Category Presentations

No Pity Party This Time! Selected for PASS Business Analytics Conference!

hopefoley 1 Comment

Got the best email ever!  I got accepted to speak at the PASS Business Analytics Conference!  I keep reading the email making sure I read it right.  There it is though, says “selected” right next to my submission!  It’s the first time I’ve been selected to speak at one of the big conferences!  And not for lack of trying and submitting to several over the years.  I became very accustomed to the Twitter woe is me pity parties.  No pity party required this time!

***

So I get this email and start to have a moment that felt a bit like one of those teenager movies.  I’ve been the awkward girl who’s likeable enough but always gets the response from the guys or PASS in this example, “It’s not you, it’s me”.  After much swooning and many SQLSaturdays, my time finally has come.  Jake Ryan, I mean PASS, picked me up in the Porshe and we had our moment where we sat on the table with a birthday cake between us.  Ok it’s a little bit of a stretch from a John Hughes movie but was what came to mind when I got that email.  I got accepted to speak at PASS BA Conference!  I’m so excited and so glad I finally get the chance to speak at one of these conferences.

***
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Kalamazoo SQLSaturday – SQL Goodness Michigan Style

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Looking over to my right I can see the tops of clouds while I’m working on this blog post.  I’m actually on my way to SQLSaturday Minnesota right now so no better time than to reflect back on Kalamazoo last weekend.  I drove up on Friday and gave myself plenty of time to make it to town which was nice.  Even stopped off in Fort Wayne to get one of them fancy presentation mice all the cool kids have and grabbed some lunch.  I get to the hotel and they had to redirect me to a different hotel.  Some nut job tampered with the sprinkler system and flooded half of the newly renovated hotel causing over $100,000 in damage.  They sent me like 2 minutes down the road to a nice hotel and were super helpful so really was a non-issue in my book.  I then spent some time with my re-vamped demo before heading over to the speaker dinner.  Ran into Norm Kelm (blog|twitter) and we rode over together to Tim Ford’s (blog|twitter) house.  I have been to other speaker dinners/after parties at folks houses before but am always just floored by how gracious those folks are for hosting.  Tim and his wife Amy, were super great hosts.  There was fantastic food and a great beer selection (super important to this admitted beer snob).  They had this really good spicy chicken and apparently fire roasted veggies for the homemade salsa.  Really good stuff!  Then got to hangout with my SQL Family a bit which was great!  Chatted up everyone who was in earshot, played a really terrible game of pool, and picked up my favorite speaker gift, ever!  They gave out these really great light jackets.  Not that I haven’t appreciated all the polos and shirts, but being a gal I typically don’t wear them after the event.  This is the first one I will actually wear again.  Nicely done organizers on the jackets!

 ***

Event day comes and my session is just before lunch.  I get a workout in and head over to the venue.  Oh what a venue it was!  This place was just a gorgeous facility!  They had it at the Kalamazoo Valley Community College.  The layout was nice as well.  Rooms were a bit spread out but wasn’t excessive at all.  I get setup for my PowerPivot session and had a great turnout.  I added a new piece to my demo which went well but I wish I was a little more comfortable with that new portion. I don’t think it showed as I got all 4s and 5s and had some folks stay and discuss PowerPivot more.  So then with my session done it was time for the WIT panel at lunch.  For a change I didn’t stuff my face during the discussion and waited till after to eat.  I’m a liar though if I say I wasn’t worried that I was going to get some food…this girl’s gotta eat!  We had really great informal discussion.  It was moderated by Shelly Noll (twitter) and the panel was myself, Wendy Pastrick (blog|twitter), Colleen Morrow (blog|twitter), and Tamera Clark (blog|twitter).  We talked about things like getting what you deserve in pay and touched some on glass ceiling issues.  I liked the term that came up of “voting with your feet” meaning that if you aren’t treated how you want or paid what you want, walk away.

