Author hopefoley

SQLSaturday Philly – Another Great Event

hopefoley 1 Comment

Coming pretty quick off the heels of SQLSaturday Chicago, shifted my focus to Philly!  I was really pumped for this one.  There was a lot of folks I consider my SQLFamily presenting at this event, some I hadn’t seen since the Summit.  There were also a lot of people there I had never met before which was exciting too!  I also have one of my best friends, Amie, who lives just outside Philly so was going to be staying a day late and visit her while out there. So I pick up my trusty sales sidekick, Kandy, and we head east! We went out on Thursday night. We had a client meeting we tried to get going out there but it fell through so we had some time to relax before the festivities started. Thursday night we had chance to go to Flying Pig Saloon. Was a nice little place with a good beer menu. Then Friday during the day we put our uber tourist hats on and went to go get a cheesesteak from Pat’s. We also got our first taste of the lovely Philly traffic 🙂

***

After worries that traffic would make me late and some issues with Kandy’s iPhone navigation, I make it to the speaker dinner. It was at McKenzie Brewhouse. This was a great place for the event. It was great weather to be outside and they had us out on back patio. Food was good and the space was great for chatting with folks.

Speaker dinner

I had the first session of the day. I definitely like having a morning slot. I can get my game face on and then relax the rest of the day. So we get to the venue bright and early. This SQLSaturday was actually held at a Microsoft building in Malvern. It was a beautiful facility and things were going just fine with registration. They had just an army of volunteers helping which must have made things easier on organizers. I always go find my room first and I get there and it was like a sauna. The building wasn’t geared toward weekend activity and they didn’t have air conditioning going at first. I am normally one to try to buck stereotypes but I am very much the typical freezing woman complaining about how cold it is. For me to be just melting hot in a room, normal folks must be on the verge of heat stroke. It got better after folks got air going but seemed the upstairs rooms stayed pretty toasty all day. Another slight drawback to the venue was that wifi was a no go 😦

***

So then session time comes. I had a great group in for my session. Lots of good discussion and people telling about how they are implementing PowerPivot in their shops. I had a slight hiccup in one of my demos but I got it worked out and was only a bump instead of a disaster. We ended up doing Birkram PowerPivot but it was fun and made me appreciate my audience even more than I normally do.

***

I then caught up for just a few minutes with the so fun Josef Richberg (blog|twitter). I was bummed I missed his session and he had to leave early to get back for son’s baseball game. He was in the zone with someone from his session going over SSIS so I then snuck into Karen Lopez’s (blog|twitter) session “Career Management for Data Professionals”. There was a lot of great info in this session. If you have a chance to catch it you should. Things such as keeping metrics on what you support but don’t break any rules or NDAs at the same time. One thing I am definitely going to start doing in interviews is ask “who do you follow?”. I think that is just a great simple question that can tell me a lot of who that person is as a DBA/Developer.

Karen laying knowledge on the folks.

Then came the WIT session. It was a bit different than most as it was in an actual session slot. I was always worried about those that are set like this as they go up against technical sessions. We had a small gathering for the session but it really was one of the best WIT discussions that I have ever been involved. Joshua Lynn was there and had a lot of great insight into motivating next generation into STEM fields, boys and girls.  He works with kids in competitive robot events. I also liked Erin Stellato’s (blog|twitter) “Lean Into It” mantra she shared that she uses with her kids when handling challenges.

WIT discussion

Then I was finally able to catch a session from Christina Leo (blog|twitter) and I mean FINALLY! It had become a recurring thing at all the SQLSaturday events we were at together that we always had same session time so never got to see each other present. We did have one session at the same time at this event but she luckily had 2 sessions. So I caught her session on server side traces. She is such a warm person and it shows in her presentation style I think. She also is a perfectionist and that shows as well.

The lovely Christina Leo

Next up I had a title catch my eye and went to see John Sterrett’s (blog|twitter) session “Performance Tuning for Pirates”. Not being from east coast and also not a baseball fan I totally didn’t even consider that his reference was for the Pittsburgh Pirates. So I expected more “Arrghs” and eyepatches but didn’t receive any. It was a really good session though and there was a lot of good references to tools to assist folks such as PAL tool on Codeplex.

