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Wait what?! MVP?! Me?! Seriously?! Get out of town!!

hopefoley 1 Comment

Sitting at my desk in between meetings on Monday, September 17, 2012 and I get an email from Simon Tien of the Microsoft MVP program.  My heart skips a beat immediately and starting checking calendar and thinking to myself “it’s not October 1”.  I had gotten super great fantastic splendid email earlier from Simon telling me I had been nominated for the MVP award.  So that email created much screaming and happy dancing including a generous dose of the cabbage patch.  That nomination email said that I would know on October 1 so that was the reason I was doing a mental check of the date.  I read on and can’t believe my eyes…they wanted my address so they could send me my MVP award!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So after the closest thing I have ever come to that dramatic beauty pageant winning moment I sit there teary eyed re-reading the email over and over again to make sure I’m not reading something wrong.  I was completely shocked!  I knew I was headed down a path that could possibly put those lovely letters behind my name, not going to lie about that, but didn’t feel like I was up to that level yet.  And I had cornered many MVPs and discussed the possibilities and different aspects to the MVP process.  I just felt like I had a little further to go to get there.  I still don’t think I have come to terms with it really that I am actually a Microsoft MVP.  I think it will still take some time to sink in for sure.

***

Thinking back over the last couple years it’s pretty amazing.  Finding the SQL community and SQLSaturdays really changed me and the path of my career.  I would have never thought my path would have taken me here.  It’s just incredible to think that at the same time I find the part of my job that gets me hot in the belly passionate would also be the one to grant me a huge honor like the MVP.  I am constantly floored by the passion and good nature that goes on in the SQL community.  Seeing some of the differences with say the community or lack of for other unnamed database platforms *cough Oracle*, I feel really lucky I found my way here.  And the people I have met along the way who have helped encourage me and push me farther, I can never thank enough.  I have met so many of the most wonderful people who have become great friends and continue to meet great people with every event.

***

I remember at the dinner after one of my first technical presentations I sat with Jimmy May (blog|twitter), Kevin Kline (blog|twitter), and Brad McGehee (blog|twitter) and was still very unsure this technical speaking stuff was for me.  I remember saying “why would anyone want to listen to me when they have guys like you out there?”.  Everyone was so encouraging and supportive, especially Jimmy.  A bit of karma that he would be the one who later on would nominate me for the MVP.  Thank you so Jimmy!  Thank you for nomination and helping put me on this wonderful path.  I take every chance I can to pay this forward and trying to motivate anyone who will listen.  Also thank you to everyone who has helped motivate me, inspire me, and push me to be better technically, professionally, and just as a human being.  Thank you to a community of wonderful people where I have found so many great friends!  And of course, thank you to Microsoft for this huge honor!

You Betcha SQLSaturday Minnesota Was Great!

hopefoley 1 Comment
Make sure to read the title in a Minnesota accent if you haven’t already.
***

I wonder how many blog posts are written in airports? Add another one to the list.  Sitting here waiting on my flight and thinking about what a great time I had at the Minneapolis SQLSaturday.  I flew in on Friday and got to the hotel with no issues.  Relax for a bit and get Kalamazoo blog post done and head over to the speaker dinner at Don Pablos.  This beer gal does on a rare occasion enjoy a margarita so had one and chatted with some excellent people.  They gave us our speaker shirts and a nice suprise, a super soft throw with SQLSaturday embroidered on it.  They are very nice!  Thank you so much organizers!

***

Then comes the day of the event.  I ride over with Ted Krueger (blog|twitter) and the whole family.  The little Kruegers were cracking me up the whole way.  They had the event at the University of Minnesota.  The site was really nice and it was a gorgeous day out.  The venue was split between 2 buildings so was a little sunshine break in between sessions.  I find my room and get ready for the shared session with Ted, Consulting – The Good, The Bad, The Ugly.  Was really fun doing this session again and under better circumstances than the first time.  It was a last minute creation for SQLSaturday Indianapolis due to a speaker who had to miss the event.  We had time to actually prepare so it felt more fluid this go round.  We had a really nice turnout and fantastic interaction with the audience which is always key to making it great.  We ended up being dead on the money timing wise too which was good.

***

Then I head over to catch Lara Rubbelke’s (blog|twitter) session, Big Data.  She had some internet connectivity issues but was prepared with a slideshow with screenshots.  I was super impressed with the way she handled it.  I know very little about Hadoop so learned a lot in her session.  She has a wonderful presence that brings to mind like a term that not sure is a real thing but will make up one…technical grace.

Lara talking Big Data

I had to leave a few minutes early to get over to prepare for the WIT panel discussion.  That went well but am kicking myself a bit for that one.  I have been on the panel plenty but I had never been in the role of moderator and I think it showed.  The discussion was really good though. We talked about work life balance or as Microsoft terms it “work life integration”.  I had just fantastic ladies who agreed to be on the panel: Jes Borland (blog|twitter), Amanda Bates (twitter), and Lara Rubbelke.  The audience participation and comments were great! There was one comment from a participant that really stuck with me “Work is not who I am”.  She said she wasn’t willing to let her work be the sole definition of who she was as a person.  I think I need to keep some more of that in my mind when I determine my own balance in my life.  My kids always come first but I feel sometimes outside of them I teeter on the edge of being driven and driving myself too hard.  Thank you to the panel and audience again!

