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<?xml-stylesheet type="text/xsl" href="http://sqlblog.com/utility/FeedStylesheets/rss.xsl" media="screen"?><rss version="2.0" xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" xmlns:slash="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/slash/" xmlns:wfw="http://wellformedweb.org/CommentAPI/"><channel><title>Search results matching tags 'Conferences', 'Goals', and 'Opinion'</title><link>http://sqlblog.com/search/SearchResults.aspx?o=DateDescending&amp;tag=Conferences,Goals,Opinion&amp;orTags=0</link><description>Search results matching tags 'Conferences', 'Goals', and 'Opinion'</description><dc:language>en-US</dc:language><generator>CommunityServer 2.1 SP2 (Build: 61129.1)</generator><item><title>Leadership, Management, and SQLRally</title><link>http://sqlblog.com/blogs/kevin_kline/archive/2011/04/25/leadership-management-and-sqlrally.aspx</link><pubDate>Mon, 25 Apr 2011 14:55:00 GMT</pubDate><guid isPermaLink="false">21093a07-8b3d-42db-8cbf-3350fcbf5496:35167</guid><dc:creator>KKline</dc:creator><description>&lt;h2&gt;&lt;em&gt;Transparency - A Great Leadership Quality&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/h2&gt;
I've always appreciated how Andy Warren (&lt;a href="http://www.sqlandy.com/"&gt;blog&lt;/a&gt;| &lt;a href="http://twitter.com/sqlandy"&gt;twitter&lt;/a&gt;) operates in the most transparent manner, especially as it relates to his role as a director for the &lt;a href="http://www.sqlpass.org" title="If you're a SQL Server professional, you have no excuse not joining." target="_blank"&gt;Professional Association for SQL Server&lt;/a&gt;. For example, Andy's &lt;a href="http://www.sqlandy.com/index.php/2011/04/sqlrally-2011-update/" title="SQLRally Update" target="_blank"&gt;latest blog post&lt;/a&gt; about prepping for the &lt;a href="http://www.sqlrally.com" title="The East Coast SQLPASS Community Event" target="_blank"&gt;SQLRally&lt;/a&gt;, 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 after hours entertainment options, giving you a chance to pipe up with your opinion if you had one.
&lt;h2&gt;&lt;em&gt;Learn from My Mistakes&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/h2&gt;
Times running out for the early registration discount.  Save $50 by &lt;a href="http://www.sqlpass.org/sqlrally/2011/orlando/Register.aspx" title="Register for SQLRally" target="_blank"&gt;registering before the end of the week&lt;/a&gt;!  And while you're at it, register for my full day, pre-conference seminar on learning leadership and management skills especially tailored for the IT professional.  Here's a quick run-down of the topics we'll cover in my pre-con:
&lt;ul&gt;
	&lt;li&gt;Earning the respect of your team&lt;/li&gt;
	&lt;li&gt;A deep understand of effectively motivating technology professionals&lt;/li&gt;
	&lt;li&gt;Specific skills to lead database professionals competently that broadly fall into the categories of:
&lt;ul&gt;
	&lt;li&gt;Coaching team members to effectively meet goals and deadlines&lt;/li&gt;
	&lt;li&gt;Facilitating change and navigating organizational disruptions&lt;/li&gt;
	&lt;li&gt;Promoting communication within the team and with management&lt;/li&gt;
	&lt;li&gt;Keeping teams and projects on task and within scope&lt;/li&gt;
	&lt;li&gt;Dealing with difficult team members&lt;/li&gt;
	&lt;li&gt;Practicing good team time management techniques&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ul&gt;
&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ul&gt;
Read all about the goals of the session &lt;a href="http://www.sqlpass.org/sqlrally/2011/orlando/Agenda/PreConferenceSeminars.aspx#PD" title="Hope to see you there!" target="_blank"&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.  If you're coming to my session, I'd love to hear your thoughts ahead of time about challenges you're facing!
&lt;h2&gt;&lt;em&gt;Personal Experience&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;Personnel Experience&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/h2&gt;
Also, just a word about my bona fides.  I've had a lot of leadership and management training over the years, but like many professionals I consider my on-the-job experiences to be the most valuable.

On the education side of the equation, I received a bachelor's degree in the school of management back in the 1980's.  I've also gone through the &lt;a href="http://www.ccl.org" title="Excellent training from the Center for Creative Leadership" target="_blank"&gt;Center for Creative Leadership&lt;/a&gt;'s leadership training curriculum, the&lt;a href="http://www.blessingwhite.com/home.asp" title="Excellent management training from Blessing &amp;amp; White" target="_blank"&gt; Blessing and White Management Training&lt;/a&gt; curriculum, and SmithBucklin's not-for-profit governance and organizational strategy training curriculum.  On the experience side of the equation, I led small dev and admin teams of 3-7 people starting way back in the early 1990's.  In the late 1990's, I started taking a more strategic direction with my skills as the manager of information architecture at the firm where I worked as well as taking a role as one of the founding directors of PASS.  In the early 2000's, I joined &lt;a href="http://www.quest.com/sqlserver" title="Makers of famous database tools like TOAD and LiteSpeed" target="_blank"&gt;Quest Software&lt;/a&gt; as our initial SQL Server product architect and spent several years leading the team to a over 50 individuals in a half dozen teams in as many disparate locations around the world.
&lt;h2&gt;&lt;em&gt;A Few Words About Community from SQLBits8&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/h2&gt;
The more I go, the more reasons I find to go back to the &lt;a href="http://www.sqlbits.com" title="Not really small bits, more like huge chunks fo SQL learning" target="_blank"&gt;SQLBits&lt;/a&gt; conferences held around the UK.  The starting image isn't very flattering, but here's a fun little interview put together by Andrew Fryer of Microsoft:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i4EjZ-FutLQ

Enjoy!
-Kev

&lt;a href="http://twitter.com/kekline" title="C'mon. You know you want to!" target="_blank"&gt;Twitter at kekline&lt;/a&gt;
More content at &lt;a href="http://sqlblog.com/controlpanel//"&gt;http://KevinEKline.com&lt;/a&gt;</description></item></channel></rss>