Let me start this post saying I 100% empathize with the difficulties women and other underrepresented groups face with speaking. I won’t go into a dissertation on the multitude of whys in this post – except to say for me, a big part really boils down to time. And how little I often have.
But… I also know the importance of being represented. And as a neurodiverse woman that has grown up with interests where I was often the minority – I have a lifetime of frustration with having to learn things mostly from a man’s POV. That’s not to say that it doesn’t have value – it does! Tons! But lots of examples used in training things DO. NOT. EXCITE. ME. And my very unscientific polling of people shows that many do not even understand why having diversity and things that excite others, is important; even just from the perspective of getting a diverse pipeline in the IT industry.
All this to say: I run a Microsoft Data Platform user group and I want to hear your voice. I want you to know your voice is important to hear.I want you to know your voice is needed. It’s important for other women, other underrepresented groups, and yes, even for men.
That’s the easy part: saying tech needs you to speak. Across the board from my user group and with other user groups/conferences, we are seeing a serious drop in women speakers. The hard part is figuring out the logistics. Because as much as I can spout my stories all day of why it is difficult for me, I’ll bet there are 100s of reasons I haven’t considered for others. If we don’t know all the reasons, then it’s difficult to come up with solutions. So first – I invite you to tell me your reason.
Second, I realize that sometimes it has to do with confidence or inexperience. Women in tech in particular, tend to be perfectionists IME, so to speak can be a bit daunting. If that’s the case, then please please please consider applying to New Stars of Data. Why would you apply to speak if you have confidence issues or inexperience??? Because the NSoD program will assign you a mentor that will help you as much or as little as you want to overcome any real or perceived issue you may have with your abilities. (Hint: women tend to underestimate their capabilities, while men overestimate.)
Third: Reach out to me on how I can best get you an opportunity speak. This includes all people that fall into underrepresented groups. (I realize I often refer to women specifically, but this applies to all that fit in this category.)
Want to find an in-person group? I will assist to help you find one.
Want to speak virtually? I’ve got you covered.
Don’t have the schedule to do either live? We can get you up on YouTube with something you record on your time.
Want to blog about something, but don’t want to do the whole “set up a blog thing?” I got you covered on that as well.
Want to have a group of women in tech to ping ideas off of? Yep. You guessed it. I know some people.
Want help with grammar? Ok. You’ve got me on that one. It’s not my strength.
HAVE I INTERESTED YOU EVEN A LITTLE??? Maybe just to start a conversation? Or maybe you want to join me in coming up with ways to help get more diversity in speaking? Ping me!
How do you contact me? That’s an easy one too: hit me up on linkedIn or X with a quick note. And if it takes me a little bit to get back to you, then know I’m in the same boat too, but I WILL get back to you.
Earlier this year, meetup sent their obligatory email about a group I was in needing a new organizer. Like most people during COVID, I joined a lot of online meetup groups after most groups moved their sessions online. The Kansas City SQL Server User Group (#KCSSUG) was no different and fast forward to 2023, one-by-one user groups were going back to in-person events.
Look, I get it. Lots of folks wanted to go back to the physical meetings to have that in-person interaction. But that option is not always available to people, and in particular, it often isn’t available to under represented groups for a myriad of reasons. I will let you do your own homework on why that is, but I can briefly speak to my experiences as a WIT. (Hmmmm, maybe that entire subject matter would make a good blog post all on it’s own.) I won’t even address it from a neurodiverse perspective.
A WIT Perspective
Here is a quick summary of my experience with it as a WIT: 25+ years ago, as a single mom, traveling to events wasn’t even an option. I was a young mother and my parents still were in the workforce and unable to take time off to babysit for me to go to a conference (though weekends were ok). Never mind school schedules. And even though I was in IT, money was pretty tight – so traveling costs were pretty prohibitive for me. (I once had to borrow money to buy basic groceries for a week.) None of my companies ever even considered paying for me to travel to a conference (or even attend a local conference), and I would have had to use PTO (personal time off – aka: sick /vacation time) to attend. If you are a parent, you know that PTO can often be eaten up by young children for NON vacation reasons and there simply was no room for me to chance it. Otherwise I might get docked pay and my review may come back that I had too many absences. Yes, folks, that’s how it is sometimes.
Think I’m exaggerating? Consider this: even though I was an organizer for SQL Saturday in Atlanta for 8 years, and I’ve been in the industry for over 25 years, last year was the first year I have ever traveled to a conference outside my local area that wasn’t on a weekend or that a vacation wasn’t planned around (PASS Data Community Summit 2022 in case you were wondering).* Even as an organizer, I used PTO to volunteer for our Atlanta Friday pre-con sessions. And I’m a seasoned IT Professional.
