Have You Heard? You Can Get a Mentor

Steve Jones and Andy Warren are at it again.  The founders of SQLServerCentral, SQLShare, and SQLSaturday have started a new program, The Mentoring Experiment, to try to match professionals (SQL Server only to start), with a more experienced professional as a mentor.  One of their goals is to learn more about what makes a mentoring relationship work so that they mentor others to become better mentors.

I can’t think of more qualified people to do something like this.  Both Steve and Andy have been mentors to many people in the SQL Server community, myself included, so they have experience and a real desire to see others grow.  I don’t know who Andy and Steve have selected to be the mentors, but I’m sure that they have selected people who have been successful, and have the desire and ability to see others succeed as well.

My recent reading has included several books on leadership and mentoring so I’m very interested in seeing how this experiment works.

If you are a SQL Server professional who would like to see your career grow I highly recommend visiting thementoringexperiment.org and applying.  You only have until April 30th to get your application in.  Were I not in the midst of a job search and move, I’d apply myself, but I can’t put the time in to be a proper mentee.

PASS SQLRally–Thoughts from an Organizer

There have been lots of blog posts about PASS SQLRally (Bing Search), but there haven’t been a lot recently from the organizers.  As today (April 12th) is the last day for the discounted $299 price I thought it would be good to talk about why I think it is a good model for an event, what I’ve done for SQLRally, and why you should attend.

Why is the SQLRally model good?

Because it is a partnership between local user groups and PASS.  This is a plus because you have the large event experience of those at PASS HQ, but also fresh ideas and new perspectives from the local people.  Just like in any endeavor, you can get stuck in a rut on how you do things and bringing in some new people brings in new ideas that haven’t been considered.  This means that each SQLRally will have a unique identity provided by the local organizers, but you get the experience of those who have put on multiple events.

Because it is regional.  The PASS Summit is a great international conference, but it is large, expensive, and a long way to travel for many people.  This means that you can’t necessarily make it every year.  Because SQLRally is regional, it is less expensive, more intimate, and accessible.  It also means that you the networking available to you is with more people from your region, which means the contacts you make may be more useful to you than national or international contacts you make at a larger conference.  Both have value, but local contacts can help you on-site or, if you are looking, provide you with local opportunities.

It is about the community.  This is YOUR event.  You selected the sessions from pre-con’s to regular sessions, you go to evaluate the abstracts and select the sessions that would be most valuable to YOU.

What I’ve Done?

My main areas of contribution have been in sponsor plan development, event programming, and speaker communication. 

For the sponsor plan development, I got to work with Al Schuler and Craig Ellis and I think we did a great job since we sold out the sponsorships.  It was a great learning experience for me because I got some insight into how to market an event to sponsors and how to break out some thins apart from general sponsorship. 

Andy Warren and I developed the speaker selection process which consisted of breaking the submissions into categories within each track for voting purposes.  We spent a lot of time discussing how that should work and putting sessions into each category.  Our goal in categorizing the submissions within each track was to ensure variety in the sessions.  It’s really easy to pick all the performance tuning sessions as you know those will be popular, but that wouldn’t make a well-rounded event.  Once the sessions were voted on, I communicated the results to the presenters, selected the wild card & deep-dive sessions, and then put together the event schedule.

I’ve also been working on what I’m calling SQLRally Overdrive, which is 3 more laid-back sessions on Thursday evening from 5:45-7:00 pm.  These sessions will be designed to have more interaction between attendees and facilitate networking.

Why Should You Attend?

SQLRally brings much of the Summit experience to you.  We have a great mix of seasoned Summit presenters along with up and coming speakers who have a lot to offer.  With the more intimate setting it should be easier to make new connections and develop those relationships.  You’ll learn from people who are DOING the same job you are, and be able to take home practical solutions that you implement the Monday after the event.  Check out the ROI page for what you can take to your boss to convince him/her to allow you to go to SQLRally.

I hope to see you there!

SqlSaturday #71–Boston Recap: An Upscale Saturday

I had the pleasure of attending and presenting at SQLSaturday #71 – Boston on April 2nd.  Adam Machanic (Blog|Twitter), Mike Walsh (Blog|Twitter), Tom LaRock (Blog|Twitter), Grant Fritchey (Blog|Twitter) and crew did a great job putting on the event.  The event was held at the Babson College Executive Conference Center which is a great facility.  The rooms were large and, except for the large room, theatre-style so the all the attendees could see.  There was also an on-site pub for the after-party that made it easy for attendees to stay and network after the event.  I was surprised that more didn’t, but the crew that did was very lively.

