SQLSaturday Advisory Council – Kalen Delaney

We’re pleased to announce the fourth member of the Advisory Council, Kalen Delaney! You’ve probably read at least one of her books or seen at least one of her presentations, and if not, you should!  Like our other choices for the Council she brings more to the table than just technical skills and we look forward to her point of view and contributions.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Kalen has been writing about SQL Server for almost 22 years, in addition to developing courseware. She wrote a regular monthly column on SQL Server Internals for Pinnacle Publishing's SQL Server Professional Journal from October 95 to September 98. She was a co-author of SAMS' SQL Server 6.5 Unleashed (Oct 96) and SQL Server in 21 Days (Feb 98), also from SAMS.

In mid-1998, Kalen joined the editorial staff of Penton's newest publication, SQL Server Magazine, which made its debut in February 1999. She wrote a regular monthly column for almost 10 years, as well as frequent articles for this publication, and is still a regular contributor.  She has also written articles for WindowsITPro Magazine (formerly Windows Magazine) from Penton Media (windowsITPro.com).

Kalen has been invited by Microsoft to present special internal training over the years. She has spoken at Microsoft Technical Education Conference (TechEd) on many occasions and presented at every PASS (Professional Association for SQL Server) Summit since organization’s inception. 

There Is No Excuse

I read Jack Corbett's blog entry,No Training Budget Still No Excuse, last week and thought it was excellent. In fact, I plan on putting it out again on Twitter again.It was that good to me, and I thought it was short, to the point and had good suggestions. And not just because he mentioned SQL Server Central.

There is no excuse for you not to be able to improve your skills and career.

I hear lots of times from people that they work too much, don't have a training budget, and how are they supposed to improve their skills. The short answer is that you work at it. On a regular basis, and using the resources you have. Jack gives some great ones, but the reality is that there are plenty more, in any field, on the Internet that will help you improve. They don't take a lot of time, but I'm sure some of you can find an hour or two a few times a week to learn something new about your profession.

Doctors do it, lawyers do it, even engineers often spend some time out of work studying and reading about their field. There's no reason that other professions can't do it as well. It doesn't have to be every day, but it should be every week. Spend a few minutes learning something new.

Some of the resources are free, some aren't. However don't let price scare you. You ought to invest a little in your career yourself, even if your employer won't. You might not be able to afford a $2,000 class or conference, but I'm sure you can buy a book, or get a subscription to some service that helps you.

My current career is dedicated to providing free (cost) learning resources for IT professionals. I also have a business that looks to provide pay services. I think they both fit needs, and we try to ensure that we are providing more value for the paid services, but that doesn't mean the free ones won't help you. They might take more time, and more work on your side, but that's the tradeoff.

No matter how you choose to do it, there isn't an excuse to not improve your career.

Looking for SQL Speakers Near Wheeling, WV

I had a great call with John Sterrett last week about the possibility of having a SQLSaturday in Wheeling and it looks like the main concern is finding speakers that live within a reasonable driving distance. I love the idea of bringing training events to smaller cities (we’re looking at one in Melbourne, Fla next year) and it’s entirely doable if we build the speaker pool.

So,  if you know someone close to Wheeling that would be a candidate for speaking, post a comment or send me an email.

Blog Posts on SQLSaturday #16

I think we need a system for capturing these better! Here are a few I spotted on the results of the South Fla event.

Vishal Shukla - http://geekswithblogs.net/Vishal/archive/2009/08/08/sql-saturday-ndash-miami.aspx

Chad Miller - http://chadwickmiller.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!EA42395138308430!505.entry

Scott Klein - http://geekswithblogs.net/ScottKlein/archive/2009/08/12/sql-saturday-huge-success.aspx

Jorge Segarra - http://sqlchicken.com/2009/08/sql-saturday-16-recap/

SQLSaturday Advisory Council – Newest Member Announced!

We’re pleased to announce that our third member of the Advisory Council is Buck Woody! Buck works with Microsoft and is a frequent blogger, we’re looking forward to the perspective he adds to the mix.

