Transparency - A Great Leadership Quality 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 … [Read more...]
Leadership, Management, and SQLRally
New on SQLMag.Com: Update to SP_WHOISACTIVE
I profiled Adam Machanic's (blog | twitter) excellent stored procedure, SP_WHOISACTIVE, back in August of 2010 in my monthly SQLMag column, Tool Time. Adam has been diligent about maintaining the tool and adding new features. Read the details on my SQLMag Tool Time column. Enjoy! -Kev Twitter at kekline … [Read more...]
Funny Things You’ll Hear at the “Leadership for IT Professionals” at the 2011 SQLRally
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 … [Read more...]
And the winner of the SQLBits8 Pub Quiz is… [drumroll please]
Wow - what a great trip through Europe! SQLBits8 was in beautiful and sunny Brighton, which everyone local to the area assures me that it's not usually either. The crowd was large and enthusiastic. 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) … [Read more...]
Looking forward to seeing my Deutschland friends in Koln today. Details for the event are at http://ping.fm/2c2sZ … [Read more...]
SQLBits and Events in Dublin, Koln, and Malmo
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. 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 … [Read more...]
SQLServerPedia Has a New Editor-in-Chief. Oh no, it’s Me!
Attrition has taken its toll once again as a few good friends move from being colleagues to being former colleagues. As a result of the folks moving on to bigger and better things, I'm now stepping up in to the roll of editor-in-chief of SQLServerPedia. This roll is mostly about checking on the quality of content produced by our syndicating bloggers to make sure that they're not trying to sell products or services and that their posts are of high quality. That's about where the official duties end, save for things like acting as a judge in big SSP contests. One new aspect that I want … [Read more...]
SQL Server auditing slides and recording now available at http://ping.fm/BK9yp … [Read more...]
So much travel ahead. After sqlsat 63 in Dallas, I've got two weeks in Europe >> SQLBits >> Dublin >> Cologne >> Malmo. … [Read more...]