Highlights

Meeting Paul White (Blog|Twitter) – I’ve “known” Paul for awhile online through SQLServerCentral and Twitter, but this was my first opportunity to meet him in person.  I’m always excited to meet people in person, especially when they are among the best and brightest in the SQL Server community, which Paul is.  It was also great to hear that he was rightly awarded SQL Server MVP status in the latest round.  If you don’t read his blog you should. 

Food Service – In order to use the facility the event had to purchase food through the facility and it was the BEST food at any event I’ve attended.  There was fruit, drinks, muffins, etc… throughout the morning at several stations in the facility, and the event staff kept everything stocked.  It was actually so well-done I wasn’t sure it was for our event because I’ve never seen it done like that before.  The lunch buffet was unbelievable!  Tampa has a good lunch at their event, but it did not compare.  I can’t even mention all the items that were available, including the desserts.  There were even servers keeping you water or other drink filled and clearing your plates.  Even the Summit doesn’t serve a meal like this!  Then, to top it off cookies and fruit appeared at the snack stations in the afternoon!  Thank goodness I stayed on my feet throughout the day or I would have gained back half the weight I’ve lost! 

Seeing old friends and making new ones – There is never a time when getting together with old friends in the community is not a great time.  People like Andy Leonard (Blog|Twitter), Aaron Bertrand (Blog|Twitter), Karen Lopez (Blog|Twitter), Chris Skorlinksi and others that make every conversation a learning experience.  Then some new friends, many of whom I interact with online, like Mike Hilwig (Blog), Michael Coles (Blog|Twitter), Andrew Kelly (Blog|Twitter), Stefan Krzywicki (Blog), and Allen White (Blog|Twitter).  Each one of the folks I interacted with during the day made a full day of #sqlwinning.  I know I’m leaving out a bunch of people, but there are too many to include.

My Session

I presented my Introduction to Triggers session in the first slot and I had at least 15 people (that’s how many evals I got), which is about my normal crowd for this session.  Overall it went well, although I lost my train of thought a couple of times, and I was a little nervous having Paul White in my session.  Paul actually was a great help in the session as he asked some great questions that reminded me of some points that I need to make or emphasize.  I am guessing that is why he asked those questions because I’m pretty sure he knew the answers, and I’d be shocked if he didn’t.  There were a lot of good questions from the rest of group as well, especially when we talked about DDL triggers.  We actually spent more time on that part of the presentation than normal because of the questions.  It is always nice to get the evaluations right at the session, especially when they are good .  I had 3 fours and 12 fives for the overall quality of the presentation which is always nice to see. Here a few comments:

“Great session – learned a lot!”

“Great Speaker.  Accessible and sincere”

“On the slides, yellow urls against a blue background are hard to read”

“Lively, engaging speaker”

“Test his code! ” – I did have a couple of oops’s

“Very good @ recovering from the “gotchas”.”

“A little extra on the real basics of what a trigger does and when it fires”

I’ll definitely be working the ones that involve doing something better, but very happy that everyone enjoyed and learned something from the session, including me!

Sessions I attended

I only attended 2 sessions, Paul White’s SQL Query Optimization: It’s Not Rocket Science session, and Karen Lopez’s session, Database Design Contentious Issues.

As I expected, Paul’s session was great and deep!  I know I’m not at his level in understanding the internals of SQL Server and he gave a great overview of how the query optimizer works, ways you can “play” with it, and ways you can “help” it.  The fact that you can help the optimizer by trying different ways to “declare” what you want to see which one brings out the best plan.  This session should be followed by Grant Fritchey’s session on query plans.

Karen’s session was very interesting as it was very interactive.  We talked about surrogate keys vs. natural keys, when to use varchar vs. char, and naming conventions.  Each of which is definitely a contentious issue, and we didn’t even talk about NULL’s!  The key thing I took from this session is that the “tools you use affect the decisions you make”.

Constructive Criticism’s

I’ve never attended a perfect event, so here are a couple things I’d suggest for next time:

1. SQLSaturday signs on the way into the event location.  Once you got to the Babson campus it seemed like you had to drive through the whole place to find the event.  I was looking for SQLSaturday signs and there weren’t any.
2. Include the speaker name on the schedule handed out at the event.  I know a lot of people want to know who is speaking as a the tie-breaker between sessions.

Other than those 2 things I don’t have any other things to change.  Check-in, which is often a problem, went smoothly, and the day seemed to flow very well.