John Sterrett’s session – See no eyepatch.

The last session of the day I went to Adam Belebczuk’s (blog|twitter) session on Service Broker. I started following Adam on Twitter and knew he was fairly new to speaking. I was intrigued to see his style and skeelz. He didn’t disappoint and was a really good session. Very engaging with the audience and you could tell he knew the subject very well.

Great new speaker Adam Belebczuk

Then on to the after party which was hosted by Joey D’Antoni (blog|twitter) at his own house! I know right?! He and his lovely wife, Kelly, hosted a wonderful party at their house for the speakers. They were just superb hosts! I had a ball with everyone as I normally do. Then I had a bit of an odd event happen. My friend Amie I mentioned earlier, she came and hung out for a bit at the after party. She is a friend I have known since college but like most of my friends and family, they only know my career as that I do “computer stuff”. It was an odd crossing of the streams but I survived and was kind of cool to have her see that side of my world.

The after party host by Joey and Kelly D’Antoni

Thank you guys in Philly for throwing a really great event! Thanks for having me! Thank you to my SQLFamily for just continuing to show me how friggin amazing a set of people can be!

Look at great crowd! Thanks Philly!

SQLSaturday Chicago 2012 – Fan-tabulous Event Again!

hopefoley 1 Comment
Continuing with super amped up excitement from the Free-Con, moved on to SQLSaturday Chicago festivities.  I have been really looking forward to this one.  I had a blast last year and it really solidified my addiction and love for SQLSaturdays.  So we head from the Free-Con event downtown to the speaker dinner.  It was held at Dave & Busters.  It was a good location and the space allowed for movement which was nice for chatting with everyone.  They also had pool tables and duck pin bowling too which was fun.  Food was good too so definitely a win for the organizers on the speaker dinner.  I left a bit early so I could spend some time going through demos and slides.  Word on the street was that there was a unicorn pool party later on but I’ll put missing that event into the win column as well 🙂
***
Then Saturday rolls around.  Get a workout in, grab a coffee and bagel, then head over to DeVry.  It was the wrong DeVry campus of course but someone points me to the right place and I make it in plenty of time.  I skipped first session to get prepared for my presentation in the speaker room.  My session was the second of the day which was a pretty good slot.  I like getting the morning sessions so I can get presentation out of the way then relax and enjoy sessions for the rest.  Then show time arrives.  I had a really good crowd (probably around 35 people).  I was in the same time slot as Mr. Ozar which is always disheartening but I was doing a B.I. topic so bit different audience than his.  My presentation went pretty good.  I always sweat the small stuff but just part of my nature.  And I always want to make sure I am constantly improving so just part of the process.  I had some great B.I folks in the room too which was very helpful.  I would not consider myself a B.I person really but want to learn portions of it better.  I was very lacking on my SSIS so I picked up this session topic as a challenge to myself to learn.  I don’t think there is any better way to dig deep and learn something than to prepare a presentation on the topic.  So it helped to have some very heavy SSIS folks in the room to assist with questions.  Thanks Bill Fellows (blog|twitter) and Norm Kelm (blog|twitter).  I got some good constructive speaker feedback in the end that I am definitely going to incorporate into this session next time.
***
Right after my presentation was the WIT panel lunch discussion.  I always love these and was very happy to sit on the panel when Wendy (blog|twitter) asked.  Wendy moderated and I sat with Erin Stellato (blog|twitter) and Shelly Noll (blog|twitter) on the panel.  As always we had a lot of great back and forth with everyone.  There were a few topics that popped up such as competitive team members and technical vs management (very much something I struggle with).  One of the main topics of the session were if you have to be assertive to be heard.  We also talked about aggressive vs assertive.  Great discussion as always.  I apologize for making folks watch me eat during this, my fear of missing a meal trumped fear of looking like a yahoo.

View of crowd from WIT panel

Then I got to sit in on Tim Ford’s (blog|twitter) session “The Periodic Table of Dynamic Management Objects”.  I wasn’t sure if I had ever seen Tim present and was very glad checked out this one.  You could tell he put a lot of time and effort into this session.  Had a great visualization (actual period table laying out and grouping of the DMOs).  A lot of great information and he has a great presentation style.  Definitely can tell not his first rodeo and he is swell and that shows through for sure.