 

Buck Woody has been working with Information Technology since 1981. He has worked for the U.S. Air Force, at an IBM reseller as technical support, and for NASA as well as U.S. Space Command as an IT contractor. He has worked in most all IT positions from computer repair technician to system and database administrator, and from network technician to IT Manager. But it is the database field he always returns to. He has been a DBA and Database Developer on everything from an Oracle system running on a VAX to SQL Server and DB2 installations. Buck has a business degree and several industry certifications, including MCSE, MCDBA and Brainbench DBA. He is the author of over 300 SQL Server articles and four published SQL Server books; he is the site personality on InformIT.com's SQL web, and was the President of the Tampa SQL User's Group for 5 years. He was awarded the Microsoft MVP Award in 2006 for SQL Server, and started work in the SQL Server Team at Microsoft a year later. He has over twenty years extensive professional and practical experience in computer networks and network design. Experienced in design and management of business and technical systems, as well as marketing and training those systems to the user community and corporate officers.

SQLSaturday Advisory Council – Andy Leonard Joins the Team!

On Friday we announced Kevin Kline as our first member, today we’re pleased to announce that MVP and SSIS guy Andy Leonard has accepted our invitation to join the Council. He’s a SQL Server MVP, speaker, and a major force behind the Richmond Code Camp (coming up on Oct 3,2009). He’s been a consultant, a manager, and an employee, and he really “gets” community.

Here’s some more about him:

 

Andy Leonard is a SQL Server database developer, MCSD, and engineer who resides in central Virginia. He is co-author of Professional SQL Server 2005 Integration Services (Wrox, 2006), Professional Software Testing with Visual Studio 2005 Team System: Tools for Software Developers and Test Engineers (Wrox, 2007), and founded VSTeamSystemCentral.com. An engineer - by training and at heart - Andy began working with Business Intelligence in the mid-1990's when he developed one of the first web-based Manufacturing Execution Systems: Plant-Wide Webs.  Andy's experience includes SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) Extract-Transform-Load (ETL) development and architecture, data warehouse architecture and development, and web and mobile application architecture and development. An experienced project manager, he enjoys translating between business and developer groups – applying Visual Studio Team System's capabilities in the business ecosystem.

SQLSaturday #28 Announced

Patrick Leblanc and the team from Baton Rouge are already into plans for their next event on August 14th, 2010, in Baton Rouge. Good to see them getting a great start by locking in the date now!

SQLSaturday Advisory Council – First Member Announced

We posted on Wednesday about our plans for the Advisory Council, and today we’re pleased to announce our first member, Kevin Kline. If you take a look at his bio below you’ll see a tremendous amount of experience across the board – technical, management, community, and volunteering. Our thanks to Kevin for volunteering his time to help us do great things with SQLSaturday!

 

Kevin Kline

Kevin Kline is the Technical Strategy Manager for SQL Server Solutions at Quest Software, a leading provider of award winning tools for database management and application monitoring on the SQL Server platform. A Microsoft SQL Server MVP since 2004, Kevin is a founding board member of the international Professional Association for SQL Server (PASS) and served as president from 2002-2006. He is the lead author of SQL in a Nutshell and a co-author of Pro SQL Server 2005 Database Design and Optimization and Database Benchmarking: Practical Methods for Oracle & SQL Server. Kevin writes monthly columns for SQL Server Magazine and Database Trends & Applications and blogs at SQLBlog.com and SQLMag.com. Kevin is a top rated speaker, appearing at international conferences like Microsoft TechEd, the PASS Community Summit, Microsoft IT Forum, DevTeach,and SQL Connections. When he’s not pulling his hair out over work, he loves spending time with his four kids and in his garden.

SQLSaturday Advisory Council

Cross posted on the SQLSaturday blog as well.

We started SQLSaturday back in May 2007 because we wanted a SQL event in Orlando, a chance for SQL people to have as much fun as the developers were having at the Orlando Code Camp. We tried to think one step ahead; can we share infrastructure and knowledge to make it happen in other cities too? Back then that seemed awfully ambitious, but two years later we’ve had 20 plus events and more on the way. So what’s next?