Thanks for putting on a great event and I hope to be back next year!

Come on Out to OPASS

Tonight is the March OPASS meeting.  You should come on out, it’s always a great time.  Note our new location and be sure to RSVP so we can have food for you.  Don’t forget to bring your resume as Signature Consultants, LLC will be there as out local sponsor. 

Here’s the meat of the meeting:

Wear any of your Red Gate shirts this meeting for an extra chance to win a free license of SQL Source Control!!
Event Date/Time:	Tuesday March 8 @ 6:00 PM
Location:	Rikka Asian Bistro 1541 International Parkway, Ste. 1001 Lake Mary, FL 32746
Map/Directions:	Bing Map to Event Location
Speaker Bio:	Ken Tucker
Speaker:	Ken Tucker is a Microsoft MVP, President of Space Coast .NET user group, and Ineta Membership mentor for Florida.  Ken currently works for Amovius as a developer.
Title:	SilverLight MVVM
Abstract:	The MVVM pattern is a common way to develop SilverLight apps. In this demo, Ken will look at some of the MVVM frameworks available and walk through creating an application.
SQL Shot Speaker:	Bradley Ball
Speaker Bio:	Bradley Ball is a MCITP SQL 2005 & MCTS 2008 Database Administrator with over 10 years of IT experience. Bradley spent 8 years working as a Defense contractor for clients such as the U.S. Army and The Executive Office Of the President of the United States. He is currently a Sr. SQL Database Administrator for Publix Supermarkets. Bradley can be found blogging on http://sqlballs.blogspot.com and on twitter here.
Title:	Transparent Data Encryption
Abstract:	Bradley will be doing a quick lightening round on Transparent Data Encryption, and will show off a script to automate certificate backups.
Please RSVP:

You can come if you don’t RSVP, but we can’t guarantee enough food if you don’t RSVP.

Once again thanks to our sponsors:

Upcoming Engagements

I haven’t been blogging lately because I’ve been busy tweaking my resume, working on PASS SQLRally, serving at church, and spending time with my family.  Things aren’t going to be slowing down anytime soon, but I wanted to let those who do read this blog know that I’m still around and about my upcoming speaking engagements:

Wednesday, March 9th 3pm

I’ll be doing a web cast on Security, Performance, and Maintenance Advantages to Using Stored Procedures over ORM Tools where I share my opinions on why Stored Procedures are better than an ORM tool for a data access layer.

Saturday, March 26th 10:50am

I’ll be presenting Introduction to SQL Server Profiler at the Orlando CodeCamp.  I’ve given this presentation several times, but will be tailoring for developers so that they can really see what their preferred ORM tool is doing.

Saturday April 2nd 9am

I’ll be presenting Introduction to Triggers SQLSaturday #71 – Boston.  I’ll be giving a brief overview of the different types of triggers available in SQL Server (DDL & DML) and then go into more detail on how and when to use DML triggers. This session will cover misconceptions about how triggers work, when triggers should and shouldn't be used (we will discuss options), common mistakes, and how to fix the most common mistakes.

February OPASS Meeting

Don’t forget to join us tonight for the OPASS meeting sponsored by RedGate and Signature Consultants.

Event Date/Time:	Tuesday February 8th @ 6:00 PM
Location:	Hampton Inn 850 Village Oak Lane Lake Mary
Map/Directions:	Bing Map to Event Location
Speaker Bio:	Brian Knight
Speaker:	Brian Knight, SQL Server MVP, MCITP, MCSE, MCDBA, is the owner and founder of Pragmatic Works. He is also the co-founder of SQLServerCentral.com and JumpstartTV.com. He runs the local Microsoft SQL Server users group in Jacksonville (JSSUG). Brian is a contributing columnist at several technical magazines and does regular webcasts at Jumpstart TV. He is the author of ten SQL Server books. Brian has spoken at conferences like PASS, SQL Connections and Tech·Ed and many Code Camps. His blog can be found at http://www.pragmaticworks.com.
Title:	Introduction to PowerPivot
Abstract:	In this session, you’ll learn how to use PowerPivot to create self-service analytics in your organization. You'll see how Office 2010 and SQL Server 2008 R2 will help your users answer their own questions and bring together datasets that may be heterogeneous like a SQL Server table and data feed from a website. Then, you’ll see how to take that data and create a striking report for your end users and collaborate with the data in SharePoint.
DevShot Speaker:	Karl Lambert
Speaker Bio:	Karl currently is a Business Intelligence Developer @ Universal American Corp. Roots in software engineering/development (VB, VBA, C++) moving on to database administration in early/mid 2000’s. Beginning focused on SQL Server security, more recently focusing on Integration Services and SSIS performance tuning & optimization.
Title:	Dependency Services in SSIS Denali
Abstract:	We will take a look at Dependency Services in SQL Server Integration Services, and how it can be used to determine Object Impact and Data Lineage. We will discuss the requirements for using Dependency Services and extracting object metadata. We will also get an introduction to the Dependency Designer UI, and how to quickly identify Object Impact.
Please RSVP:	If you are planning on attending the meeting, please RSVP here.

