There has been a lot of conversation this week in Twitterverse related to training and conferences in the SQL Server community. I wanted to share some details and my own thoughts related to a few specific events in which I am involved (and it’s all very exciting!).
Training
First, Paul announced a new IE event that will kick off at the end of September: IE0: Immersion Event for the Accidental DBA. I am thrilled to be an instructor for this course, and I’m really looking forward to teaching with Jonathan. I worked with so many Accidental DBAs in my previous job – people who were the application administrator and also had to manage the application database. We had a fairly general class that talked about databases, and we ended up tweaking that content to create a class solely focused on teaching those application administrators what they needed to do to support their SQL Server database. In the beginning it was a half day class, but we kept coming up with more content we wanted to cover, and had expanded the training to a full day before I left. How happy am I that Jon and I now have three days to help SQL Server application administrators, Accidental DBAs, and Junior DBAs learn the basics?!
If you’re interested in attending our class, or know someone who might like attend, please check out the syllabus and registration page. And if you have any questions about the course, please do not hesitate to contact me or Jon!
Conferences
Second, I am speaking at the SQLIntersection conference in Las Vegas this fall. Kimberly blogged about it on Monday and you can see the entire lineup of sessions here. I’ll be presenting three sessions:
- Making the Leap From Profiler to Extended Events
- Free Tools for More Free Time
- Key Considerations for Better Schema Design
SQLintersection is a unique conference because it is pairs with DEVintersection and SharePointintersection, and attendees have access to sessions across multiple Windows technologies. I have more detail about my Extended Events session below, and the Free Tools session will cover usage scenarios for some of the applications I’ve discussed before in my Baselines sessions (e.g. PAL, RMLUtilities). The last session on schema design is geared toward developers – but is also appropriate for DBAs – and I have a lot of great ideas for the content as I’ve just finished recording my next Pluralsight course, Developing and Deploying SQL Server ISV Applications, which should go live next week!
And finally, I will be speaking at the PASS Summit this October in Charlotte, NC! I am very honored to had the following session selected:
Making the Leap From Profiler to Extended Events
You know how you discover something wonderful and you want everyone you meet to try it? That’s this session. I had my light bulb moment with Extended Events and believe that everyone else should use it too. But I get that there’s some hesitation, for a whole host of reasons, so I created this session to help people understand Extended Events better, using what they already know about Profiler and SQL Trace. Change is hard, I get that, and people have used Profiler and Trace for years…over a decade in some cases! But both are deprecated in 2012 and Extended Events is here to stay. You need to learn XEvents not just because it’s what you’ll use for tracing going forward, but also because it can help you troubleshoot issues in ways you’ve never been able to before.
I will also be part of a panel discussion:
How to Avoid Living at Work: Lessons from Working at Home
When I joined SQLskills last summer and started working from home, I had to make significant adjustments. Some days, working at home was just as challenging as work itself. But 10 months in, I can’t imagine not working at home. I’m really looking forward to being able to share my experiences, and also hear what my rock star colleagues have learned. If you’re thinking of working from home, or even if you currently work from home, please join me, Tom LaRock, Aaron Bertrand, Andy Leonard, Steve Jones, Grant Fritchey, Karen Lopez, and Kevin Kline for what I’m sure will be an invaluable and engaging discussion.
Whew! It’s going to be a busy fall filled with SQL Server events, but I wouldn’t have it any other way. I am very much looking forward to all of these events – and I hope to see you at one of them!