Tim Ford getting his DMO on!

Next up was Argenis Fernandez (blog|twitter) and his “Troubleshooting SQL Server with SysInternals Tools” presentation.  Argenis is a super great guy and a new MCM so was very interested to see his presentation style.  It was a very good presentation and I took away a lot.  I wasn’t familiar very much at all with the SysInternals tools he used.  I have to admit I was a bit freaked out with folks trying to do some of these things he showed but still good info.  For example he showed how he got into a locked out system where you lost sa password.

Argenis doing the damn thing on some SysInternals

Last session of the day was Erin Stelleto’s (blog|twitter) “DBCC Commands: The Quick and the Dangerous”.  This was I think my favorite presentation of the day.  She is super great and had a lot of great information on DBCC commands.  She showed some very helpful DBCC commands such as DBCC SQLPERF(logspace) but also a lot of focus on integrity checks and corruption.  She went through a few examples of corruption and what you can do to fix it.  I think that’s super helpful to have some practice runs with corruption for new DBAs.  I envision that session helping quite a few DBAs in those corruption-sky-is-falling situations.

Erin doing a great DBCC session

Then hoping to up my karma points I take my dear friend Argenis to the airport to head back to Seattle.  Then haul it back for my favorite part, the aftermath!  They had the afterparty at the Hampton Inn in one of the convention rooms.  They brought in a KJ for the phenomenon called SQL Karaoke.  They had food brought in for folks from Famous Daves which was super nice.  I didn’t have to worry about making a meal out of appetizers and I didn’t have to worry about driving or finding a designated driver.  Could sit back and relax and visit with everyone.  I got to meet some folks from Twitter such as the very popular SQLCheesecake (aka Dustin Mueller) (twitter).  I am still an innocent bystander in the way of karaoke.  No one should have to hear me sing but I’ll be damned if they don’t keep trying to get me to do it.  They failed again but they are a persistent bunch so maybe one of these days I’ll cave.  Jason brought out the disturbing and supposedly foul smelling unicorn mask (I took everyone’s word for it on the funk…I wasn’t that curious).  Mark Villiancourt (blog|twitter) kills me at SQL Karaoke.  An honorable mention for his Gilbert Godfrey doing Cyndi Lauper’s “True Colors” but of course my favorite is his “Star Wars Cantina” to the tune of “Copa Cabana”.  Jason Strate (blog|twitter) also did some songs in his so wrong it’s right kind of way.  Then there were some who were super ambitious and went out dancing.  I hung back with several others and stayed in the lobby just chatting.  I felt bad hijacking Rob Farley (blog|twitter) into talking so late that he was damn near dilirious.  There were a group of us that I think stayed up till 2:00 just chatting.  It was so great!  I so love having the opportunity to hear the stories of everyone and soak up any and all advice they give.

Disturbing isn’t it?

Another fantastic experience at SQLSaturday Chicago!  All you guys who organized this did just a fantastic job!  It seemed to go really smoothly but I know that is because you guys made it appear that way.  I hope I can take some of that into ours coming up in Indy.  Thanks for having me again!

I So Got My FreeCon!

hopefoley 2 Comments

Ok before I get into what a fan-friggin-tastic event this was I have to tell everyone about the office drama that lead up to it.  I come back from SQLSaturday Atlanta on Monday and start attending to a very neglected inbox.  I find an odd email from a Brent Ozar (might have heard of him).  It was a second email to an invitation only event called FreeCon! Yeah I know! So I get super happy and doing little office chair dances while I keep reading it over and over to make sure I wasn’t reading something wrong.  Then it dawns on me it was sent on Friday which was beginning of my neglect due to SQLSaturday festivities.  My heart sinks south into my stomach and an audible “Oh no” is heard in the office.  The crying/cussing that followed pulled the whole office into my woes.  I immediately respond and start to pray my seat wasn’t gone since I didn’t get a response back yet.  Then after a couple hours of fretting I get a response back that I was in time! Hooray I get to go to FreeCon!

So this is crazy right! I was super excited to be going to this event after seeing who was coming to this one and also past attendees.  See what I mean with the list?

