Here’s a run-down on my professional activities over the course of 2011:

• Articles: 3
• Conference Spoken: 14
• Customer Calls: 124
• Customer Visits: 7
• Magazine Columns: 14
• PASS Chapter Presentations: 12
• Pre-cons/Full-day Seminars: 7
• SQL Saturdays: 4
• SSWUG Sessions: 8
• Webcasts: 16

Plus, I got to got on an awesome SQLCruise and was featured on Richard Campbell’s RunAsRadio show at least once (Richard’s blog | twitter).  (I was thinking that I’d been on twice in 2011. But that other appearance may have been in late 2010. My records aren’t clear.)

I was also put in charge of the SQLServerPedia portion of the DBPedias sites.  Some statistics there:

• 133 contributing bloggers
• 4,500 blog posts added in 2011 (out of a total 9,000 blog posts)
• 57,000 content items added in 2011 (out of a total 138,000 content items)
• Monday-Thursday all Pedias average 8,700 visits combined
• 1.9 million visits in 2011 (out of a total 3.8 million visits to Pedia sites since SQLServerPedia was started in 2008)

2011 was also my year to jump into Twitter.  By years end, I had accumulated:

• 3,452 Tweets
• 531 Following
• 2,656 Followers
• 230 Listed

I think that my increase in tweets had a direct correlation on my decrease in blog posts.  Ironically, I have accumulated even more topics to blog about (I’ve somewhere around 630 nascent blog posts), but simply run out of time to put them into WordPress.  My blogging activity for 2011 was down to 77 entries, about half what I wrote in 2010.

I’ll talk a little about my plans for 2012 in another post.  I hope to see you following me on Twitter soon!  Thanks,

Kevin

If you were to mention “Wayne Snyder” to me, I’d instantly start to grin and, probably, nod a little bit.  Wayne is the kind of leader who always comes to mind with overpowering and emotional warmth.  Sometimes when you visualize a memory of a person, you see them in your mind’s eye stooped over a console deep in thought or pontificating at a meeting somewhere deep in corporate America.  But when I recall Wayne, I always see an image of Wayne smiling with his arms out wide as if he’s going to wrap you in the biggest, most comforting, Southern-fried, big brother  hug you’ve had all year.  And that image is loaded with all kinds of deep positive connotations: supportive, enthusiastic, sincere offer you thoughtful conversation, honest convictions, and straight answers. 

To use an analogy, some leaders are only the “thermostat” of their organization – they set the temperature for everyone else.  But Wayne was also the “thermometer” as well – he showed what temperature at which our organization was running.  And that temperature is warm. As a PASS member, you knew within a heartbeat that it was ok to give a shout-out back to the speaker in a crowded auditorium, that there were no stupid questions, that it was ok to be the one who knew the least in the room because, in fact, he was the guy who knew the least in the room once and here he was to help you become the one who knew the most in the room! I honestly can’t count the number of people who Wayne recruited into the ranks of PASS simply by being Wayne.

Thank you, Wayne, for your many years of service to our community.  And thank you most of all for acting as the wellspring of our communities exuberant, uplifting, and just plain fun attitude of embodied in our motto of “Learn. Grow. Share”.  No one does it better than you.

Now, it goes without saying that Dr. Dewitt’s keynote is one of the singlemost anticipated sessions of the entire event.  Why?  As Dr. Dewitt mentions himself, the hallmark of his sessions are a semester of graduate school IT learning distilled into one hour of awesomeness.  There are lots of great resources discussing NoSQL on the internet (and I’ve pointed out a lot of them in the past).  But who wouldn’t rather leapfrog months of on-the-side research learning about NoSQL by enjoying Dr. Dewitt’s keynote?  Watch the streaming video at this SQLPASS link.

