Search results matching tags 'training' and 'ALT'

March 2012 - SSIS Training in London!

andyleonard — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 08:00:00 GMT

I am honored to announce I will be delivering From Zero To SSIS! in London, England 5-9 Mar 2012. This course is delivered in cooperation with my friends at TechniTrain who provide awesome training by talented technologists like Chris Webb (Blog), Gavin Payne (Blog), and Christian Bolton (Blog).

This opportunity grew out of conversations at SQLBits 9 in Liverpool in September 2011. I had an awesome time at SQLBits and encourage everyone to attend the conference if you have the opportunity to do so. SQLBits 10 is 29-31 Mar 2012.

Please find a course outline here. It is difficult to list everything I cover in the course, but the outline hits the high spots.

I spent a year writing From Zero To SSIS. The material grew out of my experience serving as a consultant on short-term engagements and as a manager of a team of forty data integration developers building concurrent, long-term projects in a global enterprise; serving as a data integration developer and enterprise ETL architect. The information is practical and actionable. I share my mistakes and pain points, hoping students will learn as much from my errors as I did. It is a hands-on course because I believe nothing reinforces hearing like doing. The course is not a survey of all the functionality included in SSIS. Instead, it focuses a proportionate amount of time (and laboratory exercises) on the components of SSIS the data integration developer will use.

This delivery of the course is sub-divided into Introductory and Advanced sections. One can opt to attend either section or both. The course focuses on data integration development topics in the Introductory section. Data integration topics include a lot of material about the SSIS Data Flow Task (Why? Because SSIS was built to move data.). The Introductory section also covers Control Flow topics including work flow, Containers, Precedence Constraints, and Loop Containers. The Advanced section covers the topics of Advanced Data Cleansing, Security, Deployment, Execution, Logging, Configurations, SSIS Design Patterns, and ETL Frameworks.

I hope to see you in London 5-9 Mar 2012! Should you have any questions about the course, please contact me by clicking the Email link in the upper right corner of this page.

You may register for the SSIS course here.

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OT: Back to Consulting, Week 1

andyleonard — Sun, 23 Jan 2011 23:00:00 GMT

Introduction

I pondered writing this at all. And then I pondered where to publish it. I decided to publish this here as it relates to other things I've published here. And I decided to mark it OT (off-topic).

As mentioned in this post, starting Andy Leonard Training grew out of a couple training engagements delivered in late 2010. I started fulltime work 17 Jan 2011 with an engagement in the deep South.

Gig One

The first gig went well. A lot of the credit for that goes to the team with which I interfaced; stellar technologists, every one.

The most important thing I did right was this: I delivered before the end of the engagement. There's only so much a consultant / mentor can bring to any enterprise in a week, but I believe I brought all that was possible. That's extra important for an initial engagement.

Opportunity

Two opportunities came out of the engagement:

The potential for more work from the company.
A request for a quote (RFQ) from another company in the area after a presentation at the local SQL Server UG.

Conclusion

It doesn't matter who you are, there is always risk involved in leaving the cube behind to start your own business. Week One is in the book. On to Week 2!

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I Start!

andyleonard — Thu, 30 Dec 2010 12:00:00 GMT

I originally titled this post "I Quit!" but decided that doesn't set the proper tone and definitely does not match my feelings about the upcoming transitions in my life. "I Start!" is much more appropriate!

Introduction

I've tendered my resignation from the position of Manager, ETL Team, Data Management Group, Molina Medicaid Solutions effective Friday 14 Jan 2011.

"There I Was..."

In 2008 my consultant billable-days - the metric I use to determine how business is going - dropped from 20 / month to 2 / month. I made good money as a consultant, but not enough to live on 2 billable days per month. So I climbed into the cube.

I contacted and met with Ben McEwan, a manager (at the time) with Unisys. I'd met Ben a year earlier and enjoyed an instant rapport with him. We talked, haggled, interviewed, and negotiated for a few weeks; and I agreed to go to work for Ben. That's an important distinction: I didn't go to work for Unisys, I went to work for Ben.

For those who do not recognize the name, Ben wrote the book from which I learned Transact-SQL: Teach Yourself Transact-SQL in 21 Days. For two years, Ben mentored me in business communication, strategic thinking, management, game theory, and SQL Server. He said he would do that when we talked, and learning from Ben was the reason I accepted the position. In fact, this was so widely known that when Ben resigned from Molina Medicaid Solutions earlier this year, I was instructed to immediately communicate my intentions to upper management. They wanted to know if I was also going to leave.

Working for Ben was a pivotal experience in my life and career. Thanks Ben!

Adam Machanic and From Zero To SSIS

Adam Machanic (Blog | @AdamMachanic), one of our gracious hosts and my primary point-of-contact here at SQLBlog.com, contacted me earlier this year about delivering SSIS training for his company, Boston SQL Training. I'd been working on a course called From Zero To SSIS and this was the perfect excuse to update it to SQL Server 2008 R2. So I took some vacation time from my day job and delivered a three-day version of the course at the Microsoft Training Center in Waltham Massachusetts in October.

I had a blast!

Preparing for this delivery was a serious kick in the seat of my pants. Adam and I worked together to put on the class, and I learned much about the details of such an endeavor. Adam's transparency with me, advice, and flexibility resulted in a successful delivery of From Zero To SSIS. This got me thinking it was time to make the transition into full-time training and consulting.

Thanks Adam!

Andy Leonard Training

I decided to deliver the five-day From Zero To SSIS course in December 2010 - and to do it in Farmville Virginia. I took more vacation from work to deliver the training. But that wasn't the important part. The important part was this: The advertising for that course brought several inquiries for training, mentoring, and consulting opportunities.

I started thinking "What if...?" while following up on the inquiries. As ever, I was transparent about my current situation - that I would be leaving a full-time job and would therefore need to coordinate the transition. I found those with whom I spoke willing to work with me and refreshed by this transparency. As a result, I was able to establish Andy Leonard Training in November 2010 with work queuing for Q1 2011!

If you're interested in learning more about SSIS I offer training and mentoring services. If you're looking for some help building an SSIS project or technical team, I offer consulting services. You can reach me at andy@andyleonard.net.

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Collateral

This set the stage for some radical changes in my plans for 2011. I can do more community stuff, for example (like SQLPeople!). There's more, but I will save that for future posts.

Conclusion

This is a tip-of-the-iceberg post. There's a lot more going on in my life, community, and work. It's challenging me on every level: spritually, intellectually, emotionally, technically. I'm excited about these changes and challenges, and look forward to 2011!

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