 ***

After that I grab a couple tacos to go (hooray food!) and head over to Juan Soto’s (blog|twitter) session “Wish you could live the glamorous consulting life?”. I had never seen him speak before and am a consultant so was curious to hear a different aspect of it.  He gave a lot of great information and tips for folks who are considering making that jump.  Covered some of the considerations such as working from home.  You have to be geared to do that and can’t have a lot of distractions in your home.  He also had some good information on websites and Google ads.

Juan’s session on consulting

From there I went to Garrett Edmondson’s (blog) session “Scaling SQL Server to Hundreds of Terabytes”.  I wasn’t familiar with him as well and was intrigued by the topic.  He did a good job and is very knowledgeable on data warehouses.  He also is one of the rare folks also getting to work with PDW and talked about that a bit.

Garrett’s session on data warehouses

For the last session of the day I went to go see Tamera like a camera Clark give session on creating your first SSRS report.  I’ve known her from Twitter for quite awhile so was excited to see her present.  She had some small hiccups with her datasets but she recovered well and did a good job.  She’s a fabulous gal and her personality shines through which is great.

Tamera’s going over SSRS

The wrap up went on for a good long time because they had tons of sponsors.  I gave Josh Fennessy (blog|twitter) tons of grief because of this which was really due to the fact I had a big case of sponsor envy going on leading up to the event.  So after that then we went downtown to the Beer Exchange for the after party.  This was a great place with an interesting concept.  They do the beer prices like a stock market that go up and down based on demand.  Was a happening spot so they had to break us up into 3 groups of 10.  I was in the right spot at the bar and got into one of the first groups.  We are sitting and eating having a great time.  I had great beer and the best macaroni and cheese I ever had.  A bit later I go downstairs to find that some of the others still hadn’t gotten a table yet and were still waiting!  I then begin to feel like a giant jerk and move our table out quickly.  One of the folks still waiting was Tim and Amy Ford and their kids which totally helped drive the guilt knife in a bit deeper.

Prize giveaways galore!

We then end up going back to Tim/Amy’s house after that as well.  Another reason to feel like a giant jerk…yeah umm you haven’t eaten yet but can we all crash your place again?  Luckily they are super nice like that and we all had a ball.  Jason (blog|twitter) and Sarah Strate (blog|twitter) brought a game called “Cards Against Humanity” that was just flippin hilarious!  It was kind of like a super crude and wonderfully inappropriate version of grown up Mad Libs and was fantastic!  I may have to buy a copy of that myself.

***

So yeah it was another really great SQLSaturday event and I had a ball hanging out with my SQL Family!  Thanks to Josh Fennessy who did a fantastic job being the lead organizer.  You held it together even with the venue issues and everything (almost became the first SQLSaturday to be held in a field).  Thanks to all the other organizers and volunteers!  Huge thanks and big props to Tim and Amy Ford!  Thank you for letting this crazy bunch of SQL people invade your home not once but twice!  Tim you make sure to buy Amy something expensive for putting up with all of us yahoos! 🙂

Ewww Wee – Double Dose of SQLSaturday Yumminess

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Well I had plenty of time to reflect on the SQLSaturday Indy and now I am back in the saddle but on the stressful side of the fence, the speaker side.  I will be doing back to back SQLSaturdays starting this weekend in Kalamazoo for #sqlsat160!  I am really looking forward to this one! I will be presenting on PowerPivot 2012 and BISM there.  It’s a really great lineup of speakers and word on the street is there will be tacos!  Who would miss that?  Go register for that one here!

***

If you can’t make it to that one perhaps I can persuade you into coming to Minnesota for #sqlsat149?  I’m not sure what kind of bribes were cashed in to get the schedule they have but I’ll take it!  They have a phenomenal schedule lined up and I will be part of it doing “Consulting – The Good, The Bad, The Ugly” again with Ted Kruger.  It was such a fun session, can’t wait to do that one again.  Go check out that event here.  Going to be a bit hectic back to back SQLSaturdays but really can’t wait!

