“When are we going to see you up there?” Mark Vaillancourt had just finished presenting DANGER: The Art and Science of Presenting at SQL Saturday #238. He and Mike Donnelly had put the question to me as they were packing up. I demurred; surely that was best left to experts like them. They persisted, noting how I was always at our user group meetings and how a novice viewpoint was often more helpful for beginners. Being an audience member was one thing, I protested, and speaking was quite another. They kept on the offensive but I managed to slink away without any firm commitments. Nonetheless, they’d struck a chord. Continue reading
Category Archives: Tech Community
No Walls. No Emails. Just SQL.
After the dust has settled from our national brouhaha, the PASSMN SQL Server community will hold elections for 3 of its 6 board positions. Paul Timmerman (Board Chair), Jim Dorame (Director of Program Development), and Riley Major (Director of Technology) are ending their 2-year terms. Cecil Spivey (Director of Membership / Treasurer), Eric Zierdt (Director of Corporate Development), and Jim Horn (Director of SQL Saturday) will stay on to finish the second year of their terms. Continue reading
DocuMNtary Film Release
You know how every web site has a quick, inspirational video with energizing music, quick takes, and talking heads? Scale that up to over an hour where the product is the Minnesota technology community itself and that’s DocuMNtary. It’s an appropriate analogy because filmmaker Nick Roseth said the project was all about “scaling inspiration.” Continue reading
That Diversity
The last session of That Conference is about to begin. I’ve been steeped in technology for three days. I oscillate from confident and excited to overwhelmed and tired. There is so much to learn. I want to play with my nascent Swift app, but another talk beckons… Continue reading
The Gift that Keeps on Giving
Chris Yates is hosting T-SQL Tuesday #080 and asks us to come up with a SQL-related present such as the gift of knowledge. Rather than simply share some tidbit of information, why not teach folks to fish? Continue reading
SQL Server Community Speaker Ratings with Joind.In
Earlier this year Stuart Ainsworth wrote about some controversy over speaker selection for the PASS Summit. He lamented the “lack of a repeatable objective tool for speaker evaluations”. His solution was SpeakerRate.com.
I have also been dismayed by the paper slips used by the SQL community. As technology and data professionals, we really ought to have a database of speaker evaluations. Continue reading
SQL Saturday #332 – Minnesota
PASSMN once again put on a great SQL Saturday. Kudos to Rick Krueger (Blog | @DataOgre) and the whole team for putting on a great event. Continue reading
SQL Saturday #238
I will be attending SQL Saturday #238 tomorrow– or rather, later today.
I am amazed at the quantity and quality of *free* training available for SQL Server in the form of blog posts, webinars, training videos, user group meetings, and SQL Saturdays (an entire day of free, seminar-style training provided by industry experts– often Microsoft MVPs or Microsoft Certified Masters).
I’m grateful to the community for putting these events together.