  1. Argenis Fernandez (Blog – @DBArgenis)
  2. Bill Lescher (@BLescher)
  3. Bob Pusateri (Blog – @SQLBob)
  4. Christina Leo (Blog – @ChristinaLeo)
  5. Eric Harrison (LinkedIn)
  6. Garima Sharma (LinkedIn)
  7. Hope Foley (Blog – @Hope_Foley)
  8. Jason Fay (Blog – @JFay_DBA)
  9. John Mazzolini (LinkedIn – @JMazzolini)
  10. Josh Fennessy (Blog – @JoshuaFennessy)
  11. Louis Fritz (LinkedIn)
  12. Norman Kelm (Blog – @NormanKelm)
  13. Ramin Surya (LinkedIn – @RSurya)
  14. Scott Ellis (LinkedIn)
  15. Tim Ford (Blog – @SQLAgentMan)
  16. Tim Radney (Blog – @TRadney)
  17. Tom Norman (LinkedIn – @tjnorman57)

Former Free-Con attendees include:

See?  So the day finally comes and despite my horrible driving I get myself, Argenis, and Tim in one piece to Catalyst Ranch in downtown Chicago.  We get there and you can’t tell from the outside what kind of place this is by no means.  Recheck the address and go inside.  We get out of the elevator and it’s the cutest place ever! It was this hippy artsy chic super cute venue.  I get some food and settle in with my tablet and ready to roll.

image

Looks only slightly like me. Just one of the many cute pieces of art at the venue.

One of the first topics was marketing methods in SQL community. We watched a Red Bull advertisement showing folks doing things they love to do with some Red Bull logos scattered throughout. There was never any in your face, “drink this” going on in the video. This draws parallels to what some of the vendors are doing now. The Idera Ace program was one of the examples. They are hitching their wagons to passionate, accomplished speakers in the community.

Tim Ford: You have charisma or expertise. Or you’re lucky and you have both.

Conversation then went on to discuss consulting a bit. How things change when you become the product. A lot of this portion spoke to me. I am a consultant and I don’t know that I could go back to a corporate role. There are a lot of reasons for this but one that has to be toward the top is:

Slide quote: I used to be afraid to build stuff because I’d compete with my employer. That all changes when I’m the product.

I think I probably go into a schpeel about this in each interview I do anymore. I like being the product. The better I get, the better product I am for the company to sell. It feels like a win win to me. How often does that happen in the working world?

image

More FreeCon-ites

We then moved into discussing some concepts from the book “Outliers: The Story Of Success” by Malcolm Gladwell. One of the main themes of that book is that you can master any skill if you put in 10,000 hours. I haven’t read the book myself but the concept is intriguing. Putting a hard number to what it takes to master something….makes me wonder how many hours I have in of SQL Server (not enough). This then lead to an exercise doing a timeline resume. You take yours skills and flip them to where you can see them and the years you have doing them. I plan to continue working on mine and expanding out the skills and details more. I’ll post up a view of it when I get it a bit more together. It was pretty interesting to see your skills and career laid out like this. Helps see what skills you are on the path to hitting 10,000.  Also helps to see what skills you have left behind, need to develop more, or just ditch all together. The ones to ditch lead to Lean methodology discussion. That focuses on getting rid of the waste so you can focus on your 10,000 goal skill.  This got me to thinking that I need to stop obsessing over conquering the inbox monster.  Of course I have to pay attention to it but I don’t think I can win and I’ve wasted a lot of time I could have spent for things like blogging.  Just slice my time better and focus a bit differently.

image

Check out these lovely people checking their electronic devices.

After that was about the time our gracious host had some wonderful Giordano’s pizza brought in for everyone. I, of course, tried to eat my weight in it. I LOVE Chicago style and this is some of the best. I fight through a pizza coma and we move on with discussion.  Next we talked about some ways to find your passions and let those drive you a bit. This then lead into building a product from your passion whether it’s presentations, blogs, white papers, training, etc. Then attempting to create your “least viable product” and ways to sell it, market it, and test success in how you market it. Brent seemed to have a product or example for everything which was nice.