SQLSaturday Indy Episode 2: “A New Hope”

hopefoley 7 Comments

Yes total cheese but after someone mentioned that title to me I couldn’t resist.  It’s very fitting though.  This was Indy’s second SQLSaturday and man it made a new Hope out of me!  I have been lucky enough to be part of a lot of SQLSaturdays but this one was my first in the role of organizer.  It was a very eye opening experience and I have so much more respect for anyone dedicated/crazy enough to do it.

SQLSaturday Eve

We were lucky enough to get Allen White to come to SQLSaturday and do a precon session.  We hosted it at PTI which was nice.  It gave us all a chance in the office to get giddy as school girls that Allen was coming to our home base.  I was a little worried though when I talked to him in Philly when he only 2 registered attendees.  I had nothing to worry about as he ended up selling out with even more folks trying to get into it.  It went really well and he did a fantastic job like he always does.  As I was in Allen’s session though I started catching tweets about the time zone difference tripping folks up (facepalm).  I didn’t even think to warn folks that Indianapolis was in the Eastern time zone.  Indiana has these weird lines for timezones and it’s super close to Chicago but we’re on different zones.  Ooops!

Allen and a full day of PowerShell…what could be better?

So right after his precon I pack up and head over to Western Bowl on the west side for the speaker dinner.  On my way I picked up a nice bottle of scotch for our main organizer, Caroline Bailey.  She deserved that and then some!  Shortly after I get there and the speakers start to show up.  We just had pizzas for dinner and then some bowling fun.  I hadn’t bowled forever and am really terrible at it but had a ball.  I felt pretty decent with the speaker dinner.  It seemed like everyone was having a good time.

Speakers bowling it up!

The Big Day

I get up extra early to get a quick workout in before heading over to the venue.  I had to navigate there like the pilgrims did as my phone decided to take a morning off from allowing me to get internet access.  I had to call my husband and ask him how to get to University of Indianapolis.  I get there and I was not prepared for the pandemonium.  Everything is going ok but with all the registrations going on with that many people in general, tends to give you the chaos vibes.  I try to get my bearings and then I begin to hear about issues with the hotel.  We had storms on Friday and apparently that caused the hotel not to have elevator service and hot water! Lovely no?!  I also hear how quality of it was not great.  My shoulders droop and I begin a long day of just feeling terrible, mostly about this.  The hot water and elevators were an act of god but quality of the hotel was on us.  I wanted to take care of all my speakers in my hometown and I felt like a giant failure.  Tried to swallow that issue and get through the rest of the day.  We then hear about issues with WiFi.  I begin trying to hunt down some IT folks to figure out what is going on without much luck.  We had some successes but WiFi was pretty much a no go and I learned to live with it.  From there I then hear about how someone is having issues with projector…of course they are!  I really begin to feel a bit defeated but carried on to the first session of the day.

***

I grab my stack of feedback sheets and head down to assist in Julie Smith’s (blog|twitter) “Data Quality Services – Finally!” session.  Just what I needed to help get my mind off all the issues, Julie’s great sense of humor and really great info.  This works for a bit and I am distracted wondering what type of a hat a data steward should have, because with a name like that you really must have a hat.  Then her session is over and she did a great job and I start collecting feedback.  I realize after that when I take the feedback up to the front area for prize drawing that I didn’t exactly tell hardly anyone to put their name on the sheet and it didn’t have a place for it.  Lovely…organizer reality comes crashing back to me.

Julie dropping knowledge on DQS

I then skip next session and try to get my bearings and figure out who needs help.  I probably was in the way more than I helped but that’s ok.  I talk with some of the speakers and do a lot of apologizing for hotel.  They were all pretty nice about it and tried not to make me feel bad, it didn’t work but was nice of them regardless.  I then catch up with my husband and daughter who came to help me out.  My hubby was going to take pictures of the event and my daughter was there so I could show her what mommy does when I’m out of town.

***

Ok then on to Shaun Watt’s (twitter) “PowerShell and PerfMon…Come on!” session.  We decided awhile back to make sure first time speakers had a friendly face in the audience to assist if they needed it.  I was that friendly face for his session.  This was his first SQLSaturday and had only given this session just the prior week for practice to the local user group.  I was glad to do this as was around the day of Christina Leo’s (blog|twitter) experience on her first time session. Nicholas Cain’s (blog|twitter) blog post on it stuck with me and took his suggestion.  Shaun did a great job on his session so didn’t need me but I felt better being there.  He does really well for being new to technical speaking.

