I'm being a little bit incendiary with that title. Many IT pros grow into very good managers. But it almost never comes naturally. It takes hard work and many hard won lessons before most of us ever achieve a degree of skill and comfort with managing other people. Thinking about moving into management? Help is here! I've been spending the past several years turning the lessons I've learned as a manager into a set of courses for IT professionals who want to make the leap in to management. I'll be presenting some of these lessons as full-day seminars. I hope you can join me! Details … [Read more...]
Why Do IT Pros Make Awful Managers?
Filed Under: Challenges, Opinion, Professional Development, SQLMag, SQLServerPedia Syndication Tagged With: Career, Leadership, Management
The Year that was – 2011
Looking back on 2011, I'm surprised by two occurances. First, I got a lot of work done, despite myself. My biggest obstacles to high-performance are all self-derived; procrastination, disorganization, and plain ol' laziness. Second, I'm surprised I survived my personal travails. I've had my fill of frowns this year, from wayward children to caring for sick loved ones to self-inflicted injuries in 2011. I'm glad to be closing the door on a few of those chapters and look forward to better times in 2012. Here's a run-down on my professional activities over the course of 2011: Articles: … [Read more...]
Filed Under: Conferences, Interviews, Presentations, SQLMag, SQLServerPedia Syndication, TCD blog post Tagged With: Career, Professional Development
Information Hoarder No More!
I hate to admit it, but I'm a hoarder. Yes, like those insane people on the A&E TV show. Only my hoarding is all virtual. For example, take the image above. That's just a tiny part of my Google Reader home page. That's a tiny part of my Google Reader home page AFTER reading most of the day on a recent Sunday. I still had thousands of entries to go after hours of reading. On top of that, I subscribe to some technical e-newsletters. I'm a member of quite a few LinkedIn discussion groups, each of which produce daily and weekly newsletters. (I only subscribe to the weekly versions). … [Read more...]
Filed Under: Challenges, Opinion, Professional Development, SQLMag, SQLServerPedia Syndication, Tips & Tricks Tagged With: Career, Plays Well With Others, Productivity
Here, There, and Everywhere; Speaking in Fall 2011, Part 1
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 … [Read more...]
Filed Under: Conferences, Databases, PASS, Presentations, SQLMag, SQLServerPedia Syndication, TCD blog post Tagged With: Career, Professional Development, SQLPASS, SQLSaturday, Training
New on “Database Trends & Applications”
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. [READ MORE ON DATABASE TRENDS & APPLICATIONS ] … [Read more...]
Filed Under: Administration, Challenges, Cool Technologies, Databases, IO, Opinion, SQL Server, SQLMag, SQLServerPedia Syndication, Virtualization Tagged With: Best Practices, Career, DBA, DBTA, Developer, FutureWatch, Goals, Virtualization
Blogger, Have You Heard of Microsoft Broadcaster?
Introducing the Microsoft Broadcaster: A self-service technical content repository that provides you with rich content for your blogs/sites. On behalf of Microsoft, I would like to invite you to dive into Microsoft Broadcaster. It's a site that unleashes a torrent of free technical content like Videos, Webcasts, Whitepapers, eLearning, and more, which you can use in your blogs or user group site to drive deeper engagement with your audience and community. Key Features of Microsoft Broadcaster include: Download and embed content on your sites without sending traffic away … [Read more...]
Filed Under: Cool Technologies, On-Line Resources, Web2.0 Tagged With: Career, Tools & Scripts, Video, Writing
Getting Ahead of the Curve – Big Data
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. … [Read more...]
Filed Under: Administration, BigData, Challenges, Databases, NoSQL, SQL Server, SQLMag, SQLServerPedia Syndication, TCD blog post Tagged With: Best Practices, Big Data, Career, cloud computing, DBA, FutureWatch, SQL Server 2008 R2
Business Intelligence Careers SearchSQLServer.com Interview
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 … [Read more...]
Filed Under: Administration, Databases, Opinion, Professional Development, SQLMag, SQLServerPedia Syndication Tagged With: Business Intelligence, Career, DBA, Developer, SQL Server 2008 R2, SSAS
SQL People Interview
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. ~~~ Enjoy! -Kev Twitter at kekline More content at http://KevinEKline.com … [Read more...]
Filed Under: Databases, Interviews, SQL Server, SQLMag, SQLServerPedia Syndication Tagged With: Career, DBA, Developer, MVP, Professional Development, Writing
Free Webcast Series: Patterns and Practices in Database Administration
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 … [Read more...]
Filed Under: Administration, Challenges, Databases, Presentations, Professional Development, SQL Server, SQLMag, SQLServerPedia Syndication Tagged With: Career, DBA, Management, Performance, Professional Development, SQL Server 2008 R2, Training
