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| Event Log | |
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| 13 November 2004 | |
| No more event logging cause I started blogging (well, back in June ;). Read my blog here. | |
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20 May 2004 |
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Well, it's been a long time since I entered data into my event log and for that I'm really sorry! It's been an AMAZING year with some really exciting events. I've been fortunate enough to have been invited to many great SQL Server-related conferences and this year is no exception. Speaking of which, I fly out tomorrow for Microsoft's Tech Ed in San Diego. It's an intense week ahead for me but it should also be very exciting. I'll be delivering a pre-conference workshop on Sunday and it's a whole new workshop for me. The idea was started by Matt Nunn in SQL Server Technical Marketing. Matt wanted a way for people who were struggling with SQL Server to get enough information on how to develop data driven systems that they would be more confident with SQL Server and able to get more out of their Tech Ed experience. To a certain extent it's a way for developers to better understand the backend server and why handling certain things on the backend is not a bad idea. More than anything the workshop covers best practices.
In the end, I'm very excited about these materials... it's probably going to be WAY too much for one day (have I ever ended on time? ;-) but it's a great resource for after the conference too. It's not heavy into Admin stuff at all but enough to be a developer without a full-time dBA, per se. The materials are mostly focused on database development: database creation, table creation, writing queries (search arguments, inner/outer joins), creating objects (sps, views, triggers, functions) and then a practical approach to performance tuning. I tried to fit in all of the suggestions that I gathered from some of my favorite SQL geeks... And thanks goes to Mark Souza, Gert Drapers, Darren Green, Richard Waymire, Ward Pond, and Patrick Conlan for all of their suggestions. But - I have to admit, it was really tough to get everything in for only a one day workshop. At a minimum I put in dozens of best practices and focus on the right tools for the job (ITW, BPA, EM - diagramming, graphical queries, QA, etc.). Should be a fun day! After the workshop things are still a bit intense... My first session is Monday afternoon, second session is Tuesday morning and then I'll head off to the MVP Community booth. Wednesday I have a morning session again and then I'll be participating in a "Women in Technology Panel" over lunch. I've never been involved in a panel like this but I'm looking forward to chatting with everyone about goals and career focus - especially for women in this industry - I've just had a great time in databases and computing! I'll be heading over to the RD (Regional Director) community booth on Wednesday as well. Thursday is my last day but also my craziest TechEd speaking day - one morning session and then the last two sessions of the day - to make THREE! I'll probably need a beer after that!!! Outside of my sessions I'm hoping to find time to attend a few sessions! Speakers I'm really looking forward to seeing are David Campbell, Gert Drapers, Mark Souza and Girish Chander. I hope I'll have time but if not I'll look forward to receiving the DVD. Isn't that an awesome resource?! If you didn't know it; Microsoft produces a DVD-pack with all Tech Ed sessions recorded on it. This year it's free to ALL attendees. Make sure to stop by the MVP and RD community booths and I hope to see you in one, two or all :) of my sessions. |
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7 July 2003 |
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Just back from Tech Ed Barcelona where I had a great time. The attendees were a blast - great questions, lots of enthusiam, and even some dancing (will explain later) and the speaker comraderie was the most amazing I've ever seen at such a large event. In fact, returning to the hotel on Friday afternoon, a group of us (Gert E.R. Drapers, Kevin Collins, Juval Löwy, Clemens Vasters, and David Platt) were sitting around chatting as we looked over the final sessions scores. "Amazing!" "Yes, unbelievable!!" We all agreed, Rafal was amazing. Rafal Lukawiecki (Project Botticelli) took the top four slots at the event. For those of you in the U.S. you're not likely to know Rafal - not yet anyway - but in Europe he's been the top speaker at Tech Ed for the past 3 years (2001, 2002, 2003). He's clear, precise, technical, humorous (my favorite line of the week was "no ladies and