Plays Well With Others – Upsizing Your Skills With OCW

In our last installment , I describe the three essential skills I felt were hallmarks of the best and most successful directors that I’ve worked with.  Good directors, indeed good strategic leaders of all stripes, usually have at least one or more of these skills: strategic planning, visionary goals, and emotional intelligence. The good news about these skills, and lots of other skills that can advance your career, is that you can learn them.  Many people will spend a fortune on a classroom approach to learning these sorts of skills via an MBA.  If you’re a penny pincher, you can get a leg … [Read more...]

Videos: Strategies for Addressing Common SQL Server Challenges

As a busy SQL Server DBA you face an increasing number of daily challenges: Managing fast growing data volumes and database environments Diagnosing and resolving performance issues Effective backup and recovery Monitoring and tracking database changes Balancing current resources against future capacity needs Inefficiencies in any of these areas can lead to performance degradation, unauthorized database changes, and unplanned, extended downtime. Webcast originally presented by renowned SQL Server expert Kevin Kline and learn valuable strategies for addressing these challenges … [Read more...]

Plays Well With Others – Successful Directors versus Successful Technologists

The skills that enable a person to be a top-tier database professional have very little to do with being a successful member of a board of directors. So what skills are needed for a person to be successful on a board of directors for any large organization?  Here are a handful of skills, in no particular order, that I’ve seen demonstrated by very successful directors from days past: Strategic thinking Let’s face it - technology is detail-oriented work.  No database professional can be truly effective at their job if they never get the parameters correct when calling a function, can’t … [Read more...]

Video: The Growing SQL Server World- Surviving the Data Avalanche

An expert roundtable discussion hosted by SQL Server Expert Kevin Kline and featuring speakers from Microsoft, EMC, Avanade, HP and Quest Software. With the release of SQL Server 2005 and its focus on Business Intelligence, SQL Server professionals are faced with unprecedented amounts of data to manage. How are you dealing with the flood of data? At the PASS Community Summit 2006, experts from Quest Software joined forces with a variety of other SQL Server industry experts for a panel discussion around the implications of managing large volumes of business critical data on SQL Server and … [Read more...]

Political Calculus – PASS Nominations

Pardon me, sir. Do I have a dog in this fight? After my term of service on the PASS board of directors ended in December of 2009, I fully intended to stay far, far out of the way.  It's an intention that I've largely been able to fulfill,excluding the odd conversation with an occasional board member or committee chair looking for a little impartial advice when weighing some consideration or other. If you keep up with going's on within PASS, then you'll know that there's been some hullabaloo lately.  Please reference paragraph 1 again at this point to understand that I don't really … [Read more...]

Plays Well With Others – Inaugural

Professional Development for the SQL Server Technologist This series of posts is dedicated to enhancing your soft skills.  For many technologists, the day-to-day grind of work tends to keep us focused on the SQL Server part of work and causes us to overlook the Professional.  While we, as technologists, spend the majority of our time honing hard, technology skills, but it’s important to remember that we are first and foremost employed to add value to the business processes of the organizations we work for.  In this series I will cover a wide variety of topics, including soft skills like … [Read more...]