PASS WIT lunch discussion

Then after wandering around unable to find the room for a bit I finally find Ted’s session on merge replication.  I brought the rest of my lunch with me as didn’t have a chance to eat much during the WIT discussion.  So felt like giant jerk disrupting the session trying to open my bag of chips and then even better when my phone starts vibrating during it.  Ted’s of course good at giving me grief and I totally deserved it.  So from then on I catch great info on merge replication and watch his son heckle him a bit during his session.

Ted talking about merge replication

From there I go watch Joe Sack’s (blog|twitter) presentation on “Resolving Cardinality Estimation Issues”.  I definitely knew of Joe but had never seen him speak.  I am so glad I did, he’s definitely one to go on the super human smart, intellectual crush list.  He gave a lot of exceptional information.  There was a great moment when he was discussing correlated column statistics when someone in the audience said “Oh crap!” when realized that auto statistics are only on single columns.  VERY good session!

Joe Sack session on cardinality estimation issues

Then was super excited to catch Robert Davis (blog|twitter) give session on corruption.  I really had been looking forward to meeting him in person.  I knew him by his reputation and on Twitter.  He gave a lot of wonderful information in his session and went through some corruption scenarios and resolution to them.  He’s also one of those many folks I have met that have me just floored by the amount they know of SQL Server.  They are called MCMs for a reason.

Robert Davis talking about corruption

I then head over to the closing ceremony which took a very long time due to the amount of top notch stuff from sponsors they were giving away.  Paul Timmerman (twitter) and folks did a fantastic job!  I’m sure it wasn’t as flawless as it appeared to me but I think that’s a excellent measure of a successful event.  Big props to you guys and all the volunteers.

Tons of great stuff to giveaway – thanks sponsors!

From there we then go to Elsie’s for dinner and karaoke.  They bought a ton of appetizers but after my lesson learned in Atlanta (see blog post) I order a yummy burger with a fried egg on it and enjoy some Bell’s Two Hearted Ales.  And of course we were in Jason (blog|twitter) and Sarah Strate (blog|twitter) country so the SQLkaraoke began shortly after that.  I am still holding strong on not singing but god bless them all, they keep trying.

***

I had a wonderful time with my SQLFamily as I always do.  Thank you all for just being so damn great!  So I am a bit sad to think that’s my last SQLSaturday until probably spring next year.  But there are some super exciting things coming like PASS Summit!  So excited for the mass invasion of SQL folks in Seattle in just a few weeks!

Scratching an Itch and Great Training!

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About 3 years ago now I got a surprise promotion to manage the team of DBAs and developers at PTI.  I had never been in management before and hadn’t really aspired to go down that road so  was a bit of a shock when it happened.  In the middle of the shock and glow from ego boost I took on the challenge.  It took me few to get my footing but then started to find my stride managing.  Over time as my team grew it kept pulling me more and more away from being technical which started to put a LARGE ache in me.  Any time I would go to speak at a SQL event and find someone else in management, I would leech onto them and try to glean any wisdom/guidance on how they found their path and balance in the dual worlds.  I knew eventually something would have to change because I knew without a doubt I wanted to stay technical and keep doing the things out in the community like SQLSaturdays.  All the while though I am getting praise for the job I was doing managing the team.  I am a stubborn/internally competitive person and for a long time I worked my butt off trying to convince myself I was Wonder Woman and could do it all.  I totally still think I am Wonder Woman but am a little less delusional that I can do it all.  When I got to 12 direct reports, I finally came to my senses and promoted a couple of guys on my team under me to help manage.  Around that same time of the promotions, an opportunity to resurrect the training program at my company came along.  I grabbed it and held on like grim death!  It felt like to me like my technical life raft had arrived!  It was a very tight timeline to put together the material but I was in, big time in!  So I have been busting butt putting together this material with Kyle Neier and Arie Jones for a super great 2 day training course (link to info below).  The timeline was brutal but I had an absolute ball putting it together!  It was so much fun and it did a couple things at the same time.  The first thing was that it made me step back and let the guys I promoted spread their wings a bit more than I probably would have otherwise.  I wouldn’t say I’m a control freak but I will make sure the job is getting done.  The other and most lovely is that it scratched that technical itch that I’ve had for a long time!  Who knows if I will come to that full crossroad eventually that makes me choose to manage or stay technical but this helped delay it for a bit to see if I can find balance in both worlds.

***

If you are interested in the training we are doing.  You can find info on it here.

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!

I So Got My FreeCon!

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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 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!

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

Since 1997, Perpetual Technologies, Inc. (PTI) headquartered in Indianapolis, Indiana has provided clients with unrivaled database management consulting services. Our base in the Midwest and focus on remote services, allows PTI to compete on a national level by offering highly competitive rates saving clients an average of 28%. Our subject matter experts have extensive experience with all major database products, with a focus on Oracle and Microsoft SQL Server. More generally, PTI provides software integration services, data warehouse design, custom application development, database design, capacity planning, hosting and network services, performance tuning and disaster recovery planning. Contact us today at www.PTI.net.