Search results matching tags 'Professional Development' and 'community'

Why I present

rob_farley — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 00:09:13 GMT

Louis Davidson just asked me why I write, and now Bob Pusateri (@sqlbob) is asking me why I present, which is his question for this month’s T-SQL Tuesday.

If you didn’t follow the link to see his actual question, you’ll need to know that he actually posed the question “How did you come to love presenting?”

Well, sometimes I don’t, but on the whole, I have to admit that presenting is part of who I am, and I miss it if I’m not presenting. It’s why despite being a PASS board member (that link will only seem relevant if you’re reading this while I’m still one) and having plenty of reason to NOT present at the PASS Summit in 2013, I’ve submitted the maximum number of abstracts for consideration. It’s why I want to be teaching more, both online and in the classroom, and so on.

It’s not that I think I have anything important to say (although I do only ever teach / present on things that I think are important).

It’s not that I think I’m good at presenting (my feedback scores beg to differ).

It’s not that I’m comfortable presenting (I still get ridiculously nervous most of the time).

I’m just addicted to it.

It’s a drug – it really is.

I spend my time walking around the room, or around the stage, explaining things to people, watching for those moments when the audience gets it, and... well, I’m addicted to it.

If you watch http://www.sqlbits.com/Sessions/Event5/Designing_for_simplification, you’ll see a few things. I was in Wales, and had started with the few words in Welsh that I know (but that’s been edited out – hopefully when I thought I was saying ‘hello’ I wasn’t actually insulting anyone). I nearly fell off the stage. I broke the microphone. I typed some things wrong in my queries. People complained that I didn’t say anything significant…

But around 33:10 in, you hear the audience almost start clapping. IN THE UK (where people don’t clap for presentations). It’s a moment where people see something they weren’t expecting, and (hopefully) realise the potential in what they’ve heard.

Phil Nolan wrote nicely about me on his blog, and said “Those of you who know Rob Farley will know he’s a funny guy with an enormous armoury of shockingly bad jokes.” More importantly though, he wrote “His design tips challenged a number of our ideas and meant I took away many valuable techniques,” which helped me know why I present.

…because it’s not about me, it’s about you. I present because at least one of the people in the audience will benefit from it. And that’s addictive.

@rob_farley

Summit reflections

rob_farley — Tue, 13 Nov 2012 06:05:07 GMT

So far, my three PASS Summit experiences have been notably different to each other.

My first, I wasn’t on the board and I gave two regular sessions and a Lightning Talk in which I told jokes.

My second, I was a board advisor, and I delivered a precon, a spotlight and a Lightning Talk in which I sang.

My third (last week), I was a full board director, and I didn’t present at all.

Let’s not talk about next year. I’m not sure there are many options left.

This year, I noticed that a lot more people recognised me and said hello. I guess that’s potentially because of the singing last year, but could also be because board elections can bring a fair bit of attention, and because of the effort I’ve put in through things like 24HOP... Yeah, ok. It’d be the singing.

My approach was very different though. I was watching things through different eyes. I looked for the things that seemed to be working and the things that didn’t. I had staff there again, and was curious to know how their things were working out. I knew a lot more about what was going on behind the scenes to make various things happen, and although very little about the Summit was actually my responsibility (based on not having that portfolio), my perspective had moved considerably.

Before the Summit started, Board Members had been given notebooks – an idea Tom (who heads up PASS’ marketing) had come up with after being inspired by seeing Bill walk around with a notebook. The plan was to take notes about feedback we got from people. It was a good thing, and the notebook forms a nice pair with the SQLBits one I got a couple of years ago when I last spoke there. I think one of the biggest impacts of this was that during the first keynote, Bill told everyone present about the notebooks. This set a tone of “we’re listening”, and a number of people were definitely keen to tell us things that would cause us to pull out our notebooks.

PASSTV was a new thing this year. Justin, the host, featured on the couch and talked a lot of people about a lot of things, including me (he talked to me about a lot of things, I don’t think he talked to a lot people about me). Reaching people through online methods is something which interests me a lot – it has huge potential, and I love the idea of being able to broadcast to people who are unable to attend in person. I’m keen to see how this medium can be developed over time.

People who know me will know that I’m a keen advocate of certification – I've been SQL certified since version 6.5, and have even been involved in creating exams. However, I don’t believe in studying for exams. I think training is worthwhile for learning new skills, but the goal should be on learning those skills, not on passing an exam. Exams should be for proving that the skills are there, not a goal in themselves. The PASS Summit is an excellent place to take exams though, and with an attitude of professional development throughout the event, why not?