Brent Ozar: Posters are like crack with DBAs

We then got into Tufte and how visuals can be great or horrible. They can quickly tell you so much when done well. Doing something graphic such as a poster or visual concept is something I had never really thought of doing but is an interesting one. I know I have a lot of posters on my wall selling a lot of vendor products.

***

We then went on to discuss items we can do to help make SQLSaturdays better.  A few of the examples brought up are below:

  1. In the minutes before your presentation, have folks introduce themselves to people near them.  Be prepared to squash all the lovely conversation at go time though.
  2. If the venue allows it, setup whiteboarding areas for discussions.
  3. Point everyone in session to the local user group.
  4. Encourage them to be on Twitter and use things such as #sqlhelp.

Toward the end of the day I kept waiting on the sales pitch but it never came. I was waiting to be sold a timeshare or Ginsu knives or something but it never happened. It was a fantastic day and I learned a lot. I’m still not convinced that I’m not going to get a mafia style favor asked of me one day but I can live with that. I got a lot of ideas stirring now and I did have a LOT of that pizza. Not sure it’s enough to have to bump off Fat Tony but will evaluate if that day comes 🙂

No Sicilian can ever refuse a request on his daughter’s wedding day.

Thank you Brent for being a gracious host and inviting me to this incredible event! I ate up every last minute of it and am honored to have been a part of it!

SQLSaturday Chicago!!!

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Time is flying by and it’s getting really close to SQLSaturday Chicago (#sqlsat119).  If you are anywhere remotely close on May 19 you do not want to miss this one!  Go here and register.  I got much love for this particular SQLSaturday.  This one really solidified my love for these events.  It was the second SQLSaturday that I had presented at ever after my first one in Nashville.  I had such a great time and met so many great folks.  I ate up every minute of it…all of them till 4:00AM in fact.  Everyone continued to encourage me and welcome me into this lovely, wonderful sqlfamily…I was just blown away!  So go…go now and sign up!  There’s even a session from Eddie Wuerch (blog|twitter) titled “Join Us! Getting Started as a Technical Speaker”.  Go and catch the bug like I did then make sure to come speak at my hometown SQLSaturday in July in Indianapolis (#sqlsat126).  Shameless…I know 🙂

SQLSaturday Atlanta – Karen Lopez Got Me in Trouble

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Grabs your attention doesn’t it?  Not completely a shameless driver of traffic to my blog but definitely needs more explanation.  I’ll get to that portion in a bit.  I was super excited to get picked up to present at the SQLSaturday in Atlanta.  I don’t know for sure but Atlanta has got to be up there in number of attendees for SQLSaturdays.  Not only that but there were plenty of big names who submitted presentations.  And to top it off, it was to be my first SQLSaturday of this year.  Seems most of the ones my company picked to send me to go to last year were in the spring/summer so I was coming out of a SQLSaturday drought.

I had the first session of the day which was very nice.  I had never had that slot before but was great.  I was able get in early and make sure could get the projector working without pestering previous presenter. Plus getting it over and being able to relax and get my learn on the rest of the day was fabulous.  My presentation went pretty well.  Had a great engaged audience who gave input during and didn’t seem to glaze over.  I get to the end though and realize I was 10 minutes early.  Caught me off guard as I gave this one couple times and was before trying to cram it all in with no time to spare.  I was really kind of pissed at myself and was determined to figure out what I missed.  I did and put that info into my last blog so the demons were exorcised and I feel like I learned a lesson presenting too.  I need to make sure I really think about the audience perspective.  I was afraid I was getting too deep into each task in my SSIS package.  I wrote the package so it’s old hat to me and I understand the thing inside and out.  They have never seen it before so I need to make sure to explain it well so folks aren’t lost.

I then went first to fulfill some booth duties with Kandy (sales gal from Perpetual Technologies) but was distracted by conversations with old and new friends.  She has been to SQL events with me and knew how I get at these.  She ended up turning me loose.  It was like trying to keep the kid in candy store tethered with one of those backpack leashes.  Next time anyone catches her at an event, make sure to sing her praises and compliment her out the wazoo (she’s the beautiful tall blond).  Then I caught lunch out in the Georgia sunshine with more great sqlpeeps.