And if you’re here at the PASS Summit on Day 3, I hope to see you in my two sessions this afternoon:

Crash! Boom! Bang! 10 Ways to Blow Up Castle SQL Server and the Techniques that Catch Them (DBA-318)
Enterprise Database, Administration and Deployment, Regular Session (75 minutes) in 3AB

Are you a Linchpin? Career management lessons to help you become indispensible. (PD-200)
Professional Development, Regular Session (75 minutes) in 4C4

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Keynote

Rushabh Mehta, the PASS president, spent a few moments extolling the value of community and the achievements of the professional association.  And he’s got a lot to be proud of.  PASS has come such a long way.  One of the most telling facts about the significance of PASS, to me, is that important SQL Server announcements now happen at the PASS Summit.  There was a time, and not very long ago too, in which Microsoft made important SQL Server announcements at other Microsoft events like PDC and TechEd.  No longer!  PASS is the nexus for Microsoft’s data management users.  And it shows.

Ted Kummert, Microsoft’s top data executive, had a lot of exciting talking points about how the community has grown.  PASS now has hundreds of chapters worldwide and nearly ninety thousand members.  The event has over 4000 paying attendees this year, which means probably around 6000 total attendees including press, exhibitors, speakers, etc.  That’s big!  In fact, that’s just about the peak capacity for the Washington State Convention Center here in Seattle.  No wonder PASS will be at other locations in the future.

It’s Officially called SQL Server 2012

SQL Server “Denali” is officially rolling out as SQL Server 2012.  There are a lot of interesting new developments with SQL12 regarding the way the product is splitting into multiple types of appliances designed for specific workloads and customer needs.  Need a massive processing appliance, check! That’s PDW.  Need a hybrid solution for data housed both on premises and in the cloud?  Check.  Need processing power for BigData?  Need processing for non-relational and unstructured data?  Check.

Microsoft’s improving tools will culminate in a new release of development tools called “SQL Server Data Tools”, formerly known as Project Juneau, while the business intelligence side of the house will have a new set of tools in “Power View”, formerly known as Project Crescent.  Hadoop figured large in the keynote, as Microsoft acknowledges that many BigData problems are best served by non-relational data stores.  Denny Lee, of SQLCAT, proposed an in-house data marketplace during his demos.  My face lit up like a kid at a surprise 10-yr birthday party.  Really?!?  FOR ME?!!?  I laugh because I’d been doing that at jobs throughout my career, offering up what I used to call the “data feedstore” to managers within my team.  +! for validation of your ideas.

First Session of the Day

From there I headed out to my first presentation of the conference, which I was delivering with my pal Buck Woody (blog | twitter) of Microsoft. Our session was all about Cloud 101 – when it’s appropriate to use the cloud and where you can learn more about the specific technologies like IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS.  Many IT pros don’t know the difference and are being subjected to the “implement it!” decrees of their bosses who simply read an article on an airplane saying that the cloud is the future.  The best quote from the Twittersphere about our session?  “Elastic is fantastic”  I couldn’t have said it better!

Speaking of conference sessions, my buddy Brent Ozar (blog | twitter) pointed out this great mobile schedule planning resource:

Go to Guidebook and download the app for your iPhone, Windows Phone 7, Android, or Blackberry.  After launching it, you’ll be prompted to download a guide.  Type in PASS Summit, and we’re near the bottom of the list.

Voila! Instant mobile schedule guidebook to the PASS Summit.

The Energy is Nuts!

After delivering my session, it was off to the Exhibit Hall, where I played the role of booth jockey for Quest Software for the rest of the proceedings that day.  I noticed two things of significance.  First, the crowds were thicker and more energetic than I’ve seen in years.  Wow!  I knew attendance was our highest ever, but the crowd was near to bursting out at the seems like a 14-year old kid wearing last season’s clothes.  So either the Washington State Convention Center is no longer big enough or more planning is needed to make this venue work.  When I was in leadership for PASS, planning and properly utilizing the venue was always a logistical nightmare.  So I don’t envy the current leadership in figuring out how to make the PASS Summit scale to an even larger size.  The second thing I noticed was how focused the crowd was.  Usually, you get a lot of tire-kickers in the booth who, deep down inside, only want your vendor swag.  Yes, we had some cute swag this year (a Toad beanie baby and some cool ribbons for your badge).  But we also had huge crowds even after we ran out of swag.  And, in case you didn’t detect the important part of the previous sentence, we ran out of swag! That’s right we gave out everything on day 1 of a 3 day event.  I nearly freaked the freak out. What is going on here, folks?  Haven’t you heard that there’s a recession going on?