Random AI generated image of a seasoned female IT worker because I was curious after I typed that phrase.
*(All thanks to the wonderful company I currently work for: Kent Corporation. I finally work for a company that understands the importance of conferences and upskilling employees. There’s a reason they’ve won a ton of employee satisfaction awards. )
Online Options
All of this to build up to why I decided to step up as the organizer of the Kansas City SQL Server User Group: to continue to have online options for those that may need it. Be it speakers, or members, or anyone that wants to catch it on our YouTube channel. Not all of our sessions are recorded, for various reasons (including my first event where something messed up with the recording), but the majority are.
Our group isn’t the only group doing this, so I’m not doing anything ground breaking here: there are still plenty of great user groups and conferences that either have real-time online options or recorded ones – which is AWESOME. Last year SQLBits was in Wales and I was a online speaker for that conference. I wouldn’t have been able to speak at that one if they didn’t have the hybrid option and I’m forever grateful.(Side note: not only did I have many people join live online, but Andy Yun of #SQLFamily took pics for me of the in-person view. SQLBits even posted the videos a few months later; here’s mine: Migrating data solutions to the cloud – a checklist.) That said, as I was looking through my emails at the beginning of the summer, I saw the number of online options getting smaller and smaller.
Thinking of that, I decided to take action and become the organizer for the KCSSUG, and keep it virtual. I’m a strong believer that virtual options help play a role in DEI, and instead of complaining about the diminishing options, I could at least help in that area. All of this to say: now I’m officially the organizer for the (Virtual) Kansas City SQL Server Group.
Info About Our Group
Interested in seeing some of our sessions? We loosely follow a 2x a month schedule:
1st Tuesday of the Month in the early evening (5:45 PM CDT).
2nd Thursday of the Month as a Lunch and Learn (12 PM CDT).
The 2 different times allow us to cover people that can join in the evening and people that can do lunch and learns. It also allows us to include people in some additional time zones outside the US. Plus, it helps me not take up additional family time. As mentioned, we also have a YouTube channel that we post most of our events to afterwards. (Some quicker than others because – yea – my ADHD).
We occasionally have an additional session for guest spots with both regular speakers as well as speakers from Ben Weissman and Willaim Durkin‘s New Stars of Data. I’m particularly excited about giving new speakers an additional platform to gain experience and not just because #NSoD is where I got my start. Ok maybe I’m a little partial to them because I know all they do to help new speakers perform their best with their resources, mentors, and various volunteers that do all their magic.
Who are the amazing speakers we’ve hosted in the last 5 months?
And we have many more in the works for 2024 as well as new things coming down the line! Around February, we will have a new call for speakers to fill our remaining spots, so stay tuned (and submit!) If you’d like to volunteer to help host or join our team – feel free to reach out to me on linkedin or twitter.
Ok, so that’s it. Even I think this falls in the category TLDR, but I’ve haven’t written in awhile (at least not completed one, technically I’ve written a ton), so you get this big gush in one go. If you’ve made it this far – hope to see you soon (in-person AND online)!
Super excited as this is the program that helped get me started with my speaking (along with nudges from several #sqlfamily in the community). The event is the 5th in the series and is tomorrow (May, 12, 2023). The event is free, but make sure to register here: https://www.meetup.com/datagrillen/events/291222930/.
In case you are unfamiliar with New Stars of Data, let me give you the quick summary: Ben Weissman and William Durkin from DataGrillen saw a huge gap in the community for getting new MS Data platform speakers up and running and helping to ensure the person’s success. (Ok, that’s actually an assumption on my part, but that’s my take on it.) Rather than just offer speakers a space to get noticed, they designed a program that partners the speaker with a mentor to help with every step of the way. Sometimes multiple people (both Ben and Gabi Münster helped me with mine). They help with topic selection, abstract, presentation development, and even practice run-throughs. There is also a free library for anyone to use to help improve your speaking skills. They remove the barrier of “I know this subject really well, but I don’t want to suck in a public forum”. Afterwards, the videos are available on YouTube (after the volunteers do all their wizardry to get it uploaded). So really what you end up with is a free event on current topics with great speakers.
I’ve mentioned this before, but I will also mention it continuously, attending these events (and/or watching the videos on YouTube) helps diversity in out community. By default, underrepresented people have a harder time finding mentors for stuff like this, which makes these programs super important. If that’s a topic that interests you – than make sure you support events like these.
