Search results matching tag 'Goals'

The Year That Was - 2012

KKline — Mon, 31 Dec 2012 19:31:00 GMT

2012 was, simply stated, a year that kicked my butt. When I wasn't struggling professionally, I was struggling personally. Health issues, culminating in a diagnosis of Type II diabetes, and the passing of my father soon after Thanksgiving marked my biggest struggles. I apologize to those of you who are normally on my Christmas card list for not sending any this year. The wind was not in my sails. On the positive side of the ledger, I made a scary but exciting leap to SQL Sentry midyear. This was a huge shake-up after 10 years with my previous employer, but one which has been met with unbridled enthusiasm everywhere I've gone. Thank you for the handshakes, high-fives, and hugs! We're doing some really exciting things at SQL Sentry (such as SQLPerformance.com and Plan Explorer Pro) and I hope to engage with you more than ever in 2013.

Blogging Activity, Plus Leadership Skills & Professionalism

2012 marked a bit of a shift in my content creation direction. I've seen an uptick in struggles in the non-IT part of our career - communications, leadership, motivation, goal-keeping, all of those sort of things. I feel like I have some wisdom to contribute in that space. So, in addition to technical blog posts, I been putting down more of my experiences and lessons learned on the interpersonal side of the IT career path. My top ten blog posts for the year reflect some of that new direction:

Do You Have One of "the Three W’s" to Sit on a Board of Directors? -- Important tips for any IT pro considering a role in strategy and executive leadership.
Timewarp: What Is a Relational Database? -- With all the talk about NoSQL databases, let's go back to the fundamentals.
Want Another Reason to Hate iTunes? -- A throw-away article that precipitated a maelstrom of comments. Them Apple fanboys are passionate!
Why Do IT Pros Make Awful Managers? -- Not all IT pros make awful managers, but when they're awful it's often for similar reasons.
High-Availability White Papers and Resources for SQL Server -- Read the latest about AlwaysOn Availability Groups, and more.
New White Paper: SQL Server Extended Events and Notifications -- SQL Server 2012 great augments the Extended Events feature set. Find out how.
Build Your Own Microsoft Operations Management Pack -- Resources to build out your own SCOM management pack.
Help Me Update the History of SQL Server -- I started with SQL Server when it was still an OS/2 product. Jeesh! Lots of versions have come out since then.
TIE: Recorded Webcast Available: Extend SCOM to Optimize SQL Server Performance Management and The Expert's Conference (TEC) - For AD, SharePoint, Exchange, PowerShell and Other Admins -- Pointers to a webcast about extending SCOM and the TEC conference.
A Fond Farewell to Quest Software -- I learned so much in 10 years at Quest Software.

As I mentioned in the opening paragraph about blogging, I'm putting more energy into best practices for professional growth among IT pros. Along those lines of thought, I started a website called ForITPros.com with my long-time friend Joe Webb (Twitter | Blog) and, in partnership with SSWUG, developed a 2-DVD set and streaming media class called Leadership Skills for IT Professionals containing 14 hours of leadership and soft skills training specifically crafted for IT teams.

I've also been working with PASS on the Professional Development Virtual Chapter (VC), led by Mark Caldwell (Twitter). We've already got a full year of content schedule and are trying to figure out how fit in more sessions. Maybe moving to more than one webcast per month? The PASS Professional Development VC archive has lots of great content for you to review and future sessions are detailed at the PASS Professional Development VC homepage.

In-Person Activity

2012 was busy where I actually appeared in person or put in a big effort to write or create content. Here's a run-down: Articles (2), Conference Spoken (12), Customer Calls (88), Customer Visits (4), Magazine Columns (14) at SQLMag.com and DBTA.com, New Books (1) with Ross Mistry, PASS Chapter Presentations (12), Pre-cons/Full-day Seminars (4), SQL Saturdays (4), SSWUG Sessions (4), TechNet Radio Broadcasts (2), Technical Book Reviews (3), and Webcasts (10).

In 2013, I expect to travel a bit less. But I also expect to do many more webcasts. Let me know if you have some ideas about what you'd like to learn! One business trip that I refuse to give up, though, is SQLCruise. (Register!) I know it sounds like the worst possible way to learn. I mean who'd want to learn on a cruise ship in the Caribbean?!? (I hope you could detect the sarcasm dripping from those two sentences.) But here are two favorite aspects of of SQLCruise that are totally ferreals - 1) You simultaneously can relax and focus on learning. You are disconnected from the mainland. You don't have to worry about the mobile phone going off. 2) You get extended ours in a intimate setting with the top talent in the SQL Server world. It's always a pleasure to attend a conference session from the best in the industry. But you'll get hours of time to talk with these veterans of the industry about your specific problems and situations. It just doesn't get better than that.

