The 2004 PASS Board of Directors On December 19, 2013, the PASS board of directors (BoD) proposed a small and targeted set of bylaw changes in response to CA relinquishing the BoD seats they were entitled to as a Founding Partner in the professional association. How Did CA Get Involved with PASS? You might be wondering "How did a company that doesn't seem to make a lot of SQL Server tools get a seat on the board of this huge, international SQL Server professional association?" It's a bit of a shaggy-dog story, so I'll sum it up quickly. Back in the late 1990's, there was a large and … [Read more...]
What’s the Hidden Issue in the Recent PASS Bylaw Changes?
Filed Under: Governance, Opinion, PASS, SQL Server, SQLMag, SQLServerPedia Syndication Tagged With: Career, Plays Well With Others, Professional Development
One Piece of Advice for the Aspiring Junior DBA
This post is part of the SQL Community Project #DBAJumpStart by John Sansom (Twitter | Blog). "If you could give a DBA just one piece of advice, what would it be?" John asked 20 successful and experienced SQL Server professionals this exact question. I share my own thoughts with you below and you can find all our answers together inside DBA JumpStart, a unique collection of inspiring content just for SQL Server DBAs. Be sure to get your free copy of DBA JumpStart. =-=-=-= John Sansom recently asked me and 19 other bloggers “What’s the one bit of advice you’d give a junior database … [Read more...]
Filed Under: Administration, Opinion, Professional Development, SQL Server, SQLMag, SQLServerPedia Syndication Tagged With: Career, DBA, Plays Well With Others
New on DBTA.com: Database Benchmarking Tools, the final article in the database benchmarking series
In the last several articles on Database Trends & Applications, I've been describing the benefits of reading and analyzing the benchmarking case studies released by the Transaction Processing Council. I've given you from a broad overview of the TPC benchmarks and shown ways that the vendor-published TPC benchmarks can help you save money and how the vendor-published TPC benchmarks must explain in disclaimers how they tweak their workloads. I have described how to run your own benchmarks and explained how to properly prepare your environment for a benchmark test. Pictured (L-R): Scott … [Read more...]
Filed Under: Administration, Architecture, Cool Technologies, Databases, DBTA, Hardware, IO, Opinion, Performance, Professional Development, SQL Server, SQLMag, SQLServerPedia Syndication, Strategies Tagged With: Benchmarking, Best Practices, Career, DBA, Performance, Tools, Tools & Scripts
The New PASS Executive Committee of 2014
I'm sure you can understand the high level of interest I have in the internal affairs and governance of PASS. After all, I was one of the founders of the organization way back in 1999 and was president for four years from 2003 through 2006 (fondly remembered as "the hardest fricken years of my life"). So I was keenly interested when the latest press release from PASS named the incoming PASS Executive Committee to take their seats on January 1st, 2014. The executive committee is composed of the officers of the organization, that is, directors who are empowered to sign contracts and to speak … [Read more...]
Filed Under: Governance, Opinion, PASS, Professional Development, SQLMag, SQLServerPedia Syndication Tagged With: Career, FutureWatch, SQLPASS
My Advice About Growing as an IT and Data Professional
First off, I should apologize for not blogging in quite a while. I've been traveling extensively and, because traveling can be so exhausting, I usually have to queue up blog posts to hit while I'm traveling in order to remain active while on the road. I didn't do that for these most recent trips. And, as you can see, there's quite a gap between this post and my last few posts. On the other hand, I've experienced an unexpected surge in requests for mentoring and advice from friends and colleagues about career growth. I'm always happy to help out a friend and, in fact, there's little in my … [Read more...]
Filed Under: Challenges, Interviews, Opinion, Professional Development, SQL Server, SQLMag, SQLServerPedia Syndication Tagged With: Career, DBA, Developer, Leadership, Management, Plays Well With Others, Professional Development, Writing
Continued Work Pays Off in the IT Leadership Space
I was surprised and honored to be mentioned by leadership expert Evan Carmichael as one of the top leadership Twitter experts for March 2013. Not only did I make the top 100, I came in at 12! If you weren't aware of my leadership training specially geared for IT professionals, check out ForITPros.com, as well as my DVD and stream media training Leadership Skills for the IT Professional. -Kevin -Follow me on Twitter! Google Author … [Read more...]
Filed Under: Professional Development Tagged With: Career, Leadership, Professional Development
Demo Mastery for the Technology Evangelist
In the same way that the finest presentations involve much more than the simple relaying of information, the finest software demos are much more than just presenting features. REMEMBER: The goal of a demo is to INSPIRE the audience to use the software/technology, not to teach them every nuance of software/technology. I've spent the last 10 years learning how to give good presentations and to give good software demonstrations. Here are several tips to take your software demonstration from informative to masterful: 1. Know your audience Whenever you start a demo, make sure you have a good … [Read more...]
Filed Under: Challenges, Cool Technologies, Databases, Opinion, Presentations, Professional Development, SQL Server, SQLMag, SQLServerPedia Syndication, TCD blog post Tagged With: Best Practices, Career, DBA, Developer, Presentations, Professional Development, Training
Hurray! I Have One of the Top 1% most viewed LinkedIn Profiles
I just got this email from LinkedIn about my profile (that's http://www.linkedin.com/in/kekline in clear text). Hi Kevin, Recently, LinkedIn reached a new milestone: 200 million members. But this isn't just our achievement to celebrate — it's also yours. I want to personally thank you for being part of our community. Your journey is part of our journey, and we're delighted and humbled when we hear stories of how our members are using LinkedIn to connect, learn, and find opportunity. All of us come to work each day focused on our shared mission of connecting the world's … [Read more...]
Filed Under: Professional Development, SQLMag, SQLServerPedia Syndication, TCD blog post Tagged With: Career
What’s It Like on a SQLCruise?
I always seem to get a question or two along the lines of "What's it like on a SQLCruise?" as I present at various conferences, SQL Saturdays, and user group meetings. Since we just finished up the 2013 Miami SQLCruise, I thought it'd be a good time to recap so that you can judge for yourself if you'd ever want to do it yourself. Personally, I think that Tim Ford (Twitter | Blog), together with his wife Amy, are doing better than ever in making the cruise both a top-quality learning experience and fantastic social experience. I've heard from many attendees that they learned enough in the … [Read more...]
Filed Under: Conferences, Databases, Presentations, Professional Development, SQL Server, SQLMag, SQLServerPedia Syndication Tagged With: Career, DBA, Developer, Professional Development, SQL Server 2012, Training
The Year That Was – 2012
2012 was, simply stated, a year that kicked my butt. When I wasn't struggling professionally, I was struggling personally. Health issues, culminating in a diagnosis of Type II diabetes, and the passing of my father soon after Thanksgiving marked my biggest struggles. I apologize to those of you who are normally on my Christmas card list for not sending any this year. The wind was not in my sails. On the positive side of the ledger, I made a scary but exciting leap to SQL Sentry midyear. This was a huge shake-up after 10 years with my previous employer, but one which has been met with … [Read more...]
Filed Under: Administration, Conferences, Cool Technologies, Databases, DBTA, On-Line Resources, Presentations, Professional Development, SQL Server, SQLMag, SQLServerPedia Syndication, Tool Time Tagged With: Best Practices, Career, DBA, DBTA, Developer, Professional Development, SQL Server 2012, SQLMag, Writing
