Hey Folks, Have you ever been about to take a trip somewhere new and thought ‘hey, I wonder if I’m close enough to a PASS Chapter to catch their meeting’ or for speakers, ‘if I can speak at their meeting’? Well guess what, I’ve had the same question. So I went to the PASS website and tried to figure out if Abilene was close to Houston. Unfortunately there was no easy way for me to figure that out because the chapters were all listed on separate pages and there is no map. So I did what I’m sure everyone does, I sent an email to Blythe Morrow ( twitter ) saying hey Blythe, “we need a map off all the PASS chapters around the world”. Blythe said “That’s a great idea Aaron!! When can you have it done?” Doh! I didn’t realize that I was volunteering myself for this but I figure hey this is our PASS so I smiled and said “I don’t know, send me the data and we’ll see”. I built out a map, and we ran into some issues with chapters not having quite the right address the software could recognize. Fun stuff like that. Along the way I realized Rob Farley ( blog | twitter ) not only knows how to do this stuff, but can even do it with Silverlight. I roped him into my little guerilla-community-service project, but we quickly noticed a problem: quite a few of the chapters have addresses that are not where the group actually meets but instead where the chapter leader lives or works. That being said, we quickly realized that we now need all 211 chapters to give us their meeting addresses, not their mailing address. Right now all we can show you is a static map of the chapters in the US. If we can get all of the addresses from all of the chapter leaders verified, we can give you a zoom-able map of all the chapters in the world sometime soon (*that soon part is completely up to the chapter leaders). What needs to be done? We have sent out an email to all chapter leaders asking for at the very least their meeting address and which day of the month the chapter meets. If they also want to include a twitter handle for the group and/or chapter leaders, a picture of the chapter leader(s), chapter logo, or anything along those lines we can add those as well. Please send this information as a reply to the email that has been sent out to all of the Chapter Leaders. [Click on the map for the full size version] del.icio.us Tags: PASS,Local Chapters,Map
April, 2010:
I’ll Be Speaking at geekSpeak
Next week I am giving a PowerShell for Data Professionals session on MSDN’s geekSpeak. If you haven’t heard of geekSpeak all you really need to know is they have one primary rule for presenters:Your webcast is limited to only 1 Power Point slide. geekSpeak presentations focus on practical live examples and interactive question and answer sessions that allow you to learn from a presentation in a way that you can immediately start applying to your job. https://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/WebCastEventDetails.aspx?EventID=1032449694&EventCategory=4&culture=en-US&CountryCode=US If you haven’t caught this presentation at a SQL Saturday yet, or if you want to see it again, then this is a chance to watch from your desk and follow along in Powershell for yourself. The show is at 3pm Eastern/Noon Pacific. You can see previous geekSpeak shows and subscribe to their feed here. Please stop by and heckle me check it out. del.icio.us Tags: PowerShell,Webcast,geekSpeak,Channel 9,MSDN
I’ll Be Speaking at geekSpeak
Next week I am giving a PowerShell for Data Professionals session on MSDN’s geekSpeak. If you haven’t heard of geekSpeak all you really need to know is they have one primary rule for presenters:Your webcast is limited to only 1 Power Point slide. geekSpeak presentations focus on practical live examples and interactive question and answer sessions that allow you to learn from a presentation in a way that you can immediately start applying to your job. https://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/WebCastEventDetails.aspx?EventID=1032449694&EventCategory=4&culture=en-US&CountryCode=US If you haven’t caught this presentation at a SQL Saturday yet, or if you want to see it again, then this is a chance to watch from your desk and follow along in Powershell for yourself. The show is at 3pm Eastern/Noon Pacific. You can see previous geekSpeak shows and subscribe to their feed here. Please stop by and heckle me check it out. del.icio.us Tags: PowerShell,Webcast,geekSpeak,Channel 9,MSDN