Social Media

It's hard to believe that only a year ago, 2011, was my first year on Twitter. By years end, here's where my stats had moved: 5,507 tweets (up from 3,452 tweets), 661 following (up from 531), and 3,720 followers (up from 2,656) . I didn't check my social media numbers last year, so I've got no point of comparison. But I'm currently sitting at 2,327 LinkedIn connections and 1,157 Facebook friends. One of my standing policies on Facebook is that I don't "friend" someone who I haven't personally met. That doesn't help detangle the hopeless mess I've created by having only one identify on Facebook, both personal and public. So, on the one hand, I owe all of my longtime friends a big apology for all of the SQL talk and, on the other hand, a big apology to all of my professional friends for not posting enough news and advice while dilute my status updates with personal minutia. Oh well - it is what it is.

My blogging activity for 2012 was the lowest it's been in many years, down to 44 entries, down from 77 in 2011 and well into the hundreds in 2010. My answer to that sort of doldrums for 2013 is to get sloppy! And by that, I mean less of a perfectionist and more of a content machine that just cranks it out! Most of you, as my readers, have been very forgiving of a misplaced verb, a missing punctuation, or -heck- a totally malformed sentence that makes no sense at all. So I'm going to try much harder to churn through the 700+ nascent blog posts in my notes folder and get those ideas out there!

I hope to see you following me on Twitter soon! Thanks,

-Kevin

Do You Have One of "the Three W’s" to Sit on a Board of Directors?

KKline — Mon, 13 Aug 2012 17:28:00 GMT

Let’s get one thing clear right off the bat – I’m not typing “Board of Directors” repeatedly throughout this blog post. It’s just too much typing. BoD will have to do. Live with it.

Perhaps, you’ve been paying attention to the PASS Twitter feed, read the newsletters, or otherwise stay abreast of happenings within PASS. If you haven’t, here’s a news alert – it’s time for a new round of the PASS leadership cycle. And since this is the season of PASS nominations, I thought it’d be an appropriate time to share some of my lessons learned about effective BoDs.

Having spent over a decade sitting on various BoD’s, I can testify that the most effective directors are those that bring at least one of the three W’s to the table. (I learned the three W's from a former executive director of PASS, Jon Lindberg). Note that the three W’s are not characteristics or traits. They are behaviors, that is, observable sets of activities. The keywords in the previous sentence are observable and activities. You might have every intention in the world of doing the three W's. But if other people on the BoD cannot observe that you are performing the actions, they don't exist. The three W behaviors are Wealth, Work, and Wisdom. They’re major behaviors in my leadership ethos, called servant leadership. (I’ll talk about servant leadership in another post at some time).

Let’s talk about the three W’s in detail:

Wealth

This is simple and direct. Some directors come to the boardroom with a checkbook and they’re willing to use it to further the goals of the organization. Because they fund strategic initiatives of the organization in cash or in-kind, they literally change the reality for the organization. Directors with this W remove barriers and constraints that would otherwise end many discussions and initiatives before they got off the ground due to lack of resources.

However, directors with wealth are usually their as a part of their job. In other words, their employer has a strategic reason for supporting the success of the organization. Therefore, directors with wealth often seek to ensure that the organization is tracking against certain high-level goals that coincide with the goals of their employer. This is not to say that such directors have ulterior motives. They are typically very ethical and insightful members of a given BoD. But this perspective also means that a director with wealth may be interested in activities or metrics which other directors have considered. After all, if you were to pony up big dollars for a new initiative on your child’s soccer team (say, new training equipment) you’d also want to ensure that money was spent to greatest effect.

Note that wealth doesn’t always mean cash. It can mean many other things - your presence is a form of value. (Many times, directors come to BoD meetings and proceed to work on their email. That's a major breach of sharing your wealth of knowledge). Here’s a more concrete example. Back in the early 2000’s, around 2003, PASS received a significant amount of in-kind support from Compaq Corporation at the encouragement of then Microsoft liaison and board member Ryan Trout. (In-kind support, by the way, is support that has a cash value, but is an action or activity offered instead of actual cash). In effect, Compaq conducted a major direct mail campaign to their sizeable SQL Server user base to help drive attendance at the PASS Summit and to encourage interest in both the international organization and local user groups. This contribution marked a major turning point for PASS both in terms of high-level vendor support and in visibility to the SQL Server user community.

Axiom: The golden rule, for directors with wealth, is “he who has the gold makes the rules” with all the positive and negative connotations that holds.

Work

There’s no getting around the fact that the directors who are most willing to invest personal time and energy are the most effective. (And I mean the term “effective” in the most literal sense of “having a measurable effect on the enterprise”). In a typical strategically-oriented board, the extent of work is usually to remain current on all important reading material, to strive to be aware of shareholder issues and concerns, and to formulate opinions on important strategies for the organization to consider or implement as a form of guidance for the CEO and COO.

In a portfolio-oriented board, such as the structure used by PASS and many other large IT professional associations (including most of the other major database BoD’s such as IOUG, IDUG, ISUG, ITUG, and Share), directors not only have the burden of the strategic director, but also act as the head of a specific function of the organization. For example, in a portfolio-oriented BoD, a single director might be responsible for growing and guiding the local chapters of the association (the Chapter Portfolio), another might be responsible for driving value back to members (the Membership Portfolio), a third might be responsible for the selection and implementation of the content delivered at major events (the Program Portfolio), and so on. There is no doubt that some directors are much more effective than others at managing a portfolio and leading a group of volunteers within that portfolio.

