Search results matching tags 'sql saturday' and 'Speaking'

SQL Saturday #220 (Atlanta): Demos

Adam Machanic — Sat, 18 May 2013 18:33:00 GMT

Today at SQL Saturday #220 in Atlanta I presented a new brand new session, "SQL Server Query Plan Analysis: The 5 Culprits That Cause 95% of Your Performance Headaches."

This session is designed to help people quickly analyze query plans and find likely culprits without being query tuning experts; I find that in a huge number of cases the root cause of problems is one of just a few potential situations.

Thanks to everyone who joined me today for the deliveries! In addition to it being a new session this was also the first time that I've ever been asked to present the same session twice in a single day. So it was quite an experience.

The demo script is attached. As always, let me know if you have any questions or comments.

Enjoy!

Speaking about Relational DB Design the next two weeks (Knoxville, then Atlanta)

drsql — Mon, 06 May 2013 01:57:54 GMT

On Friday, May 10 I will be speaking for the Knoxville SQL Server User Group, and on May 18, I will be speaking at SQL Saturday in Atlanta. Both days, my session is my old chestnut “Database Design Fundamentals”. It is my favorite session to do because of two things. 1. I love to talk about database design 2. No demos :). The abstract is:

In this session I will give an overview of how to design a database, including the common normal forms and why they should matter to you if you are creating or modifying SQL Server databases. Data should be easy to work with in SQL Server if the database has been organized as close as possible to the standards of normalization that have been proven for many years. Many common T-SQL programming "difficulties" are the result of struggling against the way data should be structured and can be avoided by applying the basic normalization techniques and are obvious things that you find yourself struggling with time and again (i.e. using the SUBSTRING function in a WHERE clause meaning you can't use an index efficiently).

It is a session that I haven’t done in short form since PASS 2011, and submitting this as a session was one of my resolutions this year, because it is truly my favorite regular session (my second favorite session is the precon version, because we get to spend a good amount of time on the subject.)

Additionally, at SQL Saturday Atlanta, I will be doing a lunch session for Red-Gate called: What Counts For a DBA: Observant. It is a session that is 33% professional development, 33% about where to find info about your server, 33% about monitoring your server and 11% demo of the SQL Monitor (and a lack of math skills is part of the show.) This is not the normal advertisement session, I wrote it myself, but is intended to be useful to anyone immediately without buying their tools, and to show you how Red-Gate’s tools can assist in observing your server’s behavior

SQL Saturday #146 : Nashua, NH

AaronBertrand — Sun, 21 Oct 2012 01:35:00 GMT

Today was SQL Saturday #146, put on by Mike Walsh, Jack Corbett, and a host of other volunteers and organizers.
Scott and I missed the speaker dinner last night, but we headed up from Rhode Island at 6:00 AM and made a good day of it. We had lots of great conversations with both existing friends and potential customers.

After lunch I participated in a panel discussion with Joey D'Antoni and Andrew Kelly, led my Mike. We basically talked about various things DBAs are responsible for - and ultimately take the blame when they don't work. My favorite part of the discussion was around backups, and how you shouldn't have a backup plan, but a recovery plan. Meaning - essentially - don't bother taking backups unless you've tested that they can be restored successfully.

I had the last session of the day against some tough competition. About 35 people attended, but I don't like the last time slot because there are almost always conversations that extend past the end time. In a lot of cases it's ok to cut into someone's lunch or networking time if they want to stay longer, but you absolutely cannot cut into raffle time. Anyway, the feedback was fantastic - it's amazing how much feedback you can solicit when you offer up a raffle prize like a free license to SQL Sentry Plan Explorer PRO. :-) Also have to love a write-in vote for speaker expertise (and no I don't think this was a bribe):

You can download the slide deck and samples from my session here.

Kudos to Mike et. al. for a great event!

Recap - SQL Saturday 151 in Orlando

KKline — Tue, 02 Oct 2012 14:19:00 GMT

It's always a feel-good experience for me to return to SQL Saturday in Orlando, the place where SQL Saturdays were started by Andy Warren (Twitter | Blog). On this trip, I delivered a full-day, pre-conference seminar on Troubleshooting and Performance Tuning SQL Server. I also delivered a session on SQL Server Internals and Architecture to a totally packed house. For those of you who emailed me directly, here's the link for the special SQL Sentry offer.

