Search results matching tags 'Community' and 'Presentations'

The Windows Azure Software Development Kit (SDK) and the Windows Azure Training Kit (WATK)

BuckWoody — Wed, 12 Sep 2012 13:40:40 GMT

Windows Azure is a platform that allows you to write software, run software, or use software that we've already written. We provide lots of resources to help you do that - many can be found right here in this blog series. There are two primary resources you can use, and it's important to understand what they are and what they do.

The Windows Azure Software Development Kit (SDK)

Actually, this isn't one resource. We have SDK's for multiple development environments, such as Visual Studio and also Eclipse, along with SDK's for iOS, Android and other environments. Windows Azure is a "back end", so almost any technology or front end system can use it to solve a problem.

The SDK's are primarily for development. In the case of Visual Studio, you'll get a runtime environment for Windows Azure which allows you to develop, test and even run code all locally - you do not have to be connected to Windows Azure at all, until you're ready to deploy.

You'll also get a few samples and codeblocks, along with all of the libraries you need to code with Windows Azure in .NET, PHP, Ruby, Java and more.

The SDK is updated frequently, so check this location to find the latest for your environment and language - just click the bar that corresponds to what you want:

http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/develop/downloads/

The Windows Azure Training Kit (WATK)

Whether you're writing code, using Windows Azure Virtual Machines (VM's) or working with Hadoop, you can use the WATK to get examples, code, PowerShell scripts, PowerPoint decks, training videos and much more. This should be your second download after the SDK. This is all of the training you need to get started, and even beyond. The WATK is updated frequently - and you can find the latest one here:

http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/develop/net/other-resources/training-kit/

There are many other resources - again, check the http://windowsazure.com site, the community newsletter (which introduces the latest features), and my blog for more.

Presenting at the NJ SQL Server User Group Tuesday 21 Feb 2012!

andyleonard — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 12:00:00 GMT

I am honored to present “Building Your First SSIS Package in SQL Server 2012” at the NJ SQL Server User Group Tuesday, 21 Feb 2012 starting at 6:00 PM!

If you read this blog and will be in the area, please stop by and introduce yourself! I’m the fat guy with a fu.

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A less shameless plug : PASS sessions I've voted as "preferred"

AaronBertrand — Tue, 17 May 2011 21:46:00 GMT

Not that my preferences really mean a hill of beans to anyone else, but since I've asked for your vote on my sessions, I'd also like to share the list of sessions that I've marked as "preferred" so far. Now, since we have no idea what the schedule will be, we can pick and choose the sessions without any concern about who's up against who in the same time slot; we can leave that agony for the day the schedule is released. In the meantime, you can pick the sessions you'd like to see, in an ideal world with no conflicts!

Pre-cons

I doubt I will have the opportunity to attend any pre-cons, but if I did, here are the two that would most likely end in some arbitrary tie-breaker:

Future Diagnostic improvements in Denali [300]
 Microsoft CSS Team (blog)

A Deep Dive into AlwaysOn: Failover Clustering and Availability Groups [400] 
Allan Hirt (blog | twitter)
 

Regular sessions & spotlights

These are the top 10 that stood out to me, in no particular order. Some I chose because I really enjoy sessions by these people, others I chose because I am very interested in the topic or I feel the need for a refresher.

Everything You Didn't Know You Need to Know About Database Mirroring [300]
 Robert Davis (blog | twitter)

  Implementing SQL Server Denali Using Windows Server Core [400] 
Allan Hirt (blog | twitter)

  Joins, SARGability and the Evils of Residualiciousness [300]
 Rob Farley (blog | twitter)

100 Years of Transaction solitude [400] 
Ami Levin (twitter)
Advanced SQL Server 2008 Troubleshooting [400] 
Klaus Aschenbrenner (blog | twitter)

Undocumented Query Plans [400] 
Paul White (blog | twitter)

Inside the SQL Server Query Optimizer [400]
Benjamin Nevarez (blog | twitter)

PDW Architecture and Internals [400] 
Richard Waymire, Brian Walker
SQL Server Execution Plans – From Compilation To Caching To Reuse [400] 
Maciej Pilecki (twitter)

Extended Events, Work Smarter Not Harder [300] 
Jason Strate (blog | twitter)

If you want to mark sessions as preferences, please visit the PASS web site (login required).

The results are in: I'm an okay speaker.

AaronBertrand — Tue, 15 Feb 2011 00:41:00 GMT

Last weekend I spoke at SQL Saturday #60 in Cleveland, Ohio. I had a great time catching up with some existing friends and colleagues, and met a bunch of new people too. I presented two sessions: What's New in Denali, and T-SQL: Bad Habits to Kick. Yesterday the organizers passed along the scanned-in speaker evaluations (this was the first SQL Saturday event where I found folks to be quite motivated to fill out the forms, since it was how they drew the door prizes). And being the ADD person I am, I quickly transcribed the scores and started pulling averages. I thought my presentations went rather well, with one exception that I'll get to in a moment.