Quick Blog: SQL Saturday Map Updated
Hey folks, I did a quick update to the SQL Saturday Map. I went ahead and color coded the cities that have already done a SQL Saturday in a previous year as Green, cities that are holding their first SQL Saturday this year as Yellow, and cities that are in discussion to hold a SQL Saturday but aren’t official yet as Turquoise. Has anyone else noticed that despite being home to a SQL conference, Las Vegas hasn’t held one yet? Or as Brad Shultz pointed out, San Francisco nor Silicon Valley have held one. I wonder if there’s a Chapter in Key West? I know there’s one in the Cayman’s; I’d love to speak there. I also built another map using the same colors to show where you can still catch a SQL Saturday this year. Did you know that you can learn some PowerShell at almost every one of these events? I will update this one later and try to include the info off the location page and things like that. del.icio.us Tags: SQL Saturday,Map
Quick Blog: US Map of SQL Saturdays
Just a quick post here. Yesterday there was a discussion around the notion of SQL Saturdays hitting a saturation point. Statements like that remind me of the guy who was the head of the patent office and said that there was nothing left to patent. I say that because I think that if we are in fact being successful with these events, as we expand the capabilities of DBAs DBDs and BIDs around the country, we will also expand what they want to learn next. Not to mention the value proposition that these people bring to the table at their jobs. Who knows, maybe I’m wrong and we’ll look back at this post 4 years from now and say “wow Aaron, that was a dumb prediction wasn’t it”. In any event Andy Warren ( blog | twitter ) thought before we got too far into this discussion we should have a look at a map so that we’re all working from the same frame of reference. I’m currently working on some mapping stuff that you’ll find out more about later this week so I volunteered to whip up this map. It’s basic and shows all SQL Saturdays past and currently scheduled on the home page. If you click on the map it will take you to a larger version of it. There looks to be a lot of open space there in the middle, plus I hear they do SQL in Canada (or at least organize events around it). I think a city the size of Atlanta could easily handle 2 SQL Saturdays per year depending on size; and the greater L.A. area could probably handle 4 per year so long as they move it around. What do you guys and gals think? del.icio.us Tags: SQL Saturday,Map
I’ll be speaking at SQL Saturday #41 in Atlanta
Because simply helping organize the event isn’t enough Stuart ( blog | twitter ) decided that I should speak at SQL Saturday #41 in Atlanta too. I’d like to take this opportunity to point out that not only is he not speaking at this SQL Saturday but he scheduled me for 2 sessions! OK, enough smack-talk. This year we will be hosting over 30 speakers including 6 MVPs, and around a half-dozen speakers from Microsoft. We’re lucky enough to have planned on having David Rodriguez present 3 session on SQL Server 2008 R2 right after it launched earlier this week (yep we planned the whole thing out that way ). We’ve got 250 registered and 65 people on the wait list so the next time we do this “we’re gonna need a bigger boat”. If you’re one of those people on the wait list we’ll be glad to have you join us if we have room after 9 am. If you’re not anywhere near Atlanta there are SQL Saturdays happening in New York and Southern California this weekend as well. My sessions are going to be on Virtualization using Hyper-V and SCVMM (Systems Center Virtual Machine Manager) and Windows PowerShell. Start Time 1 Centennial Park 1 Grant 1 Piedmont Park 2 Buckhead 2 Chastain Park 2 Highlands 2 Midtown 08:30 AM Mike Femenella Introduction to Performance Tuning Robert Cain Introduction to Data Warehousing / BI Louis Davidson Database Design Fundamentals Jonathan Kehayias Auditing User Activity 101 Michael Clifford When GEO meets SQL: Hotwiring Data to Locations Dan Murray Ad Hoc