I got to attend the extended events session by Jack Corbett (Twitter | Blog), middle in the photo above. Good stuff, Jack! Jack led the Orlando PASS Chapter for a few years and, although he relocated back up to New England, he enjoys getting back to Orlando when the opportunity presents itself.

I also got a chance to do a podcast with Rodney Landrum (Twitter | Blog), in the SQL Saturday chef's outfit on the right. Rodney, you should get your blog details up at the PASS SQL blogger page, btw. Rodney is also known as "the guy with the Red-Gate tatoo". Ask him why, when you meet him in person. I'll post the direct link to our podcast when I get it from Rodney. But in the meantime, be sure to check out his SQLBeat webcast. There are lots of great speakers and respected authorities to hear on his podcast.

As I mellow with age, I've found that I most enjoy connecting with friends and building relationships. The above picture shows me, Eddie Weurch (Twitter | Blog), and Pam Shaw (Twitter), head of the Tampa PASS Chapter. Pam, Eddie, and I were swapping some hilarious stories about our early years in snowy climates. Pam had the good fortune to be pulled, face first, through the snow by her mom during a trip to the school bus stop on the first big snow of the season. Mom, it seems, wanted to make sure she got to the bus stop safely, but instead fell down two steps from the front door of their home, sliding all the way to the bus stop firmly clutching Pam's hand. ROFL!

I got to spend some time with Ryan Adams (left) and Kendal Van Dyke (right), as well. There may have been some liquor involved. However, the highlight of my evening was definitely when Kendal yelled "FINALLY!" at the waitress bringing our plates out ten minutes after the appetizers were served. Kendal was actually paying no attention to the waitress or the plates and was instead yelling at the TV where the Florida State vs South Florida football game was playing. The waitress, on the other hand, was mortified. Hilarity ensued as he tried to explain that he was not the least bit cross with her. :^)

Ryan is going to be presenting at the upcoming spring 2013 SQLCruise event. You should definitely attend! Ryan Adams has lot more content here (Twitter | Blog). Kendal, by the way, is a standing member of the current PASS Board of Directors. He's written some excellent content and, just recently, moved to Upsearch consultancy where my friend Allen White (Twitter | Blog) works. Kendal Van Dyke has more content here (Twitter | Blog).

I hope you're planning to attend a SQL Saturday event soon. And not just the event, but also the after-event gatherings as well. You can almost always be sure that most of the speakers will be there. It's a great way to enlarge your professional network as well as to make real and lasting friendships!

Enjoy,

-Kev

-Follow me on Twitter

SQL Saturday #156 : Providence, RI

AaronBertrand — Sun, 16 Sep 2012 03:09:00 GMT

Well, East Greenwich, RI. Another successful event, this one put on by John Miner, Brandon Leach, Steve Simon, Scott Abrants and a host of other folks. Several #SQLFamily friends in attendance as well: Grant Fritchey, Mike Walsh, Jack Corbett, Wayne Sheffield and others. I gave a session in the morning and then a session to cap off the day. Thanks to everyone who attended! The downloads are here:

T-SQL : Bad Habits & Best Practices

The Ins & Outs of Contained Databases

SQLSaturday #162 : Cambridge, England

AaronBertrand — Sun, 09 Sep 2012 21:08:00 GMT

Yesterday I presented at SQL Saturday #162. My slide deck and samples are here:

Slide Deck & Samples: Bertrand - T-SQL Bad Habits & Best Practices

I also wanted to answer a question from an audience member after the session about how to generate YYYYMMDD strings to represent yesterday's date in order to append to a backup file name. In this case because we're probably not worried about performance (you're performing this calculation once), we can just use string conversion (see this blog post for a more detailed discussion about doing things like stripping time from datetime at high volume).

