How to burn down your house while frying a turkey

It’s an odd query, yes, but in preparation to write this post I actually typed the above phrase into my browser.  No, I’m certainly not looking to burn down my house.  In fact, wait here while I clear my search history, just in case. For the sake of argument, let’s say you’re planning to fry a turkey over the upcoming…


Join me in DC for a full day of Biml

I’m excited to announce that my Linchpin People colleague Reeves Smith and I will be delivering a full day Biml preconference seminar the day before the upcoming SQL Saturday in Washington, DC.  This seminar, entitled “Getting Started with Biml”, will introduce attendees to the awesomeness of Business Intelligence Markup Language (Biml). In this course, we’ll cover the basics of Biml…


SQL PASS 2014 Summit Diary – Day 6

Today is the last official day of the PASS Summit. The sessions will wrap up at the end of the day, and we’ll all go our separate ways and resume our semi-normal lives. Having delivered my presentation yesterday, my official PASS duties are over, and I’m planning to spend the day taking in a few sessions and networking. 08:15am: No…


SQL PASS Summit 2014 Diary – Days 3-5

The last two days have been an absolute blur.  As I first posted this week, I had planned to blog daily about my goings-on, but I’ve been running nonstop – all good things, fortunately – but it interrupted my plans to blog every day. Day 3: Tuesday 08:00am: Headed back to the MVP Summit.  Rain again. 06:00pm: Back in Seattle,…


PASS Summit 2014 Diary – Day 2

It’s another beautiful day in Seattle. And by beautiful, I mean overcast and threatening rain. Today will be mostly consumed by the MVP Summit, with some fun stuff scheduled for later in the day. At 6pm today, I’m headed back to the Tap House for BI Over Beers, a gathering of business intelligence professionals sponsored by Varigence. 08:00am: On the…


PASS Summit 2014 Diary – Day 1

Today is the first day of official activities for the week. The PASS Summit hasn’t yet started, but I’ll be spending the day at the MVP Summit, surrounded by a few hundred people much smarter than I am. The details of the MVP Summit are all covered under NDA, so today’s update will be brief. 06:00am: I woke up and…


PASS Summit 2014 Diary – Day 0

This week, I’m attending two different summit events in the Seattle area.  On Sunday through Tuesday, I’ll be participating in the Microsoft MVP Summit in Bellevue, Washington.  For the remainder of the week, I’ll be attending and presenting at the PASS Summit in Seattle.  Although there is much I won’t be sharing (especially at the beginning of the week), I’m…


Five people you should meet at the PASS Summit

As I write this, I’m airborne and on my way to Seattle for the summit week (the Microsoft MVP Summit, followed by the PASS Summit). I was struck with the notion – and not for the first time – that I’m not really looking forward to these events for the technical content as much as I’m looking forward to networking…


It’s That Time Again

“It’s the most wonderful time of the year…” No, not the end-of-year festival of repetitive music, overeating, and trampling on other people to find that perfect gift. No, it’s time again for the PASS Summit, the annual gathering of SQL Server and data professionals from around the world. The event, which is run by the organization formerly known as the…


Resolving SSDT-BI Installation with IsVisualStudio2012ProInstalled() error

Recently I was building a new virtual machine for presentations, and loaded up my usual battery – Windows 7, SQL Server 2012, and SSDT-BI.  The installation of these pieces went as expected, and everything appeared to work well – until I attempted to execute an SSIS package on this new setup.  When I did so, I received the following cryptic…