So I did. I wasn’t expecting to take one, but I was persuaded and took the MCM Knowledge Exam. I hadn’t even looked at the syllabus, but tried it anyway. I was very tired, and even fell asleep at one point during it. I’ll find out my result at some point in the future – the Prometric site just says “Tested” at the moment. As I said, it wasn’t something I was expecting to do, but it was good to have something unexpected during the week.

Of course it was good to catch up with old friends and make new ones. I feel like every time I’m in the US I see things develop a bit more, with more and more people knowing who I am, who my staff are, and recognising the LobsterPot brand. I missed being a presenter, but I definitely enjoyed seeing many friends on the list of presenters. I won’t try to list them, because there are so many these days that people might feel sad if I don’t mention them. For those that I managed to see, I was pleased to see that the majority of them have lifted their presentation skills since I last saw them, and I happily told them as much. One person who I will mention was Paul White, who travelled from New Zealand to his first PASS Summit. He gave two sessions (a regular session and a half-day), packed large rooms of people, and had everyone buzzing with enthusiasm. I spoke to him after the event, and he told me that his expectations were blown away. Paul isn’t normally a fan of crowds, and the thought of 4000 people would have been scary. But he told me he had no idea that people would welcome him so well, be so friendly and so down to earth. He’s seen the significance of the SQL Server community, and says he’ll be back.

It’ll be good to see him there. Will you be there too?

Want to Learn SQL Server 2012?

andyleonard — Mon, 22 Oct 2012 13:00:00 GMT

Or SSIS 2012? SSRS 2012? SSAS 2012? There’s no substitute for getting your hands on the product, in my opinion.

I can hear you thinking, “But Andy, I can’t afford to purchase a copy of SQL Server 2012.” Are you sure? What if I told you that you can get a full-feature version of SQL Server 2012 Enterprise Edition for $50? Well, you cannot… it’s actually less than $50! SQL Server 2012 Developer Edition is available at Amazon on the day of this writing for $41.24USD. That’s about the price of eight cups of fancy coffee.

SQL Server releases follow a cycle. SQL Server 2005 was a major release with big changes from SQL Server 2000. SQL Server 2008 and SQL Server 2008 R2 were not drastic departures from SQL Server 2005. Take it from me: SQL Server 2012 is a major release.

Is taking your career to the next level worth the price of eight cups of coffee?

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SQLPASS BoD Polls Close this Friday

RickHeiges — Wed, 10 Oct 2012 15:59:00 GMT

Research, Contemplate, Vote.

In case you didn't hear, there is a campaign going on that impacts the PASS Organization and the SQL Community. If you were a PASS member before June 1, 2012, you should have received a ballot link via email. Polls close at 3pm PT on Friday, Oct 12, 2012.

I am fortunate to know all 5 candidates for this year's election and count them among my friends. The problem that I have is that I only have 3 votes to cast. At this point, I have decided on 2 of my 3 votes. Since I have invested a lot into PASS over the years, this is not a decision that I take lightly. I have read through all of the campaign materials and kept reading replies to questions on the forums. There have been many well thought out responses and I have changed my mind several times. I will probably wait until Friday to cast my votes. However, this problem of mine means it is another sign of strength for PASS as these five brave individuals step up to the plate to lead the organization.

And the winner is.....

Polls close Oct 12, but the announcement won't occur until Oct 17. Why the delay? Aren't we in the age of instant answers? There are several reasons why there is a delay. The process isn't full-proof. I don't believe there has been an issue with the voting process, but I know that there is the possiblity of an error occurring which may force the polls to remain open. I can think of several instances in years past when submitting abstracts for sessions that caused the deadline to be extended there. That isn't the only reason. The candidates should be informed before anyone else knows so that they can prepare a blog post or whatever. This is usually done in a personal manner and it takes time to connect with each candidate - yes sometimes it takes days to connect.

Closing Thoughts

If you have already voted, you are safe - you didn't make any bad choices. :-) In the past, I have been able to predict who will win just by looking at the ballot. I have made my own prediction on who I think will win, but this is the toughest year yet. I am at least guaranteed of selecting at least one winner! Go Vote!

“Fabulous”

rob_farley — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 22:46:04 GMT

I don’t tend to find that anything about me gets described as “Fabulous”. It’s not a word I ever use myself, so I was slightly amused to see it here.