-- In SQL Server 2005, 2008 or 2008 R2, you can say:

SELECT [filename] = 'Backup' + CONVERT(CHAR(8), DATEADD(DAY, -1, GETDATE()), 112);

-- In SQL Server 2012, you can use a slightly more self-documenting method:

SELECT [filename] = 'Backup' + FORMAT(DATEADD(DAY, -1, GETDATE()), 'yyyyMMdd');

I was really impressed with how this event was run - it was super organized and I had a great time, so kudos to Mark and Lorraine Broadbent and everyone else who helped by speaking, volunteering and sponsoring.

Today I was able to take a walk around "The Backs" (the walkways along the river behind all the famous colleges here), then went to Castle Mound with Buck Woody & family, then Scott and I took a train to Ely to see the 4th largest cathedral in Europe. A good day. Pictures here:

Cambridge | Ely

Secure Your Spot at the Nashville SQL Saturday!

KKline — Mon, 27 Aug 2012 14:50:00 GMT

PASS SQL Saturdays are free 1-day training events for IT professionals interested in Microsoft SQL Server, providing a variety of high-quality technical sessions, all happen through the efforts of local volunteers. The leadership team of the local chapter of PASS here in Nashville (Facebook | LinkedIn) have worked hard to make this year's SQL Saturday a day of great training and networking.

The local NashSQL leadership team includes yours truly (blog | twitter), Joe Webb (Twitter | Blog), Louis "Dr SQL" Davidson (Twitter | Blog), Christina Leo (blog | twitter), and Shelton Dickson (website). We also get a lot of operational help from Matt LeBlank (LinkedIn | Twitter).

We think you'll find it's a great way to spend a Saturday!

Register for the free community day with 5 concurrent tracks of hour-hour technical sessions running all day long: www.sqlsaturday.com/145/eventhome.aspx

Also, we are very pleased to announce the SQLSaturday #145 Pre-con event on Friday, October 12th. We have four paid sessions available from established industry experts. Session details are provided in the links below.

Please be aware that each Pre-con is priced at a staggeringly cheap $129.95 + $8.14 processing fee.

Registrations made by August 31, 2012, will receive an EARLY BIRD REGISTRATION rate of an $99.95 + 6.49 processing fee!!!

Don't miss out on this fantastic offer! Register now: SQL Satuday #145 PreCons

A continental breakfast will be served and tea and coffee will be available throughout the day. Lunch will be provided.

And interview, an online session, a long drive and a SQL Saturday… This week!

drsql — Tue, 14 Aug 2012 04:38:03 GMT

Later this week I will be doing an episode of the Greg Low’s excellent SQL Down Under podcast (http://www.sqldownunder.com/Resources/Podcast.aspx), something I did once before back in 2006. If you haven’t listened to any of the previous editions, there are some amazing people who have been on his podcast.

On Thursday at 12:00 Central Time, I will be doing a presentation entitled Designing for Common Problems in SQL Server for the PASS Data Architecture Virtual Chapter.

Friday I will be driving up to Cleveland, OH for SQL Saturday 164. I will be doing the Designing for Common Problems in SQL Server session, along with the Sequences session that I have done at several SQL Saturdays so far. Saturday I will give away two copies of my brand new book, one in each session, so if you want to be the first person I give one to, be there!

Right now, the biggest issue is that the Designing for Common Problems session is WAY too long. In my prep so far, I have gotten halfway through with the patterns and code in one and a half hours. So who knows what I will do to cut down the time, either limit the patterns, or perhaps split the session? I will figure something out… at least on Saturday when I have real people I can poll the audience to see what they want to see in detail. Online pretty much all you see are people’s names and the clock ticking away.

I have a few other things coming up, including picking speakers for Nashville’s SQL Saturday, shipping out books to my SQL Rally attendees, and Devlink at the end of the month (when I will have a bit longer to the Common Problems session, thankfully), but more on that after this weekend.

Louisville SQL Saturday…

drsql — Sat, 14 Jul 2012 23:31:13 GMT

One more week until we get to SQL Saturday 122 in Louisville KY. I have a couple of sessions on the calendar this time. First, the one on Sequences:

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What Sequence objects are (and are not)

SQL Server 2012 adds a new object to our arsenal called a sequence that can will give us the capability to implement automatically incrementing values. However, it cannot replace a lot of functionality that we have used a numbers table and windowing functions for (though they can be complimentary to one another). In this session I will demonstrate the uses and performance characteristics of sequences, including how they compliment the use of number tables and windowing functions to create surrogate key and sorting values, and more.