BASTA! SQLCON.NET

September 26 to 29; Mainz, Germany

This big developer and admin conference runs from September 26 to 29 in Mainz, Germany.  I’ll be delivering at least one session and hobnobbing with Quest customers, friends, and in a very weird twist, my oldest daughter Emily, who will be in the Rhineland at the exact same time on a graduation present I’d been planning for her since graduation in June.

SQLBits – Query Across the Mercy

September 29 to October 1; Liverpool, United Kingdom

One of my favorite conferences of the year! The organizers are great. The speakers are great! The attendees are great!! The venues are great!!! The lunches are … um … adequate.  I’m doing all an new session on SQL Injection attack, this time with LOTS of demos kindly written by an attendee at one of my sessions in Cologne.  He like the session so much, he decided to build demos to go along with it.  (Thanks again, Volker!)

And if you’ve attended before, you know how much fun our now traditional IT Horror Stories and IT Bingo Trivia sessions are.  Make plans to attend these standing-room only sessions, before the fire marshal kicks us all out of the room for overfilling it.

The PASS Summit

Seriously.  This is the one.  If you can attend only one SQL Server training and community event in a given year, this is the one.  Over 150 sessions and pre-conference seminars.  Most everyone who is on the list of “who’s who” in the world of SQL Server and Microsoft-related data management and development will be in attendance.  And a large number of the Microsoft R&D team that builds, documents, and supports SQL Server will also be there.

Plus, more details to come on these events: Netherlands SQL Saturday, Belgium SQL Server Days, and SQLRally Nordic.

I hope to see you there in person!

-Kevin

-Follow me on Twitter!

A while back at a SQL Saturday in Indianapolis, I was enjoying the WIT panel discussion listening to the panelists discuss their  upbringing and how they became a success in the field of technology.  Their stories were, in some ways, similar.  They were smart.  They weren’t scared of math.  They had an important mentor who supported them and encouraged them that they could accomplish any goal.  They endured struggles such as financial hardship that, while difficult to overcome, also refined their desire to become successful in their careers.  Some of the women who had to deal with men of the previous generation even had to overcome blatant chauvinism.

But then another similarity among the panelists, just a hunch really, struck me.  I had to ask, to confirm my idea. “How many of you were a bit of loner or at least weren’t heavily influenced by your friends’ opinions before your professional career?  Because with my own daughters, it’s their friends who they want to please.  And they’d punt right away if their friends teased them about being good at math, or choosing a technical career, or anything else I can think of for that matter.”

It was pretty much unanimous.  All of the panelists were loners or had a very small social circle during their formative years.  Now perhaps I’m speaking from an inaccurate assumption, but most of my daughters are tight with their friends.  And friends mean a lot to them, perhaps more than any other aspect of their social lives (like their family).  So if their friends tell them that being interested in technology will “geekify” them, then they’d drop it like a hot potato.

So I wanted to put this question out to my female friends in the IT world.  Were you in a big circle of friends during your developing years?  What importance did you place on their opinions?  Did they give you any flack for going in to IT or doing well in technology related classes?

It seems like the days of overt chauvinism are behind us here in the US.  But I wonder if we need to start earlier with our daughters among their own peer groups to support them for a future in technology.

Thoughts?

Thanks,

-Kev

-Follow me on Twitter

Almost all of the speakers are friends.  Many are Microsoft MVPs.  So it’ll be great to catch up with these fine folks and, I hope, get a chance to meet many attendees.  I’ll be doing three of my favorite presentations: SQL Server Internals & Architecture, End-to-End Troubleshooting for Microsoft SQL Server, and Top Ten Most Crucial DBA Mistakes.  As I write this, I realize that I’ve got to get busy and post those other slide decks in the slides section of my website!