First, let me say that I'm always pretty apprehensive about feedback from presentations. There is always going to be a wide range of expectations at an event like a SQL Saturday - whether it be because someone has been to 10 of these events or it's their first time, or even that they may have seen a worse or better speaker right before my session. So I try to take everything with a grain of salt, not letting praise go to my head, and at the same time not letting criticism get me down too much.

That said, my big issue at this event was time management. I'd given the Denali presentation before, and this time the crowd was less than 15 (12 evals were submitted). Several folks had very good questions, so I ended up having to rush at the end to finish the content and leave the room with enough time for the next speaker to get set up. Then my Bad Habits session, in a smaller room, had well over 50 people (43 submitted evals). For this presentation I listed my "12 step program" - 12 bad habits that I'm hopeful to help other people break. I was expecting a lot more pushback, arguments and denial about whether SELECT * or sending @@IDENTITY via RETURN are bad habits. Ever try to tell a smoker they shouldn't smoke? That's what I was prepared for. But alas, the crowd was mostly silent, so I breezed through my decks in about 35 minutes... this forced me to scramble to fill the remainder of my time and make sure people got their money's worth. As noted on a few of the evals, a lighter session at the end of the day was actually appreciated, but it was certainly not my intention.

The ratings on the speaker evaluations are Very Poor, Poor, Average, Good and Excellent - I've given these scores of 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 respectively. Logical, I assume, but just thought I would clarify (I actually calculated it on a scale of 0 - 4, but my one "Poor" checkbox made me cry a little). Overall, I think people were quite kind, given the fact that I know both presentations could have been better. I don't put a whole lot of weight into the first question; unless my session has a very inaccurate title, the attendees should have some sense of whether it will be useful for them before they come - and if they just want to come because it's interesting to them even if it has nothing to do with their day job, it's still not really fair to count that against me.

In any event, my scores were as follows - I've highlighted the high (green) and low (red) in each column:

How would you rate the... What's New in Denali
(43 evals) T-SQL: Bad Habits to Kick
(12 evals) Combined Average
(55 evals)

...usefulness of the session information in your day-to-day environment? 4.083 4.512 4.418

...Speaker's presentation skills? 4.583 4.488 4.509

...Speaker's knowledge of the subject? 4.750 4.767 4.764

...accuracy of the session title, description and experience level? 4.417 4.628 4.582

...amount of time allocated to cover the topic / session? 3.667 4.143 4.037

...quality of the presentation materials? 4.167 4.419 4.435

How would you rate the...	What's New in Denali (43 evals)	T-SQL: Bad Habits to Kick (12 evals)	Combined Average (55 evals)
...usefulness of the session information in your day-to-day environment?	4.083	4.512	4.418
...Speaker's presentation skills?	4.583	4.488	4.509
...Speaker's knowledge of the subject?	4.750	4.767	4.764
...accuracy of the session title, description and experience level?	4.417	4.628	4.582
...amount of time allocated to cover the topic / session?	3.667	4.143	4.037
...quality of the presentation materials?	4.167	4.419	4.435

My take-away from this: I need to be better at adjusting the pace depending on how many interruptions I'm seeing (I will never be the guy who tells you to wait until later on to speak up). How I fix this is kind of up in the air, because next time I might have a much more vocal crowd ready to challenge each and every slide. I should have demos prepared for every single habit, and start skipping them if time starts to get tight. This may mean re-ordering my slide deck to put the most controversial habits first.

It's always a pleasure to offer up my opinions and experience to the community. If one person benefits in any way from a session, then I consider it a success. I know I have certainly learned from every presentation I've given, and last weekend was no exception. I am hoping the speaker evaluations continue to be representative of the whole crowd so I can accurately use this post as a measuring stick to see how I am learning to be a better presenter.

Thanks, as always, for your candid feedback.

Updated slide decks from SSMS presentation at SNESSUG

AaronBertrand — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 01:55:00 GMT

Tonight I spoke at the SNESSUG user group meeting in Warwick, RI. You can download the slide deck here (this is a 3.5 MB PDF with presenter notes):

http://sqlblog.com/files/folders/23423/download.aspx

If you attended the talk, please feel free to provide feedback at speakerrate.com:

http://speakerrate.com/talks/2849-management-studio-tips-tricks

Today also happened to be a birthday celebration for Grant Fritchey (blog | twitter). He blogged about the meeting and also took a picture of the cake I brought for him. :-)

SQL Saturday #33 : slide deck, recap and shout-outs

AaronBertrand — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 02:14:00 GMT

[Sorry I have been a little absent over the past couple of weeks. Returning from the Olympics just a little over a week ago meant some busy catch-up and a heavy lead-in to today's event.]