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The second session is my professional development session that goes along with my What Counts for a DBA blog series on SimpleTalk. Come with your ideas about what makes a great DBA so we can all get into the conversation (and not just so I won’t have to create too many slides). I will have my topic spinning wheel with me, so who knows exactly what we will discuss, not even I know.

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What Counts For a DBA

The world of a DBA can be daunting for a person, either as a new or old, because not only do they need to keep up with new and emerging technologies, but also with the code and designs of their coworkers. In this highly participation driven session, we will employ a random topic chooser to pick several of these traits for discussion as a group. Possible topics include past blog topics such as Logic, Curiosity, Failure, Humility, Skill and Passion, as well as any other topics that might be added for that day. So come prepared to participate and voice your opinion about what counts for a DBA.

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Hope to see you there! (and if you can’t make it to Louisville, I will be in Cleveland OH for SQL Saturday #164 on August 16, and then in Chattanooga for Devlink the last week of August. Chattanooga, TN.

How SQL Saturday could be better

AaronBertrand — Tue, 15 May 2012 12:58:00 GMT

I've been to a lot of SQL Saturdays. They are great events to attend - from a community standpoint, from a learning standpoint, and from a speaker growth standpoint. Who could ask for more, right? Great sessions, from passionate speakers willing to both teach and learn, fantastic networking opportunities and lunch. All for free, or at a very low cost - some events need to recover costs and charge $10 for lunch. Still a phenomenal bargain IMHO.

But we all know that these events aren't perfect... there are sometimes failures in process or communication that lead to frustration for attendees, speakers, organizers and volunteers. And most of these failures occur during the period leading up to the event, not on the actual Saturday.

So I have just a few minor suggestions that might help.

Speakers: don't overwhelm the organizers.

I know some of you think you have 10-15 sessions that you could deliver equally well, but all you're doing is making their job harder, and I don't think it benefits anyone. I find it hard to believe that the quality of all 15 would be similar, regardless of how experienced a speaker you may be. Pick your top three or four, and cap your submissions there. If you can't narrow it down because you think all 15 of your sessions are completely awesome, check the list of existing submissions, or contact the organizers to find out the areas where they need more coverage (they are listening at SQLSaturdayN@sqlsaturday.com, where N is the SQL Saturday number, e.g. SQLSaturday146@sqlsaturday.com). If it's too early in the submission process, then either wait, or be sure to cull your list closer to (but before) the submission deadline. I'm not in favor of the latter, though, because if you submit 15 sessions but only want to seriously consider 3 or 4, you may have prevented other speakers from submitting their session on a topic too similar to one you didn't intend to present in the first place.

Speakers: don't double book.

While you might like to have a back-up plan, this almost guarantees that you'll have to cancel on one of the events. Since you don't know which event will finalize their list of speakers first, I don't think it's fair to invite two or three girls to the prom, and end up going with the prettiest one who says yes. I suggest you pick the event you're most likely going to be able to attend, and leave your second- and third-place choices for the next time they have an event. Or pick the one with the earliest submission deadline, so that if you don't get selected, you will still have time to submit to your second choice. As above, if you wait instead of submitting five minutes after an event is announced, you can get a good sense of how many sessions and what topics and speakers you're up against (these aren't kept secret, on purpose).

Speakers: cancel promptly.

Even if you don't follow the above two suggestions, have the courtesy to cancel the minute you learn or decide that you won't be able to make the event. The longer the organizers are fooled into believing you're going to make it, the harder it's going to be for them to fill your slot(s). This goes for cancelling your regular attendee registration as well: since you are automatically registered when you submit to speak, if you're not going to be there, you're potentially preventing someone else from attending. I've heard of several cases where speakers cancelled the day of the event, or shortly before, or didn't bother letting the event know at all. Having attendees show up to an empty room with no speaker just downright sucks for everyone. I realize that some cancellations are unavoidable, and I'm not suggesting you should skip a funeral to honor your speaking commitment - but as soon as you know, let them know.

