On a more serious side, it is good to look at what I’ve been doing, check in and see what exactly I’ve been able to accomplish. I have to confess that I see what others in the community are doing and feel like I’m not doing enough. I’m not sure how some of you find the time to do everything and I’m in awe. I’m just here doing what I can.
There is a AI that compiles your LinkedIn activity and comes up with an end of year summary. There is a different one that did something similar for your Bluesky posts. The one thing that stands out is that both of them noted the importance of supporting the community based on my posts. According the LinkedIn site, my superpower is “Bridging technical expertise with community learning” and my top quote is “The best part is all of the amazing conversations I had with wonderful people who are passionate about the data platform.” I love this because I feel those statements are pretty accurate about who I am and who I strive to be.
It’s more than a week post PASS Data Community Summit and I’m finally getting around to sharing my thoughts.
From left to right: me, Andy Yun, Jeff Iannucci at the lectern
Personally, I had a blast. I was part of a Learning Pathway with Andy Yun (L | b) and our good friend Jeff Iannucci (L | b) called “Solving Real World SQL Server Problems”. We were thrilled with the number of people who came to listen to us and the level of engagement from the attendees. If you were there, thank you so much for being there! For those who filled out surveys or reached out directly with feedback, thank you! It goes a long way to helping all of us make these sessions even better. And of course, if you have questions, feel free to reach out and we’ll be happy to help.
It meant so much for me to be able to present in person. The two sessions I did this year were the first full length, in person ones that I’ve done at this conference. For the past 3 years, I have presented either virtually or pre-recorded. I don’t want to seem ungrateful for those opportunities because I was thrilled and honored to be a part of Summit; I know it’s not something everyone gets to do. And I hope those who attended those sessions got a lot out of them. But being able to present in person has been something I’ve been looking forward to doing for a long time. There’s something very different about the interaction you have with those who attend when they’re sitting in front of their individual computer screens, even if we’re all online at the same time. PASS Data Community Summit is the conference where I truly found my community and felt a part of #sqlfamily, so to be able to present face to face with attendees meant so much to me. Writing this out, it almost feels silly to make such a distinction, but I hope you understand why.
As always, this conference felt like a reunion with people in the data community. Being able to connect with those I see once a year or have connected with online is priceless. It was also amazing to see how many “first timers“ were there; I think they announced the number was around 43%. As much as I love seeing old friends, it was great interacting with new people. I hope they left with the feeling that they are now part of the larger #sqlfamily. Looking forward to seeing all of them come back next year
One of the reasons that we go to conferences is so we can learn, and I managed to catch a few sessions outside of our learning pathway. But there were so many others I wanted to support this year but wasn’t able to. I’m looking forward to seeing on the recordings when those are available. So many speakers, so little time…
Last year, the big announcement was about SQL Server 2022. This year, the “big” announcement in our space was that Fabric is now GA. It just wasn’t announced at Summit but a few blocks over at MS Ignite. (To be honest, they may have said it at Summit, but I feel like I saw more posts on social media from Ignite than hearing about it directly at Summit.) There were announcements made at Summit but none that felt as grand as last year. Maybe it’s because there wasn’t anything as big as a general release of the next version of SQL Server. We heard a lot about improvements for non SQL Server databases in Azure, general availability of a large set of Managed Instances features, a free Azure DB per subscription (preview), Azure DB hyperscale availability, and additional improvements for Azure Arc. Of these, Azure Arc definitely feels like a feature that I want to pay more attention to in general. Why is that? During the Redgate keynote, the preview of their survey of the database landscape and the instant survey during the talk showed that very few organizations were fully migrated to the cloud. Since Azure Arc can connect to on prem instances as well as databases in Azure, understanding some of how this works and the information and functionality it offers has promise. I don’t live on the admin side of the DBA house but it still is something I want to know more about. We’ll see if I’m able to dive in more.
An AI generated image of me as a superhero, courtesy of the Pure Storage booth.
Of course, AI was discussed. We saw different demos of Copilot, or AI built into new products, throughout the week along with a community keynote that highlighted the pros and cons. It will transform how we work so we need to be aware of the ways it will affect us. The biggest takeaway here was that AI is a tool and not a solution. I know we tend to confuse these things and treat tools as solutions (different rant for a different time), but if we understand the difference and how to use things like AI, we’ll be better off.
They’ve already announced the dates for PASS Data Community Summit for next year and I’m hoping to make it back. In the meanwhile, I’m going to turn my attention to some of the blog post ideas I’ve been floating around as well as other projects. And don’t worry, I’m going to try to find time to relax and catch up on all the shows that I’m way behind on.