I’ll also be visiting a few customers for the two days before hand, signing a few books, and otherwise trying to be productive.  In the parlance of my employer, that means helping with sales.

Next month, on September 17th, I’ll be speaking at the Atlanta SQL Saturday #89.  I’m presenting just one session at the event itself, though I’ll be hanging out at the Quest booth much of the time. If possible, I’m also going to spend as much time as I can in Bob Ward’s sessions.

In addition, I’ll be presenting a full day pre-conference seminar on Friday, September 16th covering all sorts of SQL Server performance tuning and optimization content.  There are only a few seats left, so if you’re so inclined REGISTER HERE ASAP.  All attendees will be getting a big goodie bag with posters, a signed copy of one of my books, and a T-Shirt.

Atlanta is an easy 4-hour drive from Nashville.  And the weather is usually great in September.  So this should be a fun event in every way!

Follow me on Twitter.

-Kev

I’ve always appreciated how Andy Warren (blog| twitter) operates in the most transparent manner, especially as it relates to his role as a director for the Professional Association for SQL Server. For example, Andy’s latest blog post about prepping for the SQLRally, to kick off in less than 30 days, is insightful and gives you a good idea of the sort of work a strong director for PASS needs to put in.  I also enjoy how Andy more or less thinks out loud and offers you the chance to provide your input.  In that latest blog post, he was mulling different after hours entertainment options, giving you a chance to pipe up with your opinion if you had one.

Learn from My Mistakes

Times running out for the early registration discount.  Save $50 by registering before the end of the week!  And while you’re at it, register for my full day, pre-conference seminar on learning leadership and management skills especially tailored for the IT professional.  Here’s a quick run-down of the topics we’ll cover in my pre-con:

• Earning the respect of your team
• A deep understand of effectively motivating technology professionals
• Specific skills to lead database professionals competently that broadly fall into the categories of:
  • Coaching team members to effectively meet goals and deadlines
  • Facilitating change and navigating organizational disruptions
  • Promoting communication within the team and with management
  • Keeping teams and projects on task and within scope
  • Dealing with difficult team members
  • Practicing good team time management techniques

Read all about the goals of the session here.  If you’re coming to my session, I’d love to hear your thoughts ahead of time about challenges you’re facing!

Personal Experience, Personnel Experience

Also, just a word about my bona fides.  I’ve had a lot of leadership and management training over the years, but like many professionals I consider my on-the-job experiences to be the most valuable.

On the education side of the equation, I received a bachelor’s degree in the school of management back in the 1980′s.  I’ve also gone through the Center for Creative Leadership‘s leadership training curriculum, the Blessing and White Management Training curriculum, and SmithBucklin’s not-for-profit governance and organizational strategy training curriculum.  On the experience side of the equation, I led small dev and admin teams of 3-7 people starting way back in the early 1990′s.  In the late 1990′s, I started taking a more strategic direction with my skills as the manager of information architecture at the firm where I worked as well as taking a role as one of the founding directors of PASS.  In the early 2000′s, I joined Quest Software as our initial SQL Server product architect and spent several years leading the team to a over 50 individuals in a half dozen teams in as many disparate locations around the world.

A Few Words About Community from SQLBits8

The more I go, the more reasons I find to go back to the SQLBits conferences held around the UK.  The starting image isn’t very flattering, but here’s a fun little interview put together by Andrew Fryer of Microsoft:

Enjoy!
-Kev

Twitter at kekline
More content at http://KevinEKline.com

Register now! WWW.SQLRALLY.COM

The 2011 PASS SQLRally is just about one month away and it’s high time I highlighted some of the important things you’ll be hearing about in my precon seminar Leadership and Team Management Skills for the IT Professional. Just to set the context, many of us IT people got to our lofty career positions because of our keen use of technology.  It takes a lot of smarts to get where we’ve gotten, but they are a very specific set of smarts that can’t always be used in every business setting.  And, since so many of us have topped out in our potential salary as long as we stay in the trenches and the only do technology work, a lot of us are starting to eye those middle manager positions so that we can continue to see our career grow.  The only problem is that all of those skills that enabled us to become top tier technologists don’t transfer into the management arena.