While a full discussion of the best practices that make some directors really effective at this second W could fill a couple additional posts, I’ll put a few quick hallmarks here in case you’re curious:

Priorities

Smart directors set their sights on a very short list of goals that follow the SMART standard. And by “short list”, I mean a list with no more than three goals. The goals are achievable and, usually, not terribly expensive nor complex to implement. If one of their top goals turns out to be much more expensive or complex to get rolling, then they move on to their next most important goal that is easily achievable.

Axiom: It is better to make small, measurable gains than to set big goals that never get accomplished.

Alignment

Smart directors make sure that the goals they’re working to achieve complement the overall strategy of the organization. This alignment provides a strong incentive for other members of the BoD to back their proposals and to act as allies in the event that a board vote is needed to settle the way resources will be directed or whether a proposed goal is accepted by the board as a new policy or program. Alignment of goals with the top-level strategy of the organization also means that successor directors will have a much easier time continuing where the original board member left off because the work simply makes sense. Plus, when a director’s goals seem unusual or very different than other goals of the organization, organizational resistance is sure to come in to play.

Axiom: Unless there’s an emergency, it is better to couch visionary change within the overall strategy of the organization than it is to introduce changes that represent a major shift in long-standing culture, priorities, or processes.

Focus

Directors who have a short list of goals are also much more successful when they devote their energies to …, oh wait a sec, gotta check email. Just kidding. But I hope you get the idea.

I’ve seen a lot of brilliant individual directors who, upon prioritizing their work, spent enormous amounts of time and energy working on other people’s problems, working on their own issues at the wrong level, or talking about an issue way after its major parameters have been decided. I’m not saying stop helping others or stop discussions. But I am saying that a portfolio director must remember that the success of their team is their success. Many IT professionals are used to being individual contributors and so they feel that if they’re busy and working hard, it must be good, right? No. If the director isn’t working to achieve the goals of their portfolio, they’re basically not working at all. Here are some common traps that damage focus:

A common way IT pros on a BoD lose their focus is to get into the details of a new program or process. For example, say that PASS wanted to introduce a cool new feature on their website. An unfocused director would immediately begin to start designing the system in their mind – “We’ll use Active Directory to authenticate new users and then they’ll connect to the services using that cool REST-ful technology I’ve wanted to try. And maybe we could use SSIS packages to…” You get the picture. The BoD hasn't even fully fleshed out the business plan for the new program and yet this director is off and running after the specific technological solution to the problem. The problem that is not yet fully mapped out and understood. Remember, directors are supposed to assess and manage the business value of any given process or new organization program, not sling code. By focusing on the intimate details of the technology first, the director short-changes the business value of the initiative. It's like the programmer who starts writing code before any requirements are understood or documented. I’ve seen directors invest huge amounts of time into initiative which, in the broad analysis, were only half-baked and not worth pursuing. The focus must for a director, first and foremost, be about business value. (As a side-bar to this line of thought, many directors are the only person who can make certain important decisions. If that person is encumbered with relatively routine but demanding work, they actually shortchange the organization of their true value. If the VP of Finance is spending a lot of time working on a technology problem, they're not just working on technology - they're also NOT WORKING on financial matters).

Another common mistake that IT pros make when managing a portfolio is failing at delegation. IT pros, as I mentioned earlier, are usually most successful when they’re a strong individual contributor. They’re used to being judged on their own technical skill. They’re not used to being judged on the success of a team. Consequently, inexperienced directors frequently under-delegate and/or under-communicate which leaves volunteers feeling unwanted and unimportant. In the same vein, directors may act rudely to their committee members or other volunteers, or may simply treat them like employees –definitely not the way to treat a volunteer. This behavior is like torching your own support network. Volunteers can quickly become demoralized, or even quit, when they feel unproductive or unwanted.

Axiom: As a smart director of a portfolio, it is better to focus on business outcomes and the success of the team than it is to perform the detailed work yourself.

Wisdom

Dictionary.com tells me that wisdom is “knowledge of what is true or right coupled with just judgment as to action”. Money cannot buy wisdom. It can only be earned through many years of manifold experiences. Some young people are wise and insightful, but frankly it’s usually the grey-headed types who’ve usually lived through enough dumb decisions to recognize when a pattern in a social situation or set of human behaviors is being repeated. A great example of wisdom on the PASS board comes from the two CA representatives who sit on the board, Neil Buchwalter and Rick Bolesta. In addition to serving on the PASS board for perhaps longer than any other sitting board member, they’ve also both sat on other boards before and concurrently with the PASS board. Their stability, deep history, and analysis of the interplay between people (or groups of people) are extremely important to the successful workings of the board.

You might thing, based on what I’ve said described about wisdom, that a wise director is prone to pontificate and engage in long-winded discourse. Nothing could be further from the truth in my experience. The typical wise director tends to be brief, interjecting comments and thoughts of great weight and importance. What they say is usually worth careful consideration. Conversely, directors who spend a lot of time talking are often the least worth listening to. Many long-winded directors often use discussion to figure out what it is they really think about a given situation. Wise directors already know what they think and, when the speak, produce fully formed thoughts and arguments in a given situation.