While I’ve been in the sql community for many many years, I have to admit it was super exciting to meet a lot of the people for the first time last year at PASS DCS who directly and indirectly helped me during my New Stars of Data Event. As well as the many friendships that have developed since. It’s not always possible to meet those that have made such an impact in your life, but if you get the chance, it’s pretty awesome.
Me, Ben, and Johan at Karaoke night.
The event is tomorrow and it is on CET time (or maybe it’s GMT, I forget), but don’t let that stop you if you are in a different time zone! I plan to catch a few sessions as I am getting ready in the morning and during the remainder of the event. I’ll circle back around and catch the ones that are too early for me on YouTube. The session lineup looks really great, and I’m chuffed to see all the new and upcoming people. Really relevant topics on things like Power BI, Azure, Machine Learning, and other SQL/Data topics. Get your TRAIN on and join us if you can!!!!
As usual, it’s been a busy few week at my job and in my personal life, so I’ll try and make this short an sweet.
Weekly Wrap up (technically from the last 2 weeks):
Certification update
WITspiration
Women don’t owe you an explanation <rant>
DPWIT-DEI Mental Health and Wellness Day
Part 1 of blog series: Migrating data solutions to the cloud – a checklist
Favorite Items of the Week in the Wild
Certification Update
Back at the end of January I did a Microsoft Virtual Training Day for Azure Fundamentals because I remembered that if you did the Virtual Training Day, that some of the VTD sessions offer a free certification test if you take it in under 90 days. So I signed up thinking it would force myself to get it done and have a clock ticking. There was no reason for me not to take the test at that point: Class is free, test is free, can take both the class and test during work and online (a big deal because my kids could interrupt during the test otherwise, which is not allowed). I even told myself “I’ll put it just under 90 days out so I have chance to study”. (HAHAAHHA The lies we tell ourselves.)
The test is pretty broad and there are a few sections that I didn’t have experience in. Truth be told, I was at work so I frequently got interrupted during the VTD, but still got a lot of information from it. Even for the things I knew, but don’t necessarily use in my area, it was good reinforcement. I highly recommend using VTDs and other free resources such as Microsoft Learn, as part of your cert training strategy.
Long story short, I took the VTD, forgot about it, and then realized test day was upon me. Freaked out, studied additionally for a few days, and lo-and-behold passed. Yes there were a few questions that had stuff that was new to me, but it was a lot easier than I had put in my mind.
Long story short – sometimes it’s a good idea to take the plunge. Even if you don’t think you are ready. (That’s kinda my thing). I had a bunch of things going on that day that blew up on me, so I really didn’t mention it at all publicly. I’m trying to get better at announcing my accomplishments – so there you go.
WITspiration
Meanwhile we’ve begun our work with WITspiration! I met with all the members awhile back and today I had my first meeting with my Circle. SUPER excited to be in a circle with such amazing women! I forgot to ask permission if I can post their names, so will wait until I get thumbs up for that. But I think we are going to create amazing things while having a sound board for each other for all things. Stay tuned for more information and I will try and remember to tag it for easy filtering.
Women don’t owe you an explanation
<begin rant>
We interrupt this regular broadcasting to explain YET AGAIN that women don’t owe you an explanation. Recently a male reached out to me with a sentence that started along the lines of “EXPLAIN YOURSELF” in a DM. It was not about anything technical and quite frankly a little bit of common sense or googling and the person could have figured it out. It was not someone I know, but it was someone many in our #SQL community know. I’m not going to call the person out, but if you are reading this: YOU HAVE NO RIGHT TO ASK ME THAT AND/OR DEMAND I TELL YOU ANYTHING PERSONAL ABOUT MYSELF.
I didn’t reply because quite frankly I was in shock, than I checked with a few friends to verify that it was way out of line (it was, of course), and then I had other bombs drop on me that day that made the situation pale in comparison. Now in hindsight I wanted to make sure to call it out here because whether you are THAT guy or just a GUY LIKE THAT – I want you to know never, never ever, never ever ever, reach out to some woman you don’t know asking her to explain anything that is none of your damn business. And if you are starting a sentence off with “EXPLAIN” and it has nothing to do with a technical thing – I can assure you – it’s none of your damn business.
Honored to be speaking again for the Data Platform Women In Technology group and even more honored when I look at the great speakers lined up. Normally I don’t speak on non-technical things too often and this is my first session ever talking about Neurodiversity, so it will probably be way different than other sessions you have seen me speak on. If you are used to operating with 1000x things at a time – block off 11:30 AM CDT on your calendar and check it out (or many of the other GREAT sessions). Sign up here.