The rest of the day I caught every session I could.  Up first I caught a bit of the sales pitch lunch for Red Gate from Grant Fritchey (blog|twitter) just for fun just because he’s swell.  Then I just HAD to go catch a PowerShell session and who better to do that than Mr. Scripting Guy himself, Ed Wilson.  I have read his site forever but never attended a presentation.  He was super fun to watch and was a good session.  Up next after that was Julie Smith (blog|twitter) and Rob Volk’s (blog|twitter) joint presentation.  I seen Julie on her blog and really enjoyed some of her work on SSIS so really wanted to see her present.  They both have a great sense of humor and it came through in this session.  After that I caught Stuart Ainsworth’s (blog|twitter) session on “biggish data”.  After he mentioned that he had been bleeped in sessions before I knew it would be an enjoyable presentation and it was.

Then came the after party at Season 52 Restaurant and Brewery.  The after parties are my favorite parts.  I love a good beer and SQL peeps so those combined is like chocolate covered loveliness wrapped in rainbow.  I began the night meeting some really great PowerShell folks such as Jim Christopher (blog|twitter) and Jon Boulineau (blog|twitter).  I was so impressed that Atlanta had a full track on PowerShell.  I still don’t get it but PowerShell for some reason gets no love from some.  Was great to get to meet and chat with Adam Mechanic (blog|twitter).  I got some really good info on planning for the event from Aaron Nelson (blog|twitter) to take back home for SQLSaturday Indy (#sqlsat126).  I got some of Stacia Misner’s (blog|twitter) journey that brought her into IT and the SQL world.  So many great folks I met or old friends that caught up with that night.  All the while my sales gal Kandy was letting me do my networking thing but sat at the bar and waited on me to make sure I had a ride.  Later in the night I was especially excited to be able to chat with Karen Lopez (blog|twitter).  I had been at events where she was but hadn’t gotten to talk to her fully yet.  I’ve mentioned my “intellectual crushes” in previous blog posts.  She is definitely super high on that list.  In fact, I’m not sure she ever responded to me fully on if I get to carry the boom box in her entourage but I’m still hopeful.  Around this time folks began heading back to hotel so she said I could catch a ride with her and Denny Cherry (blog|twitter).  Without a hesitation in the world I said “Ok” and may have giggled like a school girl.  Now I mentioned the beer earlier and that of course didn’t help my star struck situation but I completely forgot about Kandy.  I was rightfully very in the doghouse with her but being the lovely person she is, forgave me later and even traveled back to Indy without punching me at all.  I am still waiting on a mafioso style favor to be asked at some point but totally will be deserved.

I had an over the moon blast at SQLSaturday Atlanta!  A few of the lessons learned are below:

1.  Never ever leave your wingman!

2.  Don’t over think your presentations and talk yourself out of giving enough information.

3.  Make sure to keep your food to beer ratio at good levels for a small Asian girl, not a lumberjack.

4.  Christina Leo (blog|twitter) was not kidding and does keep kettlebells in her car at all times.

5.  The SQL Server community is friggin awesome!

Performance Tuning 2012 SSIS Data Loads Slides, Scripts, and Missing Atlanta Info

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Had another chance to give my new SSIS 2012 presentation this weekend for the fine folks in Atlanta.  Everything went pretty well but was surprised when I ended it a bit earlier than I had been when giving it to groups before.  Aggravated at myself I was determined to figure out what I was missing.  I had been mulling over if I was going over a bit overboard with the portion stepping through tasks in my SSIS packages.  I think I had that in the back of my mind giving it as I explained the data flows a bit more loosely than I had been.  By doing that I missed the portion allowed me to talk about a couple super lovely new SSIS expression functions: TOKEN and TOKENCOUNT.  In order for my conscience to rest I explain them a bit below.

Syntax:  TOKENCOUNT(character_expression, delimiter_string)
Example:  TOKENCOUNT("John,Paul,George,Ringo", ",")

TOKENCOUNT then gives you the number of items that are broken up by your delimiters. The same example above passed to TOKENCOUNT will give you 4…totally helpful to determine how many Beatles you have.