In some cases, a BoD can help build institutional wisdom through diversity. As I mentioned earlier, wisdom is earned through experiences (usually bad experiences). When the members of a governing body like a BoD are young and/or inexperienced, they can supplement their breadth of experiences by selecting members of a variety of background, ethnicities, nationalities, ideologies, orientation, etc. This broaden of perspective raises the quality of dialog, helps identify problems and issues in policy discussion, and helps to foresee major obstacles on the horizon.

Axiom: Wisdom and insight are crucial in building a base of institutional knowledge, context for key decisions, and insight into the highest-probability for success in socially complex situations.

If you’re involved in a governing body of some kind or are considering volunteering with PASS (or any other BoD for a professional association), do a little introspection. Do you possess one or more of the three W’s? Or do you have big dreams or a burning ember of ambition? What do you need to learn to equip yourself with one of the W’s?

Let me know what you think!

-Kevin

The Next Chapter: Inspiring and Motivating

KKline — Mon, 16 Jul 2012 14:41:00 GMT

I’d like to start this post first by thanking everyone who sent well wishes, both public and private, about my decision to move on from Quest Software. It was very uplifting and encouraging to hear from you!

So, again, the question of “Where am I off to?” The answer is SQL Sentry. I’m joining them as Director of Engineering Services, with a focus on technical sales and marketing, as well as a heavy dose of R&D design work. (Read the press release here).

In case you haven’t encountered SQL Sentry before, they’re a small Southern company concentrating on the SQL Server market. In anticipation of questions about why I might chose to work at SQL Sentry, I can sum it up in a word: potential.

SQL Sentry is loved by their customers. Their products are strong. Their R&D team is exceptionally talented, achieving master-level knowledge of SQL Server itself. Their internal processes are agile and direct. Their strategies, priorities, and ethics are a direct match with my own. That special, magical alchemy of great technology, inspired customers, and enthusiastic culture is exceedingly rare. And the potential for new achievements is, in my mind, unmatched elsewhere in the industry.

Let’s (specifically, let US, not just me) move the ball forward…

The most effective technology evangelists not only paint a picture of how new technologies can improve the lives of their audience, they literally inspire their audiences to act on that vision. (Sidebar: Would you like to see more blog posts and proscriptive guidance on how to be a technology evangelist, either internally-facing or external? I’ve not really seen much content on that topic.)

SQL Sentry has empowered me to spread a simple message - that there are no IT projects; instead there are business projects which use IT to accomplish their goals. That means you’ll still be seeing me in all the familiar venues – conferences, blogs, magazine columns, and such. That means I’ll also be serving as your technology evangelist back into SQL Sentry around our internal R&D efforts!

I’ll be working hard to spread the word, not only about SQL Sentry, but also about SQL Server and the awesome community we have built around SQL Server. Make no mistake – the SQL Server community didn’t happen by accident. It was built up over years through conscious choice and repeated action of people like you. And today, I want to encourage you to renew your mind and spirit. Don’t just shuffle through the day. Continue to add to our community. Continue to make it better.

Wondering where to start? Here’s the easiest thing in the world to do to start making our community better. I ask you to commit to responding with a comment to those posts that you’ve enjoyed. Just try it for one week. Even if all you have to say was “I enjoyed that” or “You gave me food for thought” or “Here’s how I felt about what you said”. If you don’t feel like you’ve added value after your week long trial, then stop. But I think you’ll find it such a positive experience that you keep going. We’re social creatures. Sharing makes us feel better and be better. To reiterate, communication is not a one-way street. Only by providing your input can we elevate that most pedestrian form of communication, messaging, into the infinitely better form of communication called dialog.

Let’s start that dialog today!

Again, thanks so much for your support and encouragement. Best regards,

-Kevin

-Follow me on Twitter!

A Fond Farewell to Quest Software

KKline — Wed, 11 Jul 2012 23:01:00 GMT

The week of the 4^th of July is a happy week for Americans. Most families get out for a parade, a fireworks display, a picnic in the park, a movie where Will Smith puts the beat down on a bunch of aliens, or an afternoon at the pool or lake. We celebrate the contributions of our service men and women. We honor veterans. We drink a lot of beer. We reflect on the founding of our nation and the meaning of “Independence Day”.

My own reflections over the Independence Day holiday took me in a new and rather unexpected direction. After ten-and-a-half immensely rewarding years at Quest Software, I have decided to seek new opportunities.

