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 ...

I was surprised and honored to be mentioned by leadership expert Evan Carmichael as one of the top leadership Twitter experts for March 2013.  Not only did I make the top 100, I came in at 12!  If you weren't aware of my leadership training specially geared for IT professionals, check out ForITPros.com, as well as my DVD ...

I mean really? Why should you spend some of your training budget to go to this thing? Suppose you’re someone in the PASS Community who mainly looks after people’s data. That could involve database administration, performance tuning, helping developers write queries, that kind of thing. What part of “Advanced Analytics and Insights”, “Big Data ...

In the same way that the finest presentations involve much more than the simple relaying of information, the finest software demos are much more than just presenting features.  REMEMBER: The goal of a demo is to INSPIRE the audience to use the software/technology, not to teach them every nuance of software/technology.I've ...

I just got this email from LinkedIn about my profile (that's http://www.linkedin.com/in/kekline in clear text). Hi Kevin,Recently, LinkedIn reached a new milestone: 200 million members. But this isn't just our achievement to celebrate — it's also yours.I want to personally thank you for being part of our community. ...

I always seem to get a question or two along the lines of ''What's it like on a SQLCruise?'' as I present at various conferences, SQL Saturdays, and user group meetings.  Since we just finished up the 2013 Miami SQLCruise, I thought it'd be a good time to recap so that you can judge for yourself if you'd ever want to do it yourself. ...

I was wrong – I passed the MCM lab last month. I know I thought I’d failed – I’m still surprised that I passed. Maybe I managed to satisfy enough of enough questions. Certainly none of the questions were beyond me, as I wrote just after I’d sat it. But I do know that I left more questions in an incomplete state than I would’ve liked. The things ...

Readers of my blog, or followers on Twitter will know I took the MCM Lab exam a couple of days ago. I let people know I was doing the exam, rather than doing the ‘normal’ thing of doing it in secret and hoping no-one found out until a successful result had been published. Oh, and this post has been approved by the MCM program’s boB Taylor ...

In two days I’ll’ve finished the MCM Lab exam, 88-971. If you do an internet search for 88-971, it’ll tell you the answer is –883. Obviously. It’ll also give you a link to the actual exam page, which is useful too, once you’ve finished being distracted by the calculator instead of going to the thing you’re actually looking for. (Do people ...

I've been extoling the Rules of Holes, hoping to give you both courage to get out of your Hole, and solace for having allowed yourself to get in a Hole in the first place. How about the others, the folks that see that you are up to your neck, the folks that could guide you out, the folks that are secretly glad that it is you down in the Hole ...