Today I spoke at SQL Saturday #33 in Charlotte, NC. My presentation was virtually a rip-off of the one I gave at SQL Saturday #34 in Boston: Management Studio Tips & Tricks. The goal is to have everyone in the room say "cool" or "wow" when they learn something new about SSMS; even some of the gurus who attended my presentation admitted that they picked up a trick or two. So, success!

Get used to this one; I'll be giving this presentation at least two more times this year, including at the Southern New England SQL Server User Group next Monday. Based on the feedback I've received so far, I think this will be all right. Though I'll need to update my VM to be a non-evaluation and non-expired copy of Windows Server 2008 R2 this coming week sometime. If you were at this talk, please feel free to leave me feedback at SpeakerRate; comment below if you want to remain anonymous; or by e-mail (aaron DOT bertrand AT gmail) if you don't want others to see your scathing comments. ;-) Don't worry, I have thick skin. In the meantime, I have an updated slide deck posted below.

Since I got my presentation out of the way right after the keynote this morning, I had a very nice time relaxing and enjoying the other sessions. I sat on a panel in the blogging and speaking session by Kendal Van Dyke (@SQLDBA), and it was a fantastically interactive session. I also attended talks by Tim Ford (@sqlagentman), Andy Kelly (@gunneyK), Ashton Hobbs, and Jeff Schwartz. Picked up a lot of great information, and got to heckle Tim and Andy... so that was fun.

The after-party was at Mac's Speed Shop which has great BBQ but - wtf - no mashed potatoes? How can you have pulled pork (my sandwich was called "The Big Pig") without mashed potatoes? I was kind of surprised because, even though 250+ attendees were invited to join us, it was almost all speakers who showed up. Maybe next time we should have the raffle at the after-party instead of at the end of the day... that will encourage more attendees to join us to mingle (the venue was spread out so people were almost always rushing to their next session), and then Geoff might win an iPod Touch next time.

I want to give a shout out to SQL Sentry - Greg Gonzalez (@SQLsensei), Peter Shire (@Peter_Shire), Karen Gonzalez, Missy Kelly, all the volunteers (a.k.a. hall monitors), and the other sponsors (Dell, RedGate, Confio, Quest, New Horizons, Intellinet, TEK systems, and CozyRoc). All of these people made this event possible, and their hard work made it go so smoothly. Hats off! I also want to clink glasses with all my colleagues that I got to catch up with, or meet for the first time. The list is way too long to post here (this was an event very well represented by MVPs and the like), but you know who you are: cheers. And thanks to Andy Kelly for being the designated chauffeur for the event!

Management Studio Tips & Tricks, version 1.0

AaronBertrand — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 22:00:00 GMT

Today I presented "Management Studio Tips & Tricks" at SQL Saturday #34 in Waltham, MA. I had an audience of close to 100 (my biggest talk yet!), and unless they were stroking my ego, I achieved my primary goal for the session: to make sure that every single person in the room learned at least one new thing about SSMS.

I learned some things today too:

I am still horrible at repeating audience questions before answering them. I know before and after delivering a presentation that it's exactly what you should do, and understand that there are several reasons to do so (not all of which benefit the audience). But in the heat of the moment, I'm usually spending too much time making sure I answer the question right, when I should be ensuring that the others have heard it.
No matter how much you prepare a presentation (and especially the first time you offer the topic), there will always be things you forgot to include. Today I talked about templates as an easy way to help encourage specific coding conventions and naming standards, but Tim Ford (@sqlagentman) reminded me afterward of one of the more direct features that you can utilize via templates: CTRL+SHIFT+M. If you haven't used it, this pulls up a dialog allowing you to substitute parameters in your script, without having to do it by hand. The parameter placeholders in your script have to match a specific format (some info about this here).
I am a part of a fantastic community. At events like this there is always great interaction, both with other MVPs and with the audience in general. Unfortunately I could not commit to the entire day, but aside from my session I attended both Tim Ford's talk on DMVs and Mike Walsh's session on tuning T-SQL. While I was more of a heckler than a contributor, I kind of felt at home in every session, and am looking forward to the next one.

I'll be giving the talk at SNESSUG in March, so I'll have plenty of time to work on my slide deck, and will hopefully take what I learned today into that presentation. In the meantime, you are welcome to download the current version of the deck (I exported to PDF). Some of the bullet points only make sense in the context of the talk, but several of the slides have speaker notes that might help elaborate. Please let me know if you have any comments, questions or suggestions!

UPDATE: I just signed up on SpeakerRate. If you attended this presentation, please feel free to leave me comments, either negative or positive! Thanks!

http://speakerrate.com/talks/2075-management-studio-tips-tricks

UPDATE 2: A screen shot demonstrating the multi-object action capabilities of Object Explorer Details. Click to embiggen.