Today, I wanted to publicly reflect on my time at Quest Software, saving my next blog post for some thoughts about my new endeavors. I could probably write a short novel about all of the great experiences and learning opportunities I had over the last ten years. Part of the reason it might make a good novel is because my memory is notoriously weak and my creativity is equally strong. I might just make up details to fill in the fuzzy recollections. Just sayin'... But just to give you a taste, here’s a brief timeline of my ten years at Quest, highlighting some of my favorite experiences:

I joined Quest on January 2^nd of 2002 as Senior Product Architect to design the tools that would become Quest’s first foray into the SQL Server database market. Quest dominated the Oracle tools market but was at square one for tools in the SQL Server space. I’m grateful to Eyal Aronoff, CTO in those days, and Guy Harrison (blog | twitter), current leader of the Melbourne office, for mentoring me through the near-comically hard process of designing and building software products that can sell. Dax French, then product manager, taught me about the concept of salability. Oh, it’s easy to put requirements down on paper. But that’s about as close to a finished and sellable product as a laptop is to an abacus. I also learned a whole heck of a lot about software development from Patrick O'Keeffe, and about corporate politics in a worldwide development organization, especially from Julie Ackerman, then VP of Operations.
In late 2003, I became the Director of Technology for the SQL Server Solutions Group. (Yeah! We had a team name and a few products!) Hiring your own team is a dream for many leaders in IT. And I have to say with more than a little pride that the organization we built included the most intelligent, energized, and fun people I’ve ever known. Being empowered to hire a team, set goals, and deliver on them was a fantastic, though demanding experience. . I’m thankful to the team for their incredibly hard work and unsinkable ethics: John Theron, Johnny Ortez, Lee Grisson, Joe Motley, Hassan Fahimi, Israel Kalush, and so many others. I’m grateful that my more experienced peers on the other major dev teams, Rony Lerner and Steve Rosenberg, enthusiastically taught me how to answer the needs of both a sales-driven corporation and a deadline-driven engineering process.
Throughout this time, I experienced the full support of Quest’s executive leadership as a Microsoft MVP and, even more so, as a founder and eventual president of PASS. I can’t emphasize enough what a big deal this was. The leadership of PASS was an incredibly difficult workload to support, basically equivalent to a second full-time job, and also a difficult period in my life personally. I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to fully thank the top leadership of Quest for allowing me, around 2006, to move some of those PASS hours into my day job at Quest. I literally could NOT have served two terms as president of PASS without this level of support. Yeah! Now I was back down to an acceptable number of hours per week, including the time spent on PASS, blogging, etc with my day job.
In 2005, I again ventured into new territory and new experiences. I never in my wildest dreams anticipated that I’d someday learn about and actually work on M&A deals. I knew Quest did some M&A from our acquisition of Leccotech, bringing in the outstandingly talented Claudia Fernandez and Darren Mallette, among many others, and FastLane, where I learned a lot from David Waugh. But that’s exactly what happened when Quest finally acted on my advice to acquired Imceda, where I got to meet and work with the likes of Douglas Chrystall (twitter), Jason Hall (twitter), and David Gugick (twitter). During this time, I learned an amazing amount about executive leadership from some of the very best in the IT industry – Vinny Smith, Doug Garn, Charles Ramsey, Steve Dickson and John Newsome. I think they’d probably laugh to hear me say this, but I have confess that I was at the level of “barely able to hold my fudge” intimidation whenever I breathed the same air as these guys. But I also watched them closely, tried to absorb their wisdom, and emulate their behaviors that engendered the success of the company.
2006 marked another new adventure for me at Quest because, for the first time, I began to work more heavily on technology evangelism than on product development. We now had several products which needed more attention and focus on campaign-driven marketing efforts. Billy Bosworth joined as our new VP and General Manager. Christian Hasker (twitter) joined as our new Director for Product Marketing, while Heather Eichmann and Andy Grant joined the effort. This team rocked! We became a team of thought leaders that influenced the way the rest of the company did business. I learned an enormous amount from these folks about advertising, marketing, technology evangelism, and community building. I could easily write a book with anecdotes and lessons on how to be an effective technology evangelist. Charles Ramsey, president of Quest during those days, bestowed the title of “Technical Strategy Manager” upon me due to all of the time I was spending on a wide cross-section of activities for sales, marketing, R&D, as well as interfacing with Microsoft’s SQL Server team, to name a few, Paul Randal (blog | twitter), Kevin Farlee, Gert Drapers (blog), Joe Yong, Bob Ward (twitter), the late Ken Henderson, Jimmy May (blog | twitter), Mark Souza (twitter) and the Jedi of SQLCAT, and many others.
I still remember fondly how a friend had forwarded a “tweet” from a certain Brent Ozar (blog | twitter) about him being excited to sit in my session at the PASS Summit in late 2007. My first thought was “What the heck is a tweet?!?” My second thought was "I should meet this guy!" Before long, though, I was working with Brent in his new role as our full-time technology evangelist whence I moved to Pre-Sales to work more directly with large customers and key accounts - and where I have been ever since (until now). During that time I learned how to give a really good product demo from Jason Hall, David Swanson, and Ari Weil (If you don’t already know how to give a good product demo, check out http://www.secondderivative.com/ and buy their book post-haste). It was also very education to learn from great Pre-Sales leaders like John Milburn and Robb Dunewood. I also learned a whole lot about the awesomeness of Camtasia – which you should buy right now if you ever do recorded presentations. Brent stayed with us for a couple years, teaching me an enormous amount about social media and, although I’d been blogging since 2004, a whole lot about how to be a better blogger. Someday, I hope to actually apply what I learned from Brent.