Organizers: don't delay notifications.

Speaker selection should happen as close to the submission deadline as possible. I know of at least one event where speakers changed their travel plans to be sure they would be in a certain city on a Saturday, only to find out much later that they weren't being selected to speak. Letting them know earlier will allow them to change their plans appropriately, whether that means staying home, attending a different SQL Saturday, or maybe even just spending one less night in the hotel because they won't need to be there Friday night for the speaker dinner. Now again, I realize that sometimes you can't control how early all of your speakers will want to book their travel, or exactly when you can get together with the other volunteers to make the final selections. But as much as possible this should be part of the planning process when picking the submission deadline in the first place. I think the selection should have to occur at least one month prior to the event, and in a lot of cases two months would be ideal. This would allow remote speakers that are chosen to book flights and hotel without paying last-minute premiums, and for speakers that are not chosen to make alternate plans.

Organizers: have a healthy balance of local and remote speakers.

Obviously you want to have top-notch speakers for your audience, but at the same time, you want to help groom local talent and propel them in the community (one of the founding goals of SQL Saturday). I don't think there's a way to apply a blanket rule or percentage for this, as different locations have different pools of local talent, but organizers should have some familiarity with their local speaker pool and should be able to ensure that an appropriate mix is selected. In some cases this may mean that you have to decline a better remote speaker, and I'm not suggesting in any way that this job is easy (or that you should always pick lesser experienced speakers with bad abstracts just because they're local), but I think there could be some better effort here.

PASS: minimize the number of events on a single day.

I realize it's impossible to give every event their own dedicated Saturday, but keep in mind that in addition to encouraging double booking by some speakers, and precluding others from attending one city in favor of another, you're also spreading sponsor dollars thin and making it less likely for a sponsor to step up to the level that gets a table and allows them to send a representative or two. If a SQL Saturday doesn't succeed here, the organizers and volunteers might be a little gun-shy about trying next time, and everybody loses. As with a couple of other suggestions here, it is difficult to set a hard and fast rule here - one proposal I heard was to allow only one SQL Saturday within a 350 mile radius, but geography alone is more of an issue for the local speakers and less of an issue for remote speakers and sponsors.

[Edit: In other words, I'm not convinced that a hard-coded mile radius rule, be it 350 or 400 or however many miles, is valid. 350 miles in Massachusetts or D.C. is very different from 350 miles in New Mexico or Montana. I also don't even dream of considering imposing a "no two events shall happen on the same Saturday" rule - even though I tried to make that clear above, it seems my suggestion is still being misinterpreted. I am not trying to indicate that there is some perfect rule that everyone is overlooking. I'm just suggesting that we shouldn't want to see another 5-event SQL Saturday, and should do whatever we can to prevent it from happening.]

PASS: put some policies in writing.

While some of these suggestions could be enforced through code on the SQL Saturday site, I realize that you can't just wave your hands, snap your fingers, and have the code in place. But in the meantime I don't think this should be a barrier to formalizing policies that could eliminate some of these problems. I think most are common courtesy / common sense items that don't need to be technically enforced, but posting some of these policies on the specific event site (or on the main SQL Saturday site) should be enough to help the community police this behavior. If you state, for example, that there is a cap of four sessions per speaker, there is no excuse for speakers to submit more than four, even if the site would still allow them to do so. This can also place some onus on the individual organizers to respond to those speakers and tell them to whittle down their list, or you'll remove all of them. It's a little tougher for organizers to discover that a speaker has submitted to other events as well, but I think both of these examples are things the speaker should be more responsible for anyway. You don't always have to actively *prevent* a behavior to curb it - sometimes people just need to be told how to do something right rather than get slapped every time they do it wrong.

Once again, I will stress that these are not perfect or even directly implementable answers, and I don't have any illusions that these will make SQL Saturday perfect. But I do believe they are areas that have caused some frustration in the past and that deserve further consideration - the sooner, the better.