Back after a couple of busy weeks, kinda looking forward to getting back into the old work routine (ah, well maybe 🙂 )

Last week was a big week, I had my first article published on SQLShack.com and there were a couple of small events going on called Docker Con 2017 and Microsoft Data Amp.

Docker announced that all the open-source projects are being consolidated under one name Moby. Not too sure what this means for the future of the project as Docker (the company) now want to focus on Enterprise (paid-for) solutions. Hopefully this is a good thing but time will tell.

The biggest announcement from Microsoft was that we now know that the next version of SQL Server will be called SQL Server 2017. Lots of new features to get stuck into but the one that caught my eye was Adaptive Query Processing.

There’s an excellent video here in which Joe Sack takes us through what AQP is and how it works. I definitely recommend that you give the video a watch.

I jokingly said on twitter that this feature is liable to put me out of a job. Obviously I don’t think that, the way I look at features like these is that they are another tool in the belt of the DBA. It will allow us to be freed up from routine tasks and focus on more in-depth work.

Plus, it’s not going to get things right all the time, is it?

Have a good week!

So SQLBits is over and I have to say that I really enjoyed attending on the Saturday, hopefully next year I’ll be able to go for the whole event.

Highlights for me included chatting to the RedGate people about their new product SQL Clone, attending Denny Cherry’s “What not to do with SQL Server” session and of course, presenting my session.

I’m still pretty new to presenting and SQLBits is a little different to SQL Saturdays! Having a microphone and a light shining on you is a bit distracting at first but I found that 10 minutes into my presentation I didn’t notice anymore.

Overall I thought my session went well, I covered everything that I wanted to and had some time at the end which allowed the attendees to ask a few questions, most of which I managed to answer (reasonably well 🙂 )

One thing I did notice, about half way through my session, was that I was enjoying it. Previously when I’ve spoken I’ve been pretty nervous so have kinda had the mentality of…let’s just get this done…so I hope the fact that I enjoyed it came across.

So all in all, pretty chuffed about how it went and I can’t wait to do more.

Have a good week!

Last week Pass announced changes to how speakers are going to be selected for their annual conference (you can read the announcement here.

There’s been a bit of a debate about the changes but as far as I can tell, these seem to be for the better (right?).

Inviting speakers with a proven track record of delivering high-quality presentations can only be a good thing and guaranteeing that a (albeit) small number of new speakers will be there will hopefully prevent presenting at Pass Summit becoming only available to a certain circle of people.

I’ve only been to the event once and I have to say, I found quite a few of the sessions there to be below-par. Don’t get me wrong, I also saw a few great sessions but if these changes improve the overall quality then I say that they are a good thing. Of course, it’s all about the execution so only time will tell if these make the expected improvements but I think Pass are doing this right.

They’ve asked for feedback here and have organised two online meetings so that we, as the community, have the chance to speak directly to them and voice any concerns that we may have.

Have a good week.

Hey all, I’m back after attending SQL Saturday in Iceland. This week’s going to be busy!

I’ve said before that SQL Saturday Iceland was the first time that I presented a full hour session. It seemed to go well although having it start at 14:50 wasn’t the best as I was kinda nervous so I stressed out for most of the day! But done now and I was pretty pleased with it as I finished on time whilst getting all my material in and I answered all the questions.

I don’t really want to write an “Advice for first time presenters” post as there are plenty of them out there but I will say a couple of things that really helped me. First one, don’t wing it. I made notes on each of the slides that I had in my deck and worked through them one by one to make sure I got everything in that I wanted to say. I then grabbed a meeting room after hours in work and went through it over and over, making sure that it flowed nicely and that I got used to referring to slides whilst talking.

Also, my demos would have required a lot of typing and parts that required things like server bounces which would have taken too long to do live so I invested in decent video editing software and it paid for itself imho. The demos worked well and I was able to talk whilst they were playing, something that I don’t think that I’d have been able to do if I was doing everything live.

So all in all, really chuffed that I’ve done it and it’s now onto SQL Bits!

Final word, Iceland is an absolute amazing country. I hired a car and went driving round for a couple of days and the scenery is nothing sort of spectacular. My advice, if you have an chance, go.

Have a good week!

Less than a week to go until SQLSaturday Iceland now, it’s going to be a busy couple of months for me but am looking forward to it. I’ll get my slides and demos uploaded here at some point.

I’ve been debating whether or not to do demos live when I’m speaking. In the past I’ve everything live but certain presentations make that a little risky. I’ve done lightening talks where I’ve performed the demo then and there but that’s because I know that the risk of something going wrong is minimal. I’m working on a local instance of SQL and am not depending on anything else (e.g. – an internet connection).

It also depends on what the demo actually is, if it’s code based then running it live means that you can talk about the code but if the code is simple and the demo is more about the process, running it live really doesn’t add anything to the table.

For my session on containers, the demos will be videos. This is in part to reduce the risk of something going wrong but mainly it’s because the code is very simple, what’s happening when I’m running it is what I want to talk about. A video demo means that I don’t have to concentrate on typing the code (you really should never type in demos, copy & paste) and can talk about what’s happening.

Doing it this way will be beneficial as I can focus entirely on the audience and not be staring at my screen. I want to engage with the audience as much as possible and make the session as good as it can be.

Have a good week!