Saturday, February 04, 2012

SQL Rally 2012 - I'm hoping to present a Pre-Con

This is a Shameless Plug to get your VOTE. Read on for some back story, and information about my and Chris Shaw's pre-con we are hoping to present.



SQL Rally is coming soon. May 10-11, in Dallas Texas, to be exact.
A couple days before this event, you will find various souls attending Pre-Conference sessions. 6 have been selected already. You can see them here. There were a few Pre-Cons that were not selected initially and have been served up for Community Vote. You can vote for them here.

As you peruse the available sessions, you will see one called "How to be a DBA - A Utility Belt of tools". This session is one conceived by myself and Chris Shaw (blog | twitter). The idea for this session came about as I watched Chris present last year in Utah his Utility Database session. It was then that I realized that he and I had had very similar experiences as we have supported databases throughout our careers.

Back in 2004 I became involved with PASS when I attended my first summit. I had been attending a local User Group and had even spoken a couple times at the User Group meetings. This was a scary and exhilarating prospect to stand up in front of people and talk about stuff. Some stuff that others knew much more about than I did. But I did it nonetheless. And loved it.
I have found that as I speak to folks, sharing my knowledge, I always learn form them as well. Really. This isn't one of those things you say. I do enjoy the interaction and almost always learn from the experience. Often it is new ways to look at what I do. This is priceless to me.

I have spoken at various events, User Groups, Code Camps, SSWUG virtual events, PASS SIG meetings and SQL Saturdays. As I have spoken, I have stretched and grown. I am a better DBA now because of my past experiences, including speaking and presenting. As I have spoken, I have challenged myself into bigger an better. Thus my desire to perform a pre-con at SQLRally. At the other events I have presented at, I have always felt bad that my sessions were level 100, and not level 300. But I have a certain set of skills and ideas that I feel are appropriate for this level of session. I often think back to when I started in this career, and had wished that someone would have taught me the things that I am teaching.

This same session was presented in Colorado Springs SQL Saturday 104. I was pretty worried about it, and hoped that it would come across well. Speaking for an hour is one thing. Doing that for 4+ hours is bigger. Doing it for 8 straight... well, I'm not there yet. First things first.

This pre-con will discuss various topics. Some of these I have presented many times in other venues. Chris has presented his portions as well. We are fine tuning this information, and regurgitating this for your benefit.

For this session, we will talk about the following:
  • Daily/Weekly/Monthly DBA task checklist
  • Utility Database
  • Monitoring
  • Release Management
  • Data File Size monitoring and manipulations
  • Documentation
All these topics will be presented in such a way as to help you, the attendee, the ability to learn valuable skills, and implement them when back in the office the next Monday.

After all this, I am asking you to look at the sessions available at SQL Rally. If you have some that stand out to you, vote for them. I would hope that mine would be voted for as well. Even if you will not be attending, know that this session will help someone out.

I hope to be able to present it. If not at SQL Rally, then another time, another place. I will continue to push this session. Practicing the presentation. Fine tuning it. Sharing my knowledge and ideas. Hopefully helping someone, somewhere, sometime.

Go and visit Chris Shaw's blog where he too pleads for your votes here.


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