe it’s been 4 years since I was last in KC. I still have, and often wear the shirt I got from SQL Saturday #53 when I travel and was surprised to note recently that it’s a 4 year old shirt. How time flies.

    Kansas City is a neat city, and the event is a lot of fun in a very unique setting. An old river casino, converted to a training center. I still remember driving up and being unsure if it was the right place, and then enjoying the view inside.

    This week I’ll be talking about Continuous Integration for Databases, so if you’re in the area and have time Saturday, then register and come by,

  • Off to Flowcon 2014

    With all of the work on a deployment pipeline and Continuous Integration (CI) and Continuous Delivery (CD) I’ve worked on, I thought it would be instructive to go see how the software developers build their product better. A few months ago I noticed that FlowCon 2014 was coming to San Francisco. It’s a short, easy trip for me, a 2 day conference, and I thought it would be a good chance to interact with the Thoughtworks people, as well as others.

    So I booked the trip. Even though I travel enough, I rarely go for me, and this is a good chance for me to learn. I leave this afternoon, no commitments, no presentations, just the chance for me to learn a bit.

    I’m really looking forward to seeing how people are really making software happen faster, and at a higher quality level than in the past. I’ve read a few books in preparation for this, and it’s been interesting. The first one I really liked, though it has a lot to absorb. The second two were ok.

    continuousdelivery

    Continuous Delivery – Worth the read.

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    Refactoring Databases – Not bad, and certainly this gives some ideas for the challenges of database changes.

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    Recipes for Continuous Database Integration – Meh

  • SQL in the City 2014

    It’s official, we have a couple 2014 SQL in the City events scheduled, covering two countries this fall. Both events are packed into a short time (less than two weeks), so Grant and I have quite a bit of travel ahead of us.
     
    Once again we’ve divided up the sessions into administration for the DBAs and development topics for the developers, but feel free to cross from one to the other. Our theme is “Ship often, ship safe” and we hope to show you how to build better software, faster. Our goal is to help you get your enhancements and patches into production so your customers can make better use of their applications.
     
    London is first, on Oct 24 at Grange St. Paul’s Hotel. The agenda is set with Grant and I delivering a few sessions and a host of Red Gate developers along with some Friends of Red Gate presenting on a variety of topics. We also have a labs you can drop into during the day to gain practical knowledge on how to solve some of your SQL Server problems.
     
    A little over a week later, on November 3, 2014, SQL in the City returns to Seattle, with an all day event the Monday before the Pass Summit. We have a similar agenda, though a few different speakers at the McCaw Hall at Seattle Center.
     
    We do hope you’ll join us at one of the events, and get a day of training on SQL Server, the Red Gate way. We’ll also have a short happy hour afterwards, and Grant and I would love to share a toast with you. Feel free to stop and chat with either of us at anytime we’re not presenting.