I write this from the perspective of experience. I’ve helped organize dozens of events over the past ten years. Feel free to take the parts of this advice that help and discard the parts that don’t. Enjoy! Planning an event is hard work. If you’ve never volunteered to help your local User Group or SQL Saturday, I encourage you to get involved. ...

Wow, it is fall again, and in a large percentage of the minds of SQL Community members, that means that the PASS Summit is here again. I have been to all of the Summits save the first one, and honestly it has become one of the highlights of my nerd year. I have learned a tremendous amount about SQL, made a lot of real friends, and gained a taste ...

One of my favorite events is just around the corner! It's just a few days until SQL Saturday Dublin, Ireland’s largest SQL Server conference on the 19th/20th September, run as a community event by the SQL Ireland User Group. Have You Seen the Schedule? The schedule is complete with an amazing line up of speakers from around the ...

 Join Me at SQLSaturday #288 in Beautiful Ft. Lauderdale, FLSQLSaturday is a training event for SQL Server professionals and those wanting to learn about SQL Server. This event will be held Jun 14 2014 at 3301 College Avenue, Davie, FL 33314. Admittance to this event is free, all costs are covered by donations and sponsorships. ...

This part is part of an ongoing series of blogs I am writing while preparing to give a presentation based on the prefix of this blog's title. It is a work in progress as I explore the effects of the new in-memory model. I would love comments that tell me that I am wrong (especially if it turns out that I ...

SQL Saturday #277 is going to be held 22 Mar 2014 in Richmond Virginia! There will be three day-long pre-conference sessions on Friday 21 Mar: Performance Tuning and Troubleshooting Like a Pro by Robert L. Davis (@sqlsoldier) Murder They Wrote by Wayne Sheffield (@DBAWayne) and Jason Brimhall (@sqlrnnr) SSIS Design Patterns by me ...

I volunteered to help out and present a keynote at SQL Saturday #250.  It worked out that they couldn't find anyone better.  :-)  I am really looking forward to it and hope that I do not disappoint. The time available is about 40 minutes so it can't get too technical. Although I have been a part of 2 keynotes at the PASS Summit, I ...

As a friend of mine tells ''The first time that something happens is a fortuity, the second time that it happens again is a probability and the third one is a certainty!'' Therefore, this year, SQL Saturday in Italy is a certainty! From October to December in Italy there will be three SQL Saturday events! The first one: October 8th 2013, ...

I'm sure you can understand the high level of interest I have in the internal affairs and governance of PASS.  After all, I was one of the founders of the organization way back in 1999 and was president for four years from 2003 through 2006 (fondly remembered as ''the hardest fricken years of my life'').So I was keenly interested when ...

In July and October, I will be doing my "How To Design a Relational Database" full day conference in two places. First on July 26 for the East Iowa SQL Saturday, and then for the big daddy SQLPASS Summit in Charlotte, NC on October 14. You can see the entire abstract here on the SQL PASS site. It is essentially the same concept as last ...