It’s going to be an interesting week (in May, Monday 14th to Saturday 19th), in which I have two stints in classrooms (the three day course in downtown Chicago and this pre-con), plus two presentations at the main SQLSaturday event. I’ll be in a room freshly vacated by Jes Borland (I suspect you'll probably be still able to smell the ‘squee’), and from the look of things, I’ll be delivering a solid 2.5 hours of material, with an intermission of 15 minutes. Mind you, with people in the other rooms like Argenis, Ted and Erin, I’m not sure I’ll have much of a crowd. It might be more like “An Intimate Afternoon with Rob Farley” with whoever’s left.

The course will be the highlight of my week. I love teaching this course – it’s a great time to be able to get people in a room for a few days and go through ways to make queries better. More effective. It has “Advanced T-SQL” in the title, but I really try to focus on the “Effectiveness” aspect. Yes, we’ll look at a bunch of advanced features, and your T-SQL arsenal will grow, but the idea is to arm you with the information you need to be able to have more effective T-SQL. Advanced is only better when it’s more effective. It’s going to be a really fun few days, as I stretch your thinking and make you look at T-SQL in a new way.

The pre-con is going to be very different. We’ll be going through the syllabus of the new 70-461 exam, teaching you about all the ins and outs of the various features, leaving you in a position to be able to confidently take the exam. I’ve sat this exam in beta, but of course I can’t use any inside knowledge I gained from that to teach this. There’s a lot of stuff to get through. Each of the four sections has four or five bullet points underneath, and even more sub-points under that. We’ll be pushing through a lot of things, and a lot of the more basic stuff will certainly be skimmed through – but we’ll be looking deeper into a lot of the new things, and making sure that you get all the concepts on the exam. I can’t offer a proper guarantee that you’ll pass – some people just take exams badly. But as we’ll also be looking at a bunch of exam technique aspects, I think you'll be fine.

The two sessions that I’m doing at the SQLSaturday #119 are two of my favourite talks.

One of them is on SARGability. I remember doing this talk with a bunch of MVPs in the room (and a certain cloudy Microsoft employee), and even they said “Ooh – I didn’t know that” afterwards. SARGability – the ability to use indexes effectively – is such a significant aspect of querying, and a pet topic of mine (as regular readers will realise). SQL Server even provides a bunch of methods you can use to improve the SARGability, even if you can’t tweak the queries themselves. Very cool stuff. And did I mention I won’t have slides?

The other is on Analytic Functions (a talk which I’m currently doing around Australia and New Zealand at SQLSaturday 135, 136, 138, 139 and 140). There are eight new Analytic Functions in SQL 2012, plus some new enhancements to the OVER clause. I’ll be running through these, and I’m sure you’ll leave the room with new ideas to try to enhance your reporting and data analysis.

See you there?

Adelaide's SQL Tuesday

rob_farley — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 08:36:42 GMT

This coming Tuesday sees a midweek SQL Saturday hit Adelaide. LobsterPot’s a sponsor, as are a bunch of other companies.

An all day event, with two tracks featuring some of the best material you’ve ever seen presented. I’m presenting too.

The thing I really want to draw your attention to is that we have two sessions from Paul White. If you haven’t heard of Paul, click the link to have a look at his blog. When you’ve picked your jaw up and some of the mind-blowing information he likes to write about, imagine yourself sitting in sessions by him. I’ve just got back from Wellington where I heard him for an hour, and knew that giving him two sessions was completely the right choice. Everyone left the room wishing that he could’ve gone on longer, and I suspect Paul will be somewhat caught up for questions for the rest of the day, as people try to pick his brain about some of the Query Optimizer things he can teach. He’s been scheduled for the morning so that attendees can have plenty of opportunity to see him around for the rest of the day. It’s his first time ever to Australia, so it’s completely brilliant to have him come to Adelaide for this event.

I shouldn’t suggest that the other sessions won’t be excellent though. Peter Ward’s session about the $10000 question has been very well received at SQLSaturday events so far, as have the sessions by Roger Noble and Paul te Braak. Combining these with Microsoft’s Raja N presenting about the Database Consolidation Appliance, some excellent local speakers, a terrific sponsor-session from Fusion-io (and a couple of spots from me), and I’m sure you’ll agree that this event is definitely worth getting to.

Numbers are limited and being a free event it may well sell out. So get yourself registered (but I’d recommend joining PASS first, which gives you a bunch of extra benefits and there’s no extra effort involved), and I’ll see you there.

It’s in less than a week!

24 Hours of PASS – first reflections

rob_farley — Mon, 26 Mar 2012 02:03:21 GMT

A few days after the end of 24HOP, I find myself reflecting on it.