Shaun doing his second live presentation ever!

Then on to the WIT lunch panel.  I always love going to these and honored when asked to sit in on the panels.  My sales partner in crime, Kandy Vicini, was the moderator.  On the panel I sat with Wendy Pastrick (blog|twitter), Eddie Wuerch (blog|twitter), Julie Smith, and my daughter sat with me.  She is severely shy so knew she wouldn’t speak but it was nice having her with me.  She is my own little WIT ideas in action and I at least exposed her to a technical world.  Everything went well and Kandy did a great job other than the failure of mispronouncing and not knowing who Roger Waters is of Pink Floyd.  She came armed with statistics and everything! I was very impressed with the job she did as moderator (and no not still sucking up after Atlanta incident).  The discussion turned more into one on community than women but that was OK.  It was still great conversation and a lot of information was shared with audience.

We all look amused except for Eddie.

Up next was Brent Dragoo’s (twitter) session, “Database Crime Scene Investigation”.  I was sooo looking forward to this as it was his first time doing a technical presentation.  I met and talked with him at last year’s PASS Summit and started putting that bug in his ear ever since then to speak.  He is one who is very passionate about the SQL community, well spoken, and technically savvy so I knew he would be great.  And he was and I was able to say I paid a little bit of that good karma forward for those who help nudge me along down this wonderful community path.  Even though he was an unknown speaker, his topic packed the room!  He did a good job and the symbolism he used was really great.

Brent and his first presentation ever!

Next I caught my bearings and chatted with Ted Krueger (blog|twitter) a bit on our session that was up last session of the day.  We had a speaker who unfortunately had a car wreck and was unable to make it to SQLSaturday.  I found this out on Thursday.  I had been toying with the idea of doing a professional development session for awhile on consulting.  Ted, who is inhuman for the amount of time he gives to helping folks in the community, agreed to help me with a last minute panel discussion.  So we quickly whipped up “Consulting – The Good, The Bad, The Ugly”.  For being such a rushed effort, I thought the discussion was really good and we got good feedback.  I can’t wait to do that one again and refine it a bit.  I really had a blast during that one!  We also pulled in Josh Fennessy (blog|twitter) to the session and Aarow Lowe (blog|twitter) provided a lot of great feedback as well.  Big props to Ted!  You are da man!  And thank you Josh and Aaron too!

See…this session was a riot!

Ok so then on to the awards ceremony.  That was a bit chaotic as well but worked out.  Kyle did well presenting closing remarks.  Eddie also stepped in as well to fill some time and provided a lot of comic relief.  Somehow he became the guy who you had to take a picture with when you won a prize.  By this time I started to become distracted with visions of much needed beers in my future.  One thing that I noticed though was that we did not have to re-call any names during the huge amount of prize drawings!  I thought that was really great and says a lot for the Indy tech community.  Either they are dedicated enough to learning to stay all day or really, really wanted that LANTech iPad.

***

Then on to the after party.  We were worried about funds so planned a very casual gathering for folks at the hotel restaurant.  The appetizers were good but being there in the blegh hotel just felt like salt in my wounds.  I had some good conversation with folks and many kept trying to build me back up.  Many times in the past when I have talked to organizers, they are very apologetic and I’m often confused wondering why.  I completely know how they feel now!  I kept saying “I’m sorry” over and over and folks looked at me funny and how great it was from their perspective.  They don’t feel the full weight of every little thing that went wrong.  We then moved on to a Mexican restaurant for some REAL food.  (See I learned my lesson from SQLSaturday Atlanta – never try to make a meal out of appetizers when drinking).  I think I pulled a muscle laughing so hard at dinner and mas cerveza helped me out of my down in the dumps demeanor a bit.  Some even more brave souls trekked onward to the lovely karaoke dive bar where we did have some SQL Karaoke.  My record of not singing is still intact but they put in a good effort to try to convince me again.