From that early team, we built a culture of trust with our customers, attempting at every turn to add value to what we built. And it shows. Our products have won a multitude of awards and plaudits. I’ve seen a host of product launches and major new releases. I cannot take nor deserve the credit for these great tools. I was merely a very small part of the team that brought them to life.

I’m so very proud of the full-stack monitoring and alerting in Spotlight, of the unmatched analytics in Foglight Performance Analysis, of the raw value of LiteSpeed. I’m also very proud of the evolution of Toad, from a small and practical aggregation of utilities, into a full suite for developers, data modelers, and data analysts. Add in the unique scalability testing features of Benchmark Factory and I can say without any apology that we built the definitive and comprehensive platform of tools for the database professional.

Working deep in technology has always been interesting and exciting. But my favorite part of the job has always been interacting with customers and partners. It’s an uplifting experience to share the ways in which the Quest tools empower customers to do things they’ve never been able to do before and to make their jobs and their lives better. Meeting our clients on four continents over the course of thousands of presentations and meetings has been a top highlight of my career. Whenever I interact with customers, I want the focus to be on mutual learning. Customers teach me as much as I’ve ever taught them.

As time advanced, though, I gained insight into why some periods at Quest were more enjoyable than others. The laser-sighted focus of our early, smaller organization was a definitely highlight. The rhythm of business travel also picked up dramatically in recent years, with a commensurate decline in my overall health and wellbeing. Clearly, I needed a change.

You might be asking “If it was so good, why are you changing things?” Well, I’m not leaving because of a negative of some kind. I can assure you that it is not because I’ve had some kind of personality conflict, disagreement over strategy, or that I’m otherwise unhappy with Quest. Quite the opposite, I’m leaving because I’ve been offered an new opportunity that is both very exciting and enormously reinvigorating.

To all of you that I’ve already mentioned mentioned by name, and to the multitude more whose name I wasn't able to record above, I owe a debt of gratitude. I wish you not goodbye, but the fondest of farewell.

Farewell is also in order because to you, my readers because, well, you’ll still be seeing me in all the old familiar places. So where am I off to? Tune in next Monday for that bit of news.

Until then. Enjoy!

-Kev

-Follow me on Twitter

ITPro, Re-architect Your Life

KKline — Thu, 12 Apr 2012 14:21:00 GMT

Have you ever found yourself wanting to make a major shift - in skills, in roles, in relationships? One of my good friends, Jimmy May (Blog | Twitter), accomplished a set of major career and lifestyle revisions including relocating to Redmond, taking on a huge new level of job responsibility as part of the Microsoft SQL Customer Advisory Team, and achieving the noted accreditation of Microsoft Certified Master.

Jimmy and I were chatting about undertaking major life changes like these and, as is often the case, his thoughts were too good not to share. Be sure to explore these excellent career development resources. So here were some great pointers from Jimmy:

I’ve referred you before to J.D. Meier. Incredibly powerful guy. Here are some brief yet powerful posts:
What’s the Challenge?
http://sourcesofinsight.com/2011/06/24/whats-the-challenge
101 Ways to Motivate Yourself and Others
http://sourcesofinsight.com/101-ways-to-motivate-yourself-and-others/

Want more?
30 Days of Getting Results
http://sourcesofinsight.com/30-days-of-getting-results
Take a Tour of Sources of Insight
http://sourcesofinsight.com/2011/06/21/take-a-tour-of-sources-of-insight
Still not enough? Here are his three blogs:
www.sourcesofinsight.com
www.gettingresults.com
http://blogs.msdn.com/jmeier

Let me know what other resources you enjoy for professional and career development!

And if you're really interested in developing your IT leadership and management skills, I encourage you to attend my Leadership Skills for IT Professionals seminar. I'm presenting this full-day seminar in Dallas at the SQLRally on May 8, and in Louisville at SQL Saturday 122 on June 19. Hope to see you there!

Thanks,

-Kev

-Follow me on Twitter at @KEKline

Blog Post #500 : 2011, a year in review

AaronBertrand — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 19:55:00 GMT

My favorite blog post

Picking favorites is never easy. While I definitely feel like I had some more thought-provoking, controversial and laborious blog posts, my favorite would have to be my summary of 18456 errors:

http://sqlblog.com/blogs/aaron_bertrand/archive/2011/01/14/sql-server-v-next-denali-additional-states-for-error-18456.aspx

When I initially wrote that post, it started as a quick listing of the new states introduced in SQL Server 2012 (involving contained databases). When I started testing various issues using both contained and non-contained databases, I quickly realized that there isn't really a comprehensive resource out there that lists the various states and helps decipher the root of the problem. There also isn't a lot of help about a more fundamental point: the error message that's relayed to the end user or application is intentionally vague. To find the real reason for the permissions issue, you need to look at the SQL Server error log.

In a more general sense, I am proud to have started getting serious again about the Connect digests. Even though most issues are way too late to consider for SQL Server 2012, I still think there is a lot of value in voting for items you think are important or worthwhile. There is even more value in expressing your business case for the change or fix - how specifically will your organization make better use of SQL Server, or in fact be able to justify a migration or an upgrade, if the issue in the Connect item is resolved?