I’m still waiting on most of the information. I want to be able to discover things like where the countries represented on each of the sessions, and things like that. So far, I have the feedback scores and the numbers of attendees. The data was provided in a PDF, so while I wait for it to appear in a more flexible format, I’ve pushed the 24 attendee numbers into Excel.

This chart shows the numbers by time. Remember that we started at midnight GMT, which was 10:30am in my part of the world and 8pm in New York. It’s probably no surprise that numbers drooped a bit at the start, stayed comparatively low, and then grew as the larger populations of the English-speaking world woke up.

I remember last time 24HOP ran for 24 hours straight, there were quite a few sessions with less than 100 attendees. None this time though. We got close, but even when it was 4am in New York, 8am in London and 7pm in Sydney (which would have to be the worst slot for attracting people), we still had over 100 people tuning in.

As expected numbers grew as the UK woke up, and even more so as the US did, with numbers peaking at 755 for the “3pm in New York” session on SQL Server Data Tools. Kendra Little almost reached those numbers too, and certainly contributed the biggest ‘spike’ on the chart with her session five hours earlier. Of all the sessions, Kendra had the highest proportion of ‘Excellent’s for the “Overall Evaluation of the session” question, and those of you who saw her probably won’t be surprised by that. Kendra had one of the best ranked sessions from the 24HOP event this time last year (narrowly missing out on being top 3), and she has produced a lot of good video content since then.

The reports indicate that there were nearly 8.5 thousand attendees across the 24 sessions, averaging over 350 at each one. I’m looking forward to seeing how many different people that was, although I do know that Wil Sisney managed to attend every single one (if you did too, please let me know). Wil even moderated one of the sessions, which made his feat even greater. Thanks Wil.

I also want to send massive thanks to Dave Dustin. Dave probably would have attended all of the sessions, if it weren’t for a power outage that forced him to take a break. He was also a moderator, and it was during this session that he earned special praise. Part way into the session he was moderating, the speaker lost connectivity and couldn’t get back for about fifteen minutes. That’s an incredibly long time when you’re in a live presentation. There were over 200 people tuned in at the time, and I’m sure Dave was as stressed as I was to have a speaker disappear. I started chasing down a phone number for the speaker, while Dave spoke to the audience. And he did brilliantly. He started answering questions, and kept doing that until the speaker came back. Bear in mind that Dave hadn’t expected to give a presentation on that topic (or any other), and was simply drawing on his SQL expertise to get him through. Also consider that this was between midnight at 1am in Dave’s part of the world (Auckland, NZ). I would’ve been expecting just to welcome people, monitor questions, probably read some out, and in general, help make things run smoothly. He went far beyond the call of duty, and if I had a medal to give him, he’d definitely be getting one.

On the whole, I think this 24HOP was a success. We tried a different platform, and I think for the most part it was a popular move. We didn’t ask the question “Was this better than LiveMeeting?”, but we did get a number of people telling us that they thought the platform was very good.

Some people have told me I get a chance to put my feet up now that this is over. As I’m also co-ordinating a tour of SQLSaturday events across the Australia/New Zealand region, I don’t quite get to take that much of a break (plus, there’s the little thing of squeezing in seven SQL 2012 exams over the next 2.5 weeks). But I am pleased to be reflecting on this event rather than anticipating it. There were a number of factors that could have gone badly, but on the whole I’m pleased about how it went. A massive thanks to everyone involved.

If you’re reading this and thinking you wish you could’ve tuned in more, don’t worry – they were all recorded and you’ll be able to watch them on demand very soon. But as well as that, PASS has a stream of content produced by the Virtual Chapters, so you can keep learning from the comfort of your desk all year round. More info on them at sqlpass.org, of course.

24 hours to pass until 24 Hours of PASS

rob_farley — Tue, 20 Mar 2012 00:03:18 GMT

There’s a bunch of stuff going on at the moment in the SQL world, so if you’ve missed this particular piece of news, let me tell you a bit about it.

Twice a year, the SQL community puts on its biggest virtual event – 24 Hours of PASS. And the next one is tomorrow – March 21^st, 2012. Twenty-four sessions, back-to-back, featuring a selection of some of the best presenters in the SQL world, speakers from all over the world, coming together in an online collaboration that so far has well over thirty thousand registrations across the presentations. Some people are signed up for all 24 sessions, some only one.