SQLSaturday #62–Tampa Recap

I had the privilege of attending and speaking at SQLSaturday #62 – Tampa the weekend of January 15th and this is my belated recap post of what I did for the weekend.

I headed to Tampa from Sanford on Thursday afternoon as I was attending Denny Cherry’s (Twitter) pre-conference seminar, Storage and Virtualization for the DBA, on Friday.  I was able to have dinner with one of my college roommates who I had not seen in over 15 years that evening.  I had a great time with him.

Friday morning I headed to Denny’s seminar and there was a great turnout, with I think 30 people in the seminar.  It was good to re-connect with Denny, Mike Nelson (Twitter), Ron Dameron (Twitter), and Mike Wells during the breaks in the seminar.  I selected this seminar because both storage and virtualization are areas that I have no experience with and I want to understand them so I can speak credibly with storage and virtualization admins.  Honestly I need a couple of weeks training on both, with some hands on experience, but I definitely know more than I did before the seminar.  This was the first time I’ve sat in on a session by Denny although I did listen to his session on Service Broker on the PASS Summit 2010 DVD, and I was impressed.  He does a great job teaching and explains things in a way a complete noob like me can understand.

Friday night I attended the speaker/volunteer dinner at Spaghetti Warehouse and there was a great turnout with I would guess close to 50 people there.  I wish I had written this sooner so I could remember the names of the new people I met, but I can’t.  I talked with a lot of people there and had great conversations.  The opportunity to see friends is one reason I love the events, especially the Florida ones.  I’d list names, but I’ll leave someone out.  I always feel some awe because of the great talent in the room.  It makes me thankful for the opportunity I have to be part of the SQL Server community.  I’m always amazed at how willing the “names” of the SQL world are to share their hard-earned knowledge.

Pam Shaw (Twitter) and Jose Chinchilla (Twitter) did a good job with the event on Saturday.  They had a great idea for check-in that they called, SpeedPass.  They sent out pdf’s with all your printed materials (name tag, lunch ticket, raffle tickets), so you could print them out ahead of time, and then at check-in you went to the SpeedPass line where you got a bag with just the generic information.  It definitely made check-in, which was an issue at last year’s event in Tampa, go more quickly. 

After getting my t-shirt from PragmaticWorks, I went to Rodney Landrum’s session, DBA Repository, and picked up some good tips.  Then I sat in on part of Andy Warren’s (Blog | Twitter) session on having a professional development plan.  I definitely picked up some good tips and need to develop a better plan for myself.  I left his session early because I was presenting the next hour.

My session, Why I Use Stored Procedures, went very well, and was very well attended.  In fact it was my largest crowd for this particular topic with between 30 and 40 in attendance.  I don’t have a lot of slides for this session, but spend time telling stories about why I like stored procedures of ORM tools.  I do some very simple demos of Linq to SQL and Entity Framework, showing the queries they produce using SQL Server Profiler.  I demo both .NET 3.5 and 4.0 as they do behave differently with 4.0 being a big improvement.  I don’t claim to be an ORM expert, but in the experience I do have I have seen things that cause some concern as they proliferate.  There were several good questions and comments throughout the session and I had a few people hang around and ask some further questions after the session.  I was very pleased with how everything went and had a great time delivering the session.

There was a great catered lunch and I left pretty much after lunch as I had been gone from my family since Thursday and I was ready to see them.

Overall is was a great event.  The pre-con was great, speaker party was good, SpeedPass was a great idea, and lunch was fantastic.  There were 2 things I think could have been better:

1. Better signs in the morning as there were 2 rooms in another building and it was not clear where to go after check-in.
2. The schedule in the event guide didn’t list the speaker names, just the session name.  I like to know who is speaking as that helps me decide when there are multiple sessions I’d like to attend.

Thanks Pam and Jose for a great event.  Sorry I didn’t get this recap up sooner.