***

I had a great time with everyone who made it.  And again I am sorry for the bumps but as you can see I learned my lesson.  <in my best Scarlett O’Hara> And as god as my witness, speaker hotel will not be janky ever again!

***

Below are some more lessons learned as my first go as a SQLSaturday organizer:

***

1. The internet is a damn liar!  Well except for this blog post of course, but I will NEVER EVER EVER trust only website photos for quality of hotel.  Always have manual inspection of hotel or only use ones people have stayed in before.

2. Always have a run through of sessions with the room proctors prior to the first session.  We didn’t have the process down for until after first session. At least have a quick huddle up with everyone to let them know of the process.  The absolute worst thing happened here due to this, at least one speaker I know didn’t get feedback.  Feedback to a speaker is like gold and should be treated that way.

3. Start early to get sponsors.  It is great that there are more and more SQLSaturdays for the community but organizers have to work harder and harder for sponsor dollars.

4. Talk to surrounding SQL Server community areas when you are deciding on dates.  Louisville’s SQLSaturday was the weekend prior to ours.  While it may have worked out for some speakers traveling, overall think we should have spaced those out better.  Also along these lines make sure someone is either a better race car fan or uses that mythical internet to verify major races aren’t the same weekend! (more facepalm)

5.  Make sure to consider topic as well as speaker for the projected audience size.  We had some rooms that were larger than others.  We miscalculated on some of the session crowds, BIG TIME!  I apologize to those who were sardines in some sessions.  An idea I had, if you are unsure, ask speakers for feedback on audiences for presentations.  There’s no guarantee with that still but better than a shot in the dark.  Also another idea I have from this is to have room proctors to get counts for future reference.

6.  Force help more on obsessed organizers.  Caroline Bailey is on our marketing and event planning team at PTI.  She plans a damn good event and did so again with our SQLSaturday.  Us in the SQL community (myself and Kyle) totally took advantage of her willingness to help and skill at event planning.  Make sure you don’t let passionate souls bear the more weight than they should.

7.  Again make sure since Indiana is weird timezone wise to remind folks that Indy is Eastern timezone.

8.  Get with the venue folks many times in advanced to check on WiFi status.  Stress importance of WiFi for technical audience and threaten life if necessary!

9.  May have been nice to have headsets to communicate with organizers.  Or at least some way to communicate via cell phones instantly.  There were several times I shrugged my shoulders to questions when could have/should have fired it off to Caroline or other committee members.  Oh the goofiness I could create wearing a headset too!

10.  Make sure to have plan B, C, and D in place for speaker fill in for cancellations.  Cancellations seem to be inevitable and need to make sure to have your backup plans in place.  Thank you so much to Wendy and Joe for doing two sessions.  And big thanks to Ted again for helping out super last minute.

***
Thanks again to all the speakers, organizers, committee, and volunteers who made SQLSaturday Indy a success!  Check out more pictures of it at http://www.flickr.com/photos/hope_foley/sets/72157630877966720/

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!

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

hopefoley 2 Comments

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.


	

	


			
				
				


			

					
IndyPass Presentation (May 2011) – What Can’t PowerShell Do?
						

			hopefoley						2 Comments
								

			


		

		
I had a great time presenting at IndyPass tonight.  I finally got to do a presentation on one of my favorite topics…PowerShell.  The presentation overall went well I think.  I had a lot of good engaging questions and some good feedback on it right away…good signs in my book anyway.  It was the first time I had done this particular presentation so a few minor things I will work on but I will put this one in the win column.  I had some folks who were anxious too for me to get info up on my blog so here I am doing just that.  If any of you guys who were there have any suggestions to make it, as I said tonight “moe betta” please let me know.  It appears I can only upload certain files so I put all the scripts into a combined word document.  Here are scripts and the slide deck.  I hope these are helpful and get everyone going down the road of using PowerShell.  It’s a great tool to have in your admin arsenal.