Thank you PASS Data Community Summit! Until next year…
When I started this blog back in 2016, I wanted to make sure I wrote a blog post every March in honor of Women’s Month. I missed it last year but I want to get back in the routine. I figure as long as it was about by the end of the month, I’m good, right?
This particular post took me a long time to put together. I actually started putting it together well over a year ago. I’m not sure why it’s taken so long to hit “Post”. Perhaps because I don’t like what it says but I feel it needs to be done anyway.
I see a lot of conversations on social media related to diversity at events. It bubbles up every couple of months or so. Some organizers are great about making sure they have a diverse pool of speakers but aren’t always able to get there. Other times, the conversation is criticizing organizers who are falling short of the goal. But there seems to be a general sense that we aren’t as diverse or representative as we want to be. So I wanted to take a look to see if this is an accurate assessment.
I stared this post on my way home from Pass Data Community Summit 2022 and finishing it on Thanksgiving here in the US. There’s something that feels appropriate about this fact. Maybe because it was being inspired after attending PASS Summit 2016 and thinking about what I’m grateful for are intertwined in this one topic.
New Stars of Data is the brainchild of Ben Weissman (t) and William Durkin (t) as a platform for new speakers to get a start in the community. They paired the speaker with a mentor to help them prepare. I was lucky enough to be picked as a mentor and then moderator for this. It’s been amazing to see so many of these speakers become stars in the community so quickly. As a continuation, they have asked other speakers to contribute by writing a blog post about their experience getting started as speakers. (They also have a library of resources for speakers as well so definitely check out the New Stars website!)
It’s T-SQL Tuesday! The last one of 2020 in fact so I’m glad I’m able to pull things together to contribute.
Lisa Griffin Bohm (t|b) is hosting this month. Her challenge for us is this:
This month, I’d like those of you who have presented, or written a presentation, to share something technical THAT DID NOT RELATE to the topic of the presentation, that you’ve learned in writing or giving the presentation.
This is a great topic, so thanks for hosting this month, Lisa!
It’s official – the PASS Summit 2020 Call for Speakers is open from now (March 26th) until April 23rd. You can find the official announcement here or go straight to the submission page.
This time last year, I saw a lot of people on Twitter stressing about pulling together their abstracts and making sure they submitted on time. As I watched them go through this process, I thought about whether I wanted to submit. I wasn’t sure I was ready to do it yet. Was I a good enough speaker? Did I have a strong enough abstract? As the deadline hit, I decided not submit. There was still a small part of me that wishes I had but again I wasn’t sure I was ready for it. That’s why I made a deal with myself that if Speaker Idol was held again, then I would throw my name in the ring. We all know how that turned out….
PASS Summit 2019 – testing out the podium
Now the question for me is what to submit. I still feel like there’s extra pressure to have an amazing, high quality session because it’s PASS Summit. I definitely have a session or two that I already have ready that I think are good enough to submit and I have a new idea for one forming in the back of my mind. So, my challenge is to pull the new abstract together and clean up the existing ones so I can submit them in time.
The only thing I think I won’t get to experience this year is the stress of wondering whether I’ll get picked or not. Although submitting multiple sessions means I still get to stress about which one gets picked. But for now, I will just enjoy the fact that we knew I was speaking at Summit before we knew Bob Ward was speaking. Pretty sure he’ll still have more people attend his session than mine – which I’m perfectly OK with. I’ll take my little victories where I can find them. But I’m looking forward to seeing who else will be speaking with me this year.
If you are where I was last year – a new-ish speaker who hadn’t spoken at Summit before, I say: Submit. What’s the worst that can happen… you get picked?
I know there’s a lot of craziness in the world right now and who knows what’s going to happen or change on us. But in the meantime, I remain optimistic and am looking forward to planning for the future. See y’all in Houston!
This should be my final post about Speaker Idol 2019. I’ve said Thank You’s, I’ve told you how I put the presentation together, and now it’s time to give back. Here’s my advice for anyone who wants to do this in the future. Some of these apply regardless of whether you’re competing so I’m breaking these out in general.
I thought I’d share some more about my Speaker Idol experience. This post feels a little weird for me because I am writing about pulling together my presentation. I say this is weird because I’m not used to talking about myself like this. But my real goal in sharing this is every speaker has a different way they pull presentations together and as this was a very different presentation, I thought I’d share my process. That or I feel the need to milk the Speaker Idol win a little more. Or maybe it’s a bit of both.
This happened a couple of weeks ago now and somehow that sentence still feels surreal to write. But it happened. It’s on Twitter and everything…
I will definitely have follow up posts about my process putting everything together and advice but I thought I’d keep this one short and readable for now.
So I wanted to start with the Thank Yous, because there are a lot of them.
Deb the DBA 