My most popular blog post

By a wide margin, my most popular post in 2011 was actually a post I wrote in 2010. The purpose was to both express and prevent frustration in the removal of evaluation editions of SQL Server:

Fun with Software : uninstalling SQL Server 2008 R2 Evaluation Edition

This process is unnecessarily complex, particularly if the expiration date has already passed. And since there's no straightforward or documented way to determine when an evaluation edition will expire, this is kind of a double-whammy for some folks. I have two related Connect items I'd like to point out:

#257649 : Make expiration date of eval edition more visible

Written in February of 2007, I expressed the fact that we have to use all kinds of cumbersome workarounds to determine when an evaluation edition installation will expire. My favorite is one that I learned of a lot more recently: check the earliest create date in sys.logins. But it is an ugly hack not unlike checking create_date of tempdb in sys.databases to determine system uptime. They've exposed this value in DMVs in the meantime; why not store the expiration date somewhere easily accessible?
#329054 : Setup : Please provide a utility that removes an instance

The steps you have to go through sometimes to remove an instance of SQL Server are infuriating. In this connect item, filed in February of 2008, Microsoft initially responded that they were going to create a utility for cleaning up instances. Then they closed it as a duplicate. Then they closed it as "done." Then I re-opened it after discovering that the utility was not in the plans. Then it was closed as fixed again. Then I re-opened it. Then they explained that the utility would not be produced, but a KB article would be published instead. Three months later, they advised it was in edit. Four more months later, I inquired about the status of the KB article. They waited a few days and then explained that, like the utility, the KB article that they promised also wouldn't be published. Since they still haven't fixed a lot of the issues with removal of an instance, I guess they'd rather see folks wipe and pave a machine than take the risk of using MSIZAP and/or following my instructions in the blog post above. This is an embarrassing demonstration of how Connect fails (now, there are many examples out there of how Connect succeeds, so don't take this as an overall summary).

While I'm glad that I continue to help people get out of this sticky situation, and it's nice that so many express their appreciation, I do sincerely hope that Microsoft considers fixing this issue. Adding your votes and, more importantly, your comments, to the above issues will help show Microsoft that they should make these usability concerns a priority for the release after SQL Server 2012.

My Travels

I had some great travel experiences last year. For work, I went to England twice (I spoke at both SQL Bits 8 in Brighton, and SQL Bits 9 in Liverpool), spoke at the SQL Rally Nordic event in Sweden and on the SQL Cruise to Alaska, and spoke for the first time at the PASS Summit in Seattle. I also spoke at countless SQL Saturdays, a handful of user group meetings, and visited our offices in Charlotte multiple times. I also got to enjoy Negril, Jamaica, with my wife, for our 1st anniversary - we went to the same resort where we were married on 10/10/10. We also went to Canada multiple times. This year I have even more travel planned - next week I embark on SQL Cruise Caribbean, then in February I'll be taking a trip to Quebec City and attending the MVP Summit in Seattle. In March I'll be hosting a curling bonspiel up near North Bay, speaking at SQL Saturday #105 in Ireland, and speaking again at SQL Server Connections in Vegas (another first for me). In April, Nicole's sister is getting married on the Mayan Riviera. Sound like a busy four months? Yeah, I thought so too.

My Goals

At the end of 2010, I wrote a goals post for 2011. I did not meet all of them for various reasons, but rather than dwell on my failures (I'll be doing that quite enough on my own, thanks!), I'll treat a couple of successes:

I certainly met my speaking goals. I gave 20 presentations across 14 different events in 3.5 different countries (including a couple from my house). The .5 is Canada, since I believe I gave my SQL Cruise Alaska talk while we were floating west of Vancouver Island.
I definitely had lulls in my blogging, but am happy with my overall results here. I also met my goal of personal blogging - I abandoned aaronbertrand.com three years ago, but started a new blog for topics non-SQL over at bertrandaaron.wordpress.com.
I wanted to attend more sporting events. I think we did that - went to some Bruins games, and lots of Merrimack basketball and hockey games. This year we've already been to a Patriots' playoff game and have tickets to see the Bruins beat up on the Penguins in April.

I have plenty of items on my goals list for 2012, but not in a state to share just yet.

New on "Database Trends & Applications"

KKline — Tue, 16 Aug 2011 19:37:00 GMT

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 ]

SQL People Interview

KKline — Thu, 28 Apr 2011 13:35:00 GMT

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

Leadership, Management, and SQLRally

KKline — Mon, 25 Apr 2011 14:55:00 GMT

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 after hours entertainment options, giving you a chance to pipe up with your opinion if you had one.

Learn from My Mistakes

Times running out for the early registration discount. Save $50 by registering before the end of the week! 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:

Earning the respect of your team
A deep understand of effectively motivating technology professionals
Specific skills to lead database professionals competently that broadly fall into the categories of:
- Coaching team members to effectively meet goals and deadlines
- Facilitating change and navigating organizational disruptions
- Promoting communication within the team and with management
- Keeping teams and projects on task and within scope
- Dealing with difficult team members
- Practicing good team time management techniques

Read all about the goals of the session here. If you're coming to my session, I'd love to hear your thoughts ahead of time about challenges you're facing!