Traditionally, LiveMeeting has been used as the platform for this event, but this year we’re going with a new platform – IBTalk. It promises big, and we’re hoping it won’t let us down. LiveMeeting has been great, and we thank Microsoft for providing it as a platform for the past few years. However, as the event has grown, we’ve found that a new idea is necessary. Last year a search was done for a new platform, and IBTalk ticked the right boxes. The feedback from the presenters and moderators so far has been overwhelmingly positive, and we’re hoping that this is going to really enhance the user experience.

One of my favourite features of the platform is the language side. It provides a pretty good translation service. Users who join a session will see a flag on the left of the screen. If they click it, they can change the language to one of 15 on offer. Picking this changes all the labels on everything. It even translates the text in the Q&A window.

What this means is that someone from Brazil can ask their question in Portuguese, and the presenter will see it in English. Then if the answer is typed in English, the questioner will be able to see the answer, also in Portuguese. Or they can switch to English to see it as the answerer typed it. I know there’s always the risk of bad translations going on, but I’ve heard good things about this translation service.

But there’s more – IBTalk are providing staff to type up closed captioning live during the event. So if English isn’t your first language, don’t worry!

Picking your language will also let you see subtitles in your chosen language. I’m hoping that this event is the start of PASS being able to reach people from all corners of the world. Wouldn’t it be great to find that this event is successful, and that the next 24HOP (later in the year, our Summit Preview event) has just as many non-English speakers tuning in as English speakers?

If you haven’t been planning which sessions you’re going to attend, you really should get over to sqlpass.org/24hours and have a look through what’s on offer. There’s some amazing material from some of the industry’s brightest, covering a wide range of topics, from classic SQL areas to the brand new SQL 2012 features. There really should be something for every SQL professional. Check the time zones though – if you’re in the US you might be on Summer time, and an hour closer to GMT than normal.

Massive thanks must go to Microsoft, SQL Sentry and Idera for sponsoring this event. Without sponsors we wouldn’t be able to put any of this on. These companies are helping 24HOP continue to grow into an event for the whole world.

See you tomorrow!

@rob_farley | #24hop | #sqlpass

PASS Summit 2011 - What you can expect at the Conference - Summary

RickHeiges — Mon, 19 Sep 2011 13:30:00 GMT

As I finish up preparing for the Sep 20 (@1pm ET) webcast, I thought a final blog post may be appropriate in order to quickly reference many of the areas that I have touched upon. Naturally, much of this information is geared towards First Timers, but Alumni are welcome to join in the webcast as well and are encouraged to help spread even more tips/tricks around to all who attend.

PASS Summit 2011 - What you can expect at the Conference - Part 6

RickHeiges — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 13:30:00 GMT

Now that I have covered just about all of the "official" Summit activities, it is time for a blog post about "After Hours" activities.

There is a webpage that lists some of the activities that we are currently aware of. You can find that page here.

Monday Night Networking Dinner - Last year, Andy Warren and Steve Jones started a Netowrking Dinner (Food / Drink is your own responsibility). It will be Monday Evening at Lowell's. More information is available on the link provided above.Follow general #sqlpass on twitter to see what's going on.

Photo Walk - Pat Wright and Tim Ford started this tradition several years ago. Essentially, Pat / Tim coordinate a place / time to start on a tour of Seattle. Bring your camera andprepare to have a great time discovering Seattle.Follow #photowalk on twitter to obtain more information.

SQL Kilt Day - It will be Thursday this year. Several years ago, three SQL Community leaders decided to wear kilts one day. Many more joined in last year (even some vendors). I don't havve an exact count, but I suspect that thee were at least 50 people wearing kilts last year. I suspect that number will be over 100 this year. Wearing a kilt on #sqlkilt day will definitely bring you some attention. :-)

SQL Run - Running is a favorite fitness activity of quite a few members of the SQL Community. Would you like to run with some others who are attending the conference? Follow #SQLRun on twitter to find out when/where to meet up for a run.

SQL Karaoke - What happens when you mix an open mic, SQL Professionals, and some libation together? SQL Karaoke at a Dive Bar. See the Link above for more information on locatoin. This year it will be on Wednesday Evening and now enjoys a limited sponsorship by NEC and Genesis Hosting Solutions. Follow #SQLKaraoke for more information - especially on Wednesday.

SSC / Redgate Party - SQL Server Central and RedGate will be hosting another party right after the Welcome Reception on Tuesday night. More info may be found here.

Other Vendor Parties - Many other Vendors will also host parties or other get togethers. Be sure to visit all of the vendors in the Exhibit Hall. I encourage you to visit all of the vendors and perhaps score an invite to an "after hours" event.

There is more, but I don't know about it yet. Denny Cherry has put together a website that lists "after hours" events that he is aware of.