Syntax:  TOKEN(character_expression, delimiter_string, occurrence)
Example:  TOKEN("John,Paul,George,Ringo", ",", 1)

In this example above it will give you “John”. And it’s TOKEN that breaks up the Beatles this time, not Yoko. (So sorry but I couldn’t pass up a joke that cheesy.)

These functions can definitely help out in scenarios where you are breaking out fields in delimited files instead of the FINDSTRING/SUBSTRING ugly gymnastics you normally have to do prior to 2012. Sorry Atlanta for short changing you out of the information.

My slides are available here.  The script is available here.

I will be getting out more on the experience of the fan-tabulous event very soon.


	

	


			
				
				


			

					
Sa-weet!  Going to present in Hot-lanta!
						

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I got some good news last week.  My SSIS 2012 presentation got picked up for SQLSaturday Atlanta(#sqlsat111)!!  I keep checking the site to make sure I didn’t daydream it but it’s true!  So excited to be a part of a fantastic line-up.  I’m excited too to be getting back and doing some SQLSaturdays again.  I hit the SQLSaturday circuit fast and furious last year early but trailed off a bit at the end and itching to get back in action.  If you are even remotely in the area on April 14, you MUST come down for a great day of training.  And make sure to come see my session (Super-size Your SSIS Breakfast Sandwich: Performance Tuning in SSIS 2012)! Go check it out for yourself at http://www.sqlsaturday.com/111/eventhome.aspx. There are some really great pre-cons going on as well.

	

	


			
				
				


			

					
PTI SQL Server 2012 Firestarter Web Series
						

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My company is going to be hosting a webinar series on all the lovely new stuff in SQL Server 2012.  I will be doing a couple of them and as well as some of the other guys on my team.  Below is the official marketing blurb.  Will be great way to find out about all the new goodies in 2012.  Come join us!  Pass along to anyone/everyone.  Here is the link to register:  http://pti.net/Firestarter/




 Announcing PTI’s 2012 SQL Server Webcast Series Don’t miss out, there is still time to register for the first webinar on February 2nd! 


With the upcoming release of SQL Server 2012 later this year, PTI has created a series of one hour presentations designed to give you a sneak peek at all the exciting changes, updates and toolkits that Microsoft will be offering in this new version. Join our staff of presenters as they take you through; Master Data Services in SQL Server 2012, Enhancements to Reporting Services in SQL Server 2012, SSIS 2012 – New and improved, Extended Events – the death knell of SQL Trace, and much, much more.


This series begins February 2, 2012 and continues each Thursday through March 29, 2012. See below for presentation details, then click on the banner above or go to PTI.net/Firestarter and register for any or all of the webinars today.  Don’t miss out on this chance to get ahead of the technology curve. 

2/02 – Master Data Services in SQL Server 2012 – presented by Arie Jones

2/09 – Utilizing Knowledge with Data Quality Services in SQL Server 2012 – presented by Arie Jones


2/16 – Throwing T-SQL 2012 enhancements against the wall – presented by Kyle Neier

2/23 – Enhancements to Reporting Services in SQL Server 2012 – presented by Hope Foley

3/01 – AlwaysOn – Way to get your 9’s? – presented by Warren Sifre

3/08 – SSIS 2012 – New and improved – presented by Kyle Neier

3/15 – PowerPivot & BISM in SQL Server 2012 OH MY! – presented by Hope Foley

3/22 – SSAS 2012 – What BISM means to you!!! – presented by Warren Sifre

3/29 – Extended Events – the death knell of SQL Trace – presented by Kyle Neier


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Friday SQL Nugget #1
						

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Got tagged today by Ted Krueger (blog|twitter) in his Friday SQL Nugget.  I started this post before midnight so it counts right?  The concept for today was when to pitch it all and start over.  I had to ponder this awhile because I couldn’t think of anything I have thrown away lately related to my job.  My hubby may disagree but I will pitch stuff like crazy at home.  At work though, that’s a step back/gasp/stare in horror type moment to think of pitching things.  I hang onto links, emails, books, and whatever else makes sense in my technical hoarder type way.  And scripts…you must be out of your mind if you think I’ll get rid of a script!  There was finally something I thought of that I don’t mind letting go of without a regret at all…presentations.  I haven’t been doing presentations for a terribly long time (around a 1.5 years) but in the fall started getting antsy to get something new going.  I ended up taking the holidays off, well to just survive the holidays.  It’s a new year and kicking it into gear fast and furious on some new ones that I’m really excited to start doing.  I will admit I may have issues getting rid of some things, presentations is not one of them.  Although I may keep 2 or 3 copies of all files related to them, ok I’ll stop while I’m ahead before someone offers to get me psychiatric help.


