Like clockwork, another year has come and (almost) gone. It’s been a wild year on many fronts: major happenings included the devastating Haiti earthquakes, the signing into law of a landmark healthcare reform bill, a major debacle over the use of body scanners and intimate pat-downs at TSA airport security stations, the personal crash and burn of golf star Tiger…
Join me next Tuesday, December 14th at 11:00am CST as I present a webcast on behalf of the PASS AppDev Virtual Chapter. I’ll be presenting “Dynamic SSIS with Expressions and Configurations”, where I show you how to remove static elements (such as connection strings, file names, and other transient values) from your packages and placing them in easier-to-administer configurations or…
The sessions are over, and the post-cons are done; the vendor parties are but a memory, and the #sqlkaraoke music has died. Another PASS summit is in the books, one billed to be the “best PASS summit ever”, and I’d have to concur. The Best PASS Ever Perhaps it started with the entertaining (albeit ill-advised) Tina Turner impersonator during the…
My friend Jen McCown of MidnightDBA fame issued a challenge last week called “Un-SQL Friday”. The inaugural topic is on branding. Although I’ve written a little about personal branding over the years, I don’t pretend to be an expert, but I have learned a thing or two that works for me. As I mentioned in a comment on Brent Ozar’s…
Today is the last official day of the SQL PASS 2010 summit, which also means the last day for live blogging during the keynote. This has been a lot of fun, and I’m looking forward to doing it again next year. Today’s ceremonies will include a keynote by Dr. David Dewitt. Before that, PASS board member Rick Heigis gives the…
This year, PASS is taking an extra step to help identify first time summit attendees. Most attendees are given ribbons for various recognitions, including Speaker, MVP, Chapter Leader, and other accolades. This year, attendees who are attending the PASS summit for the first time are recognized with a yellow “First Timer” ribbon on their badge to allow those of us…
The second day of the SQL PASS summit has already started in unique fashion. Today is #sqlkilt day, and there are a dozen or more guys and gals dressed in fine Scottish attire. Bill Graziano, executive VP of finance for PASS, was playfully booed when he took the stage for having worn pants on kilt day. Bill took the time…
The day 1 keynote was kicked off by a Tina Turner impersonator doing a rendition of “Simply the Best”. Rushabh Mehta followed up with a Tina wig of his own, though he fortunately had a much less revealing outfit. Rushabh starts off with an overview of the PASS activities for the year. PASS has touched over 65,000 individuals this year…
This past Saturday, our NTSSUG group hosted SQL Saturday 56, which was our second SQL Saturday of the year. This event was a departure from the typical SQLSat in that it strictly focused on BI, and featured topics including SSIS, SSRS, SSAS, SharePoint, MDX, and other disciplines in and around the Microsoft BI stack. Due to space and logistical issues,…
The PASS Summit is just around the corner, less than a month away. Although I’m not presenting a session at the event, I’ll be contributing through a couple of other outlets this year. First of all, I’ll be hosting a table at the Birds of a Feather lunch on Tuesday, November 9th. The BoF lunch is designed to facilitate targeted…