Visual Analysis Kendal Van Dyke Getting started in blogging and technical speaking 9:45 AM Kevin Boles SQL Server Memory Deep Dive Tejas Patel Introduction to Data Mining Whitney Weaver Solving Real World Problems With DMVs Geoff Hiten Clustering for Mere Mortals Ryan Duclos Common Table Expressions Mike Femenella Loading Data In Real Time Janis Griffin Tuna Helper for SQL Server DBA’s 11:00 AM David Rodriguez SQL Server 2008 R2 Overview – Session 1 Mark Tabladillo SS2008 Data Mining with Excel 2010 and PowerPivot Kevin Boles Advanced TSQL Solutions Geoff Hiten Scale Out the DBA (Enterprise Policy Management) Chris Eargle RESTful Data Chris Skorlinski Q&A with MS SQL Escalation Kendal Van Dyke The (Solid) State Of Drive Technology 01:00 PM Whitney Weaver A Lap Around SQL Server 2008 Master Data Services Evan Basalik Troubleshooting SSRS Performance Kevin Boles Common TSQL Programming Mistakes Aaron Nelson PowerShell for the Data Professional Troy Gallant Introduction to Transactional Replication Robert Cain Off and Running with PowerPivot for Excel 2010 Meredith Ryan-Smith Work/Life Balance? Just A Myth? 02:15 PM David Rodriguez SQL Server 2008 R2- BI Drill Down Session 2 Ryan Duclos Can you control your reports? Louis Davidson Database Design Patterns Chris Skorlinski Introduction to Change Data Capture Aaron Nelson Virtualize This! Janis Griffin Wait-Time Based SQL Server Performance Management Evan Basalik SQL Azure: Data in the Cloud is a Good Thing 03:30 PM David Rodriguez SQL Server 2008 R2- DBA Drill Down Session 3 Robert Cain Full Text Searching – A Guide for DBAs & Devs Jennifer McCown T-SQL Code Sins Chris Skorlinski Introduction to Merge Replication Audrey Hammonds The Art and Science of Data Modeling Jonathan Kehayias Troubleshooting SQL with Event Notifications Glen Gordon Survey of Windows Azure Platform Storage Options 04:45 PM Dave Turpin De-mystifying Execution Plan Analysis Noah Subrin Data Warehouse Assessments – What,Why, and How Jack Corbett Why I Use Stored Procedures and You Should Too! Kendal Van Dyke Configuring SQL Access for the Web Developer Jennifer McCown T-SQL Starter Kit Tejas Patel What is Microsoft StreamInsight? Evan Basalik Diagnosing Connectivity Issues with SQL Server Remember to dress in layers and I hope to see everyone there tomorrow. LiveJournal Tags: SQL Saturday,PowerShell,Virtualization,SQL Server 2008 R2
PASS Virtual Chapters Late April Presentations
To finish up the month of April we’ve got sessions from AppDev and DBA and I’m even including one from PASS on ‘Intro to Speaking At PASS’. The AppDev group will be hosting the SARGability session twice, once for people having Lunch in Australia or Dinner in L.A. and once as a Late lunch for people in the UK (*I think). _____________________________________________________________ Understanding SARGability (to make your queries run faster) April 27th 12:30 PM Adelaide, AUS CST (GMT +9:30) [April 26th at 8:00 PM PDT (GMT -7)] Add to Calendar (AUS) April 27th 8:00 AM EDT (GMT -4) Add to Calendar Presenter: Rob Farley SARGable means Search ARGument able. It relates to the ability to search through an index for a value, but unfortunately, many database professionals don’t really understand it. This can lead to queries which miss out on the potential to run much quicker. This is a talk involving lots of demos, showing plenty of queries and execution plans. Any time I’m not typing on the screen, I’ll be waving my hands around to explain things, with apologies to those tuned in through Live Meeting. Rob Farley: Rob Farley runs LobsterPot Solutions, a consultancy based in Adelaide, Australia. He has been consulting in IT since completing a Computer Science degree with first class honours in 1997 and using SQL Server since 1998. He is a regular presenter at conferences such as TechEd Australia, heads up the Adelaide SQL Server User Group and holds many Microsoft certifications. He is a Microsoft Certified Trainer and is a recipient of the Microsoft MVP Award for SQL Server. Rob has also helped create several exams for Microsoft Learning, and has recently written two chapters for the book SQL Server MVP Deep Dives. Rob’s blog can be read at http://sqlblog.com/blogs/rob_farley/ How do I view the presentation? Attendee