What my hard drives feel like.



	

	


			
				
				


			

					
Top Ten Things Learned at my First PASS Summit Experience
						

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Work has been crazy since I got back from my vacation after the PASS Summit.  Vacation always seems you work extra hard on front and back end.  Finally taking a little bit of time for myself to finally get a blog post out of my experience.  Even at the risk of over using the term there really is no other way to say it…PASS Summit was da bomb!  It was an uphill road trying to get myself to this event so when I was there it was like a victory on top of the normal goodness.  I got myself addicted to the SQL Server community at SQLSaturdays.  If that was the piece to create the addiction, this was the full on overdose.  Everywhere I looked were wonderful SQL folk.  I was on a whole different level of happy while I was out there.  The only bummer was when I was asked if I was presenting but there’s always next year.  Here are some of the tidbits I learned at my very first PASS Summit.


1. I have many more folks I am adding to my intellectual crushes list.  The level of training was amazing!  I got to see presentations from folks I had never seen before, especially some that I’ve followed forever in blogs and etc (i.e. Paul Randal and Steve Jones) .  I did attend a Bob Ward session which lived up to it’s reputation.  Kind of scary there are people that smart out there…I’m skeptical he’s human.  There wasn’t a bad presentation that I saw though.  I did also get to partake in a pre-con session with Adam Mechanic…fantastic!  Too many really so many good things out there that your saving grace is the DVD.  If you don’t you HAVE to get the DVD.  Makes the ones you miss not such a tragedy.


2. Must make sure to use Zoomit profusely at all future presentations.


3.  SQLKaraoke is always something that is more than that it really should be.  Always a wallflower at these…no one would want to hear me sing…I promise.  Super fun though.  Glad my bad influence for the conference, Eddie Wuerch, invited me to go.


4. The term “networking” has new meaning for me.  I had no idea that drinking more than I should and staying out way too late means “networking”.  I did a lot of networking back in college and it was a lot easier then than it is now on this older Mom version of myself.  At least next year I know that sleep is out the window, be prepared for it and accept it.




5.  They were really serious about the kilt thing.


6.  Need to rethink about animations in my slides.  It can help and be non-cheesy if done right.


7.  It was nice to see the W.I.T luncheon in person this year.  Loved all the ladies up there!  I don’t remember what it was Karen Lopez said, but I remember thinking standing up and saying “Amen” felt like an acceptable thing to do.  I go to all the WIT events that I have opportunity.  Always get this fire in my belly feeling at those, so sent the email to offer up my services and get more involved in that.


8.  There was also SQLGive going on at the Summit.  Very nice to see when someone thinks outside of themselves.  Thanks to all the folks to coordinated that.


9.  The professional development sessions are much better than I ever gave them credit.  I normally am a technical fiend at any of these events and always trying to soak up as much knowledge as I can.  These types of sessions always had gotten the axe when they were set up against something fun technically.  I ended up going to see Steve Jones do one and it was really good.  It may have been good timing too.  I ended up getting into management on accident and now that the team is bigger I’m struggling with the technical/management question it seems many have been faced.  So after his session I opened myself into going to two more.  Very good information I gathered and definitely got my wheels turning.  I love picking the brains of others to hear their experiences and I got a lot of info that relates to this internal struggle.


10.  All the cool kids ended up with longer ribbons.  There became such a thing as “ribbon envy” by the end of the summit.


I knew I would dig this PASS Summit thing I kept hearing about so much.  I talked my company (Perpetual Technologies) into sponsoring this year as well.  It’s a good thing…I think and hope it won’t be such a hard sell next year.  And who knows…maybe next year will be my year to present.  This first timer is hooked so I have to hedge my bets and make it happen to go next year and all to follow.