One of the things we’ve run into is that we’re (Brian, Steve, and I) are so immersed in the details and have been so many events that we start to lose perspective. Are we doing a good job for the speakers and sponsors? Are we evangelizing too much or too little? Are we staying focused on our original goal? What else can we do to add value without exceeding our mandate?

Given our growth we also wanted to give the SQL community a formal voice. We discussed converting to a not for profit and selecting a board, but that is a big step – another tax return, legal implications, overhead added to the decision process, and costs. The latter is a challenge because we’re currently a zero budget organization, we don’t collect any fees to subsidize the site. So…what to do? We decided to take a baby step and select an Advisory Council and get them involved in some of the decisions. Why select and not elect? Simplicity. Rather than come up with a bunch of rules and process (heavy), what we really need is advice. That advice might lead us someday to be a not for profit, but for now why not get a few people with experience in business and community to help us go from year two to year three?

We’ve invited some people that we know well and that we think can give us a good variety of opinions to join the AC. It was tough choosing, we know a lot of good people. Tomorrow we’ll announce our first advisor – a little suspense!

Notes on SQLSaturday #16

SQLSaturday #16 in South Florida went very well, the final attendee count being 300 or slightly higher – the new record!  We’ll get some follow up links posted later this week. Scott Klein & Herve Roggero did a nice job and are already looking ahead to their next event in August 2009.

Comments on SQLSaturday #17 from Patrick Leblanc

http://www.sqlservercentral.com/blogs/sqldownsouth/default.aspx

Learning at LSU - SQLSaturday #17

(posted by Steve Jones)

I attended SQLSaturday #17 in Baton Rouge this past weekend. It was the 4th event that I've been to like this, and I think it was an amazing success. I posted a few notes at my SQLServerCentral blog, and you can read some raw thoughts there. However, I had a few more logistical items that I wanted to add here.

1. Timing - This event was put together in basically 2 months by Patrick LeBlanc and the Baton Rouge SQL Server user group. They rushed few a few things, but for the most part I think this was amazing and it really goes to show what a few dedicated people can accomplish. I think there were 4 or 5 main people that got things done, but Patrick led the way.

2. Venue - The venue was at the LSU campus, and all of the events I've been to used college campuses. I think this is an outstanding idea for anyone that wants to put one together. LSU has a strong alumni group, and a number of the organizers had attended the school. I highly recommend that you use local colleges and check with your membership to see if you have alumni in your group.

3. Local Sponsors - We have a few national sponsors for the events, but a lot of work was put in by a local consutling company. They do some regional work, but they not only had a couple people manning the booth they set up, but they also volunteered for setup, takedown, and at the after party. One of their people helped with printing and organizing little things as well. It's worth a call to local consulting and staffing companies to see if they want to help.

4. Closing things down - There seem to be tons of prizes at the end of the day to giveaway, often 30, 40, or more books. At this event there everyone gathered in the main lecture room, about 110-120 people, and numbers were drawn out of a box. Actually they had a web page displaying things, but that went too slow. Two suggestions here:
- Make sure that you test your method and it moves quickly
- Put the table with books somewhere that you can queue people up in a line to pick out their book. Everyone wants to win, but they also want to get done.

5. Get user counts - They missed counts in the rooms, and so of the 202 people attending, we don't know how many went to which session. We would like to enhance this site to include that feedback, but it would be great to get some numbers from other events to help groups plan room sizes for sessions.

6. Give more prizes for evals - There was a drawing for an iPod Nano at the end from the session evals. I'd suggest that you give away 5 or 6 prizes, maybe one for every slot or track and one large one. It gets people to stay and also fill out more evals.

Overall it was a great event, and ran as smoothly as the ones I've seen planned for 6 months. I asked the group to write a few blog posts about the experiences, so look for them soon.

Early Feedback on SQLSaturday #17

I just finished up a call with Patrick Leblanc, the event lead, and it seems that thing went pretty well. Attendance of about 200, no major problems, and already working on a date for next year! Congrats to Patrick and team for doing such a great job. Patrick is writing up details and we’ll get that published soon.