Personal Experience, Personnel Experience

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 Center for Creative Leadership's leadership training curriculum, the Blessing and White Management Training 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 Quest Software 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.

A Few Words About Community from SQLBits8

The more I go, the more reasons I find to go back to the SQLBits 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 Twitter at kekline More content at http://KevinEKline.com

Goals for 2011

AaronBertrand — Thu, 30 Dec 2010 20:48:00 GMT

I was tagged by Denis Gobo (blog | twitter) in a Review of his 2010 Goals. I didn't make such a post last year at this time, so I had nothing to check against. But that doesn't mean I can't start with my goals for the coming year, right? A few areas come to mind:

Speaking More

I have set a challenge for myself to speak at 10 events this year. So far I have submitted sessions to the following, or plan to do so when I can; at least one is already confirmed:

SQL Saturday #60 (Cleveland, OH, February 5)
SQL Saturday #65 (Vancouver, BC, February 26)
SQL Saturday #67 (Chicago, IL, March 26)
SQL Saturday #71 (Boston, MA, April 2)
SQL Bits #8 (Brighton, UK, April 7-9)
SQL Rally (Orlando, FL, May 11-13)
PASS Europe (Berlin, Germany, ???)
PASS North America (Seattle, WA, Oct 11-14)
SQL Connections - Fall (Las Vegas, NV, ???)

Blogging About the Same, Give or Take

I plan to continue blogging here at sqlblog.com as frequently as I have over the latter half of 2010 (I was pretty busy and stressed for the first several months). I am going to try to maintain a better average than I did in 2010 (~10 blog posts per month). I'd like to do more personal blogging, but there are only so many hours in the day, and only so many of you willing to tolerate missives about my own life - so I'm not going to set any false hope there. I also plan to keep up my submission pace of 2 tips per month to mssqltips.com.

Reading More

I need to read more. I just started reading a Christmas gift, The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein. As an avid dog lover, I am sure this is going to be an emotional roller coaster I am not prepared for; hopefully reading more will raise my tolerance over time. I think I should get a kindle or a nook though, as I'm horrible at keeping my page...

Walking the Dogs More

I'm one of those lazy people with a fence - so instead of walking my beagles multiple times a day, I just open a sliding glass door and let 'em rip. The problem is this isn't enough exercise for them or for me - I need to get them out more. I'm not talking about the obligatory walks around the block, though I need to do more of those, too. I'm talking about the day trips where we go hiking in the woods. We went on several hiking trips over the last few years but we very rarely bring them. I think we can try for a better record this year.

Attending More Sporting Events

Since Nicole and I both love hockey and football, I'd like to make it to more live games. Last year we went to the Winter Classic at Fenway, the Olympics in Vancouver, and the playoff game that New England lost within a few minutes of the first quarter. So it will be a tough year to beat. We won't make it to Winter Classic, and I reneged on a 10-pack of Bruins tickets - including games against the Leafs and Habs. But we are going to a World Junior medal round game next week - we have no idea who will be playing, but I've always wanted to go to the World Juniors, and have always made excuses. So we're off to a good start this year.

Preparing for the MCM

I don't think I'm going to go for it this year, but I would eventually like to go for this certification, even if it means I first have to obtain some of the other certifications that I don't value all that highly. That means I've got some non-fiction reading to do, too. I know what I know, and for the most part I know what I don't know, but as they say, the proof is in the pudding (or I guess, as Bill Cosby would say, the proof is in the pudding pop).

Working Smarter

As you may have read back in October, I shifted gears in my career and took a new and radically different position with SQL Sentry. I want to continue helping them strive to be the best SQL Server software vendor, period. In November, our Performance Advisor software won the Best of Show at SQL Connections; we also released a free tool for the SQL Server community called Plan Explorer, which goes above and beyond Management Studio (and any other alternatives) in helping analyze execution plans and determine the source of performance issues. We have an imminent new release of Performance Advisor with plenty of enhancements and new features, several projects on the go that will help solidify our spot in the 3rd party vendor landscape, and I have some ideas for shaking things up a bit more in 2011 and beyond - so stay tuned!

Keeping in Better Touch

Yesterday I went to lunch with a friend from Nipissing University who now lives in Sundridge, Ontario. I couldn't believe that it had been several years since we had seen each other in person. I need to be better about keeping in touch with all of the people in my life, past and present. I have a few people who I think about a lot, but unfortunately it doesn't get much further than that and an annual Christmas card. While I will be traveling a lot more in 2011, I do hope to make more out of both my trips to Canada and my spare time at home.

A lot of these goals are hard to quantify, and if there's anything I learned in my previous job, it's that managers really love to have goals that are measurable. In this case I'm just going to have to use these points as a rough guideline over the next year, but hopefully I will end 2011 feeling very good about the goals I set and the success I had in reaching them.