The last quarter of the year is usually my busiest due to the fantastic PASS Summit and SQLBits events. The fall looks a little different … BECAUSE IT WILL BE EVEN BUSIER! Here’s a rundown of where I’ll be this fall through mid-October:
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.
In last month’s column, “2012 Might Really Be the End of the World as We Know It,” I described a number of major developments in the IT industry that are likely to disrupt the life of database professionals everywhere. I categorize those four disruptors – virtualization, cloud computing, solid state drives (SSD), and advanced multi-core CPUs – into two broad groups. I’m going to continue an analysis of these disruptive technologies in inverse order. Today, let’s discuss SSDs.
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I have to confess that I’m incredibly excited about BigData. I haven’t been this excited about new innovations in IT since relational databases first appeared on the scene early in my career. But what is BigData?
Back in those days, I can still feel the echos of adrenaline when I was hired to work on a NASA project that would involve over 100Mb of data. ONE HUNDRED MEGABYTES! Good grief, that was fantastically huge to us on the team. (That database was over 130Mb when I finally moved on to another project). And remember – PC software was installed using 640Kb floppy disks at the time. In fact, my Oracle v5 instance required shuffling through about a dozen floppy disks to get the thing installed on a 286 IBM PC.
BigData today takes on an entirely meaning as database sizes scale into the petabytes. But the emphasis is still the same today as it was back in the 1980′s – turning data into actionable information. However, with BigData, we can achieve amazing new insight from this data and mine for tidbits that would never have seen the light of day with smaller data sets.
The two major themes to remember about big data are 1) the more data you have on a given domain, the more power you have, 2) the better the analysis you can perform on the data, the more power you have. In fact, theme 2 might be the most important thing to consider because lots of data is meaningless unless you can extract knowledge from it. And that’s where better analytical techniques come into play.
Here are some articles about Big Data that you might enjoy:
I had a very interesting conversation recently with a good friend of mine. She’s at the top of her game as a first class enterprise DBA in a major medical institution. She was interested in my career advice because she’d recently received an unsolicited invitation for a higher paying job in the business intelligence (BI) field. While I won’t talk much more about the specifics of that conversation, it’s not a unique conversation. In fact, I gave an interview to SearchSQLServer.com a while back about how DBA career paths are more and more leading into an even better paying career in business intelligence. Check out the interview HERE.
Many thanks to Microsoft SQL Server MVP Andy Leonard (blog | twitter) for conducting a series of interviews of prominent SQL Server types, including me. The interview found here.
SSWUG.ORG’s virtual webcasts will prepare the “Accidental DBA” for patterns and practices they will experience in their role as a database administrator. I will provide easy-to-understand insights and realistic examples for professionals who have not had any formal DBA training. By the end of our four-part series, you should have the information needed to get up to speed on database planning, administration and performance tuning basics.
Session Descriptions
In the first session, you will see what is needed to fulfill the role of a (Database Administrator) DBA by learning more about what is typically expected of administrators and where the bulk of the work is done. Regardless if you are a draftee or volunteer to the position, the information applies to anybody wanting to better understand and fully own their title.
Over the course of the second session, you will find out why it is important to grasp some of the tips and tricks that DBAs have practiced for many years. I will emphasize about the need for documentation, testing, automation, sharing experiences and continuing your education.
During the third session, you will understand the reasons why the DBA is the sheriff in town! That’s why it’s important to know what you’re dealing with in your departments and inside your databases. I will explain how to inventory, determine what is not your responsibility, talk to your stakeholders, learn the business cycles and tackle important tasks.
The fourth and final session will emphasize the four essential skills needed to survive and excel in your database administration position – Communication, Troubleshooting, Benchmarking and Automation. I will explain how to leverage these abilities toward increased job security and professional successes.
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:
Brent Ozar (blog | twitter) and I did an interview with TechTarget’s Brendan Cournoyer at last summer’s Tech-Ed, which as turned into a podcast titled “Cloud efforts advance, SQL Server evolves.” The podcast covers all the major trends at the conference (like BI), virtualization features in Quest’s products (like Spotlight), Brent’s new book and MCM certification, and more.
Sometimes I’m timely in getting the news out on useful resources. And, other times, I’m a bit slower on the draw. As I told friends back at New Year’s Day, “As an official member of the Procrastinators Club, welcome to 2008!” On the other hand, it’s always good to remind folks of great resources that are still available and on the shelf. Why? Well, the Internet hits us with such a deluge of constantly new material, that we often forget about the old(ish) stuff that’s still really useful.
Darth Doofus, Emporer Palpatine, and Darth Goofus
Quest vConference for SQL Server
One of the most popular teaching sessions I ever engaged in was the Quest vConferences for SQL Server in 2010, with my good friends Buck Woody (blog | twitter) and Brent Ozar (blog | twitter).
These are evergreen favorites for their strong technical content and, perhaps, an outpouring of Brent’s faux chest hair in the latter part of the training events. Go to this URL for the code samples, download the slides, and to rate the presentation: http://questkb.com/live and or http://www.vconferenceonline.com/shows/spring10/quest/conference/ondemand.asp. You can also get the full events shipped for free anywhere in North America on a single DVD.
24 Hours of PASS Celebrates Women in Technology
Kalen Delaney, author and expert, and one of the initiators of WiT within PASS
It’s always a big thrill for me when a successful initiative launched by PASS goes viral. One such example is the 24Hours of PASS. (See last year’s webcasts at http://www.sqlpass.org/24hours/2010/). I now see other industry trade groups and technology user groups launching their own 24 Hours type webcast marathons. Kudos – PASS folks thought of it first! (I’d give proper credit, if I could only remember who thought of it. Rick Heiges (blog | twitter), I think).
This year, 24 Hours of PASS is gearing up for an exceptional lineup of SQL Server and BI experts in 24 one-hour technical webcasts. This free training event takes place over two 12-hour days March 15-16, with each day beginning at 12:00 GMT (UTC). Click here to get registered: http://www.sqlpass.org/24hours/Spring2011/. And in celebration of Women in Technology, PASS is hosting an all female line-up of speakers.
This is another area in which PASS has prompted many emulators. My memory of the details grow dim, since this was almost ten years ago, but I believe it was then PASS director Kalen Delaney (blog | twitter) and Microsoft liaison to the board Jacqueline Borges who put forward the idea of hosting a special Women in Technology luncheon. Since that time, WiT has gone on to be one of the best parts about the big PASS Summit and something widely emulated by other professional and trade associations.
Microsoft Thrive – Career Planning Insights
I was honored to be a featured speaker on the Microsoft Thrive website about this time last year. What’s Thrive? It’s a website put together by Microsoft that helps you plan out your career. It has certification and learning resources, career paths, and traditional learning patterns and practices. In other words, it tells you what you need to know to qualify for various kinds of it jobs and then gives you links to dive deeper. Check it out!