URL (AUS): Live Meeting link Attendee URL: Live Meeting Link _____________________________________________________________ SQL Server 2008 Audit April 28, Noon Eastern Time (GMT -4) Presenter: Thomas LaRock With SQL Server 2008 you now have the ability to set up auditing with SQL Server Audit. Attend this session for an overview of SQL Server Audit, learn how to initially configure an audit for your server or databases, and examine the audit logs to report on the information that is captured. Thomas LaRock: Thomas LaRock is a seasoned IT professional with over a decade of technical and management experience. Thomas is a member of Quest Software’s Association of SQL Server Experts, currently serves on the Board of Directors for the Professional Association for SQL Server (PASS), and is a SQL Server MVP. Thomas can also be found blogging at http://thomaslarock.com and is the author of DBA Survivor: Become a Rock Star DBA. Door Prize: There will be a drawing for a $50.00 Amazon Gift Certificate Registration: You can attend the meeting without registering but if you want to be entered in the drawing, you must register at https://www.livemeeting.com/lrs/8000181573/Registration.aspx?pageName=fmxpl8tdzwcrc6z0 no later than 5:00 PM Eastern on April 27th. Live Meeting Link: https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/8000181573/join?id=6K8GPR&role=attend _____________________________________________________________ Intro to Speaking At PASS: Creating a Winning Abstract (If I Can Do It, Anyone Can!) April 28, Noon Central Time (GMT -5) Presenter: Chuck Heinzelman Have you ever attended a conference (such as PASS) and thought to yourself, “Wow, I wish I could speak at something like this!” Speaking at a conference like PASS is not something reserved for the superstar speakers. Each year PASS actively calls out for presentation proposals from members of the SQL Server community. During this session we’ll talk about what goes into creating a submission for the call for speakers with the goal of reducing the fear and anxiety that can go along with the process. Live Meeting Link: https://www.livemeeting.com/lrs/0000000379_116/Registration.aspx?pageName=nk4md836r0tzp94j ______________________________________________________ Coming in May… Stuart Ainsworth presents “You Got XML In My Database? What’s Up With That?” and Patrick LeBlanc presents “Introduction to SQL Server Profiler” LiveJournal Tags: PASS,AppDev,DBA,SQL Server 2008
Some SQL Saturday Swag for the #WITs in Your Life
WIT (Women in Technology) is an important topic for us all. At least 3 of us who work with the AtlantaMDF and SQL Saturday #41 have only daughters so it’s not just important to us–it’s our legacy. When I got back from SQL Saturday #29 in Birmingham my daughter promptly stole the Telerik Ninja shirt that I had won. To make a long story short, I really liked that shirt and I have heard good things about Telerik from developers like Sahil Malik ( blog | twitter ). I decided to track down the sponsor and see if they would sponsor SQL Saturday #41 in Atlanta. They said they’d be happy to. I also mentioned that my daughter stole my shirt (without mentioning what the shirt looked like). A week later a box of swag arrived at my house and when I opened it I knew I’d need to hide them from the aspiring Geekette. I took a handful to give out at SQL Saturday #31 in Chicago they got great reactions. C# MVP Chris Eargle ( blog | twitter ) will be presenting on RESTful Data at #SQLSat41 and will also be available to answer any questions that people have about Telerik and their products. If you would like to check out their products ahead of time just explore the demos available out at their website. I love seeing companies get involved in our technical community. If you work with WIT, are organizing a SQL Saturday or even just a future User Group meeting and would like to get in touch with Telerik please drop me a comment or shoot me an email and I’ll put you in touch with them. Oh and in case you didn’t notice. Telerik also sent along a copy of the Premium Collection to raffle off. I have heard nothing about great things from developers about these tools so I wouldn’t mind winning this myself. LiveJournal Tags: SQL Saturday,WIT