gentleman, that's not encryption, that's Polish.") and just one of the nicest guys I've met in a long time. I look forward to the pleasure of working with him again! As for Tech Ed - it was well organized (thanks Sam, Heidi and Jo) and everything ran smoothly - even when something didn't. In fact, this is partially the reason for why I've started this new page - the Event Log. I need to tell a bit of a story. On my first session, which was on the first day of Tech Ed, I was just beginning my 4th demo and the system seemed to freeze - or at the very least - slow to an unbearable crawl. I had no idea what the problem was and standing on stage with hundreds of people in the audience I was not about to start troubleshooting. I switched to the powerpoint backup for the rest of the session. After the session I began troubleshooting and found my first disk errors at 37 minutes into my session. Talk about timing! Yes, it was the disk and I think I had four more successful boots until chkdsk -f decided that the disk was not repairable. It was now evening and I had the first session slot at 8:30 am the next day. So I went to see the PCI folks - these are the hardware folks that work an unbelievable amount of hours "behind the scenes" making sure all of the hardware works - for demos, for schedules, for evaluations, email, etc. You often don't notice them and that's what makes them so good - when all is well, you don't really know they're there. In fact, they work really hard to be invisible. They re-imaged a backup laptop they had on hand and gave it to me to setup for Wednesday. I did and I used the backup laptop for the rest of the week...but the story doesn't stop there. My main (and at the time, dead) system was a Dell Latitude and Dell was at Tech Ed - as an exhibitor. On the advice of Ken Getz, I went over to chat with Dell. I really didn't think they could do much but as I was only to be home for 3 business days before I returned to Europe for the SQL Server Summer Academy in Croatia, I had to do something. I really didn't have a lot of time to spare when I got back to the states. Well, to make a long story short - Dell Spain and specifically Daniele Savoretti - were AMAZING. Daniele took time to contact the local support, order a new disk and manage to get it over to the conference center while there was still another day left of the conference. The PCI guys took a bit of time to help re-image my disk from a backup of the original. Right now, I'm sitting at a machine that I'd really never have known what had happened without having lived through the nightmare while on stage. For the rest of the week I had the backup laptop configured, Gert Draper's machine configured for my demos ("just in case" - thanks Gert!) and Fernando Guerrero's system was ready and waiting as well (thanks Fernando)! I was ready for just about anything and it was a great lesson to have learned. Even with backups, nothing beats having your own laptop. At no point had I had data loss (thanks to a USB key that I backup current files to while I'm on the road and a full system backup which I did the evening before leaving town) but I certainly had downtime. So, I want to end this event report on a couple of thanks... first, technical thanks! I must admit that I couldn't have gotten through the week without the help of PCI (specifically Allan Clark) and Dell (specifically Daniele Savoretti). Second, fun thanks! On Friday evening we had the speaker party. What a great event. Tech Ed Europe was over and all went well. Dinner was lovely and dancing followed. While out dancing at the Port Olympico Friday night a gentleman asked me if I was Kimberly Tripp... OK, not entirely a small world story as there were more than 7000 people who attended and/or were involved with Tech Ed this year BUT still funny! He's from Iceland and it was great fun running into him. Nice meeting you Thorvaldur. Third and final - attendee thanks! Thanks everyone - with all of you I wouldn't do what I do. If you're interested in accessing resources and/or learning more about speakers from Tech Ed Europe 2003 - Barcelona, Spain check out some of these sites: Main Microsoft Tech Ed Europe Site: http://www.microsoft.com/europe/teched/home.asp. Save the date! Microsoft® Tech·Ed 2004 Europe will take place on 28 June - 2 July 2004 in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Speaker Sites: Gert E.R. Drapers: www.sqldev.net Fernando Guerrero: www.callsql.com and www.SolidQualityLearning.com Juval Löwy: www.idesign.net Rafal Lukawiecki: www.projectbotticelli.co.uk David Platt: www.rollthunder.com Introducing Microsoft .NET by David Platt Clemens Vasters: www.newtelligence.net |
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