I’ll be teaching a wide variety of soft skills and specific management checklists to help you survive those early transitional days.  And if you’re not a manager?  You’ll still want to attend because the wide variety of communication skills we’ll cover will help you stay on top of many other real life situations, from leading the local Girl Scout troop to taking a role on the local PTA organization.

You can read the full and pedantic session description at the link I provided up above.  But here’s a list of Five Funny Things You’ll Hear in the Precon:

1. “Here’s where we get out the whips and chains…”
2. “In this section, we’re going to learn how to manage our managers…”
3. “And then I was, like, OMG. And she was, like, LOL.  And her cousin was, like, ROFL. But then I was, like, meh…”
4. “Darth Vader would be proud…”
5. “The beatings will continue until morale improves!”

And one bonus:

• “That’s what she said…”

Did I put these in context, heck no! But it’s a fun session, with some practice labs and LOTS of content to help you make that transition from full time technologist to part- or even full-time leader!

I hope to see you there.

-Kevin

Twitter at kekline

We did two rollickin’ fun lunch time vendor sessions, one being the SQL Pub Quiz.  (I’ll tell you about the other one tomorrow in a separate blog post).  We used a bingo pub quiz approach and, I have to say, a form of bingo I’d never before seen in my life.  We managed to extract quite a bit of fun out of it any way, presentation hiccups and all.

Our giveaway winners were Mark Dodd (at top) and Dave Wimbush (at bottom).  Congrats!

Enjoy!

-Kev

MVP Rob Farley Channeling the Inner Viking at SQLBits, Oct 2010

SQLBITS

One of the top highlights of my year is when I get to visit the great cities of Europe and meet with the great IT professionals there.  Last October, I was able to visit several cities in Europe, including my first ever stop in Stockholm and Malmo, Sweden.  Last year’s SQLBits event was in the lovely city of York, England.

The Level of Attendees Has Come Up a Notch. See?

This spring, in fact the next two weeks, I’ll be on a whirlwind junket.  In just a few hours, I fly out to London and then drive down to Brighton for a couple days of SQLBits.  SQLBits has a great lineup of speakers and content this spring.

I’m looking forward to many of the sessions going on as well as the innovative CIO-oriented event that will include facetime with Fusion-IO executive and industry legend, Steve Wozniak.

This Crew Is Crazy!

Our lunch time sessions on Friday and Saturday are ALL ABOUT FUN! If you attended last year, you’ll know to get there as early as you can because it will be standing room only.  Bring a good horror story to tell about your experiences in IT because we’ll have some fun prizes to hand out as well.

Of course, the biggest fun for me is time spent with other SQL Server people.  Lots of great speakers and Microsoft SQLCAT team members will be on hand, too numerous to name them all, in fact. And of course, I always enjoy a visit with my colleagues at Quest, such as Iain Kick (at left).

We were so inspired by winning a Trivia Pub Quiz that we decided to do one at SQLBits!

DUBLIN

After SQLBits, I head out for a day long session in Dublin on Monday, April 11th with my old friend Niall Flanagan at the Microsoft European Development Centre, South County Business Park, County Dublin starting at 09:30 am.  If you’re in old Eire, I hope to see you there! Registration details are HERE.

COLOGNE (KOLN)

At the conclusion of the Irish event, I head directly to the airport for a flight to Cologne, Germany.  The next day, on April 12th starting at 09:30, we’ll do another day with the expert.  The agenda is a bit different, but all the details including registration are available HERE.

MALMO

My final stop before heading home is on Wednesday, April 13 in Malmo, Sweden.  The user group in that area is lead by the very talented Johan Ahlen, whose blog is located HERE.  I especially enjoyed his posts about FileStream late last year.  I’m looking forward to more good sessions and, again, to learning as much from the attendees as they do from me.  Be sure to register for the event HERE.