Part 1 of blog series: Migrating data solutions to the cloud – a checklist
Last, but not least, – Part 1 of 9 (yes 9) is out in case you missed it. This is the none technical, but very necessary items you need to make sure you do when planning a migration. It reviews key items you need to do for Pre-Planning and Evaluation. Next week I will push out Part 2: Discovery.
Favorite Items of the Week in the Wild
None.
Well, it’s not that there aren’t any, I just need to get this post out. I know, I know, I told you I would add it with each wrap-up, but I’m not this week and we are all going to just have to deal with it.
How bout this: I turned 51 on Wednesday, and as I’ve posted elsewhere: Being the same age as old people is weird, but I’m hanging in there.
If you are a follower of me in the various places or a reader of this blog, you know that recently I presented the session Migrating data solutions to the cloud: a checklist at SQLBits 2023. As promised in the weekly wrap-up from April 7th, here is the first installment of a more in depth dive to that session. The session had 9 parts to it and so I thought that would make for nice chunks to consume in blog posts. I’ll add links to each one so it will be easy to navigate once all of the posts are up.
The Parts are broken down as follows:
Pre-Planning and Evaluation
Discovery
Assess
Architecture
Costs
Migrate
Testing
Post – Migration
Resources and Closing
This post will focus on the first item in the list Pre-Planning and Evaluation.
Let’s get right to it! Ok ok. I know you are probably chomping at the bit wanting to immediately get into the technical parts – I know how it goes – but that is not where you start.
“Begin at the beginning,” the King said, very gravely, “and go on till you come to the end: then stop.”
What is your company’s goal of moving to the cloud? Some examples are:
Reduction in CapEx (capital expenditures)
Lower reliance of complex and/or end-of-support technologies
Optimization of internal operations
Reduction in vendor or technical complexity
Preparation for new technical capabilities
Modernization? Cost-savings? Multiple things? Maybe your current infrastructure is at end-of-life, and it just really makes sense to modernize it and move it over to the cloud before you are dead in the water. Or maybe your goal is to reduce downtime for managing infrastructure and upgrades .
What is the problem you are trying to solve? Is there a business requirement driving this or maybe something else? Make sure you understand what the problems are you are trying to solve and if your goals actually address those problems. That is a business decision that has to be determined WITH your technical team and not necessarily BY your technical team. I’m a technical person, and I’m going to be the first person drawn by the shiny new object – which often is not the best thing for the company strategy.
Ultimately your problems can drive a portion of your goals, but you may have additional objectives. These items need to be determined upfront so the choices you make during the process align. They create value streams for your organization. Higher ups love to hear about value streams!
Once you have your objectives – you can create a plan and KPIs towards those objectives and then show how you met those at the end. This is our objective, this is the state at the beginning, this is the state at the end. Look how far we’ve come!!!
It’s hard to have project success if you don’t define what your objectives are. This is a project, and if you’ve been working on projects for a while, you know how easy it is to go sideways and lose sight of your goals. Sometimes those goals change a bit, and that’s ok, but ultimately your success will be measured by if you achieve clearly defined goals that you can apply metrics towards.
Support
Executive Support
Many times, you will go into a migration project that is being driven by the top level. Maybe your CEO went to a conference or read some important articles – and if so, you are ahead of the game (well, until you have to set expectations properly). But if you don’t already have executive support, then you need to identify an executive sponsor. Someone who is high up and can lead a cultural shift within your organization. A Champion. <insert bugle sounds here>
Stakeholder Buy In.
You need to Identify and involve key stakeholders early in the process. On both the business and IT side. Involvement and communication is key.
People don’t like change. Try telling a bunch of financial analysts that have been doing their job for over 20 years and have lived through multiple technology shifts – try telling them they won’t have Excel anymore. I promise you; it won’t be pretty. Rather than focus on what you are taking away – focus on why the change is needed, and what it gives them. How can you get their buy-in for your project, while still being honest.
If you don’t have that executive support or stakeholder support, then you may need to a little digging. What are your company’s core values? What is the 5- and 10-year plan for business initiatives? How does moving to the cloud address these? At the department level – what are primary goals and concerns from a technical perspective. How can moving to the cloud help this? Everyone’s answer will not be the same but look at how you can align key stakeholder needs with the goals of the C-Suite. Building a business case that addresses top concerns and how the cloud will help – is ideal for this situation.
Teams
The next thing we need to consider is what we will do in-house versus what we may pull in a partner for.
For your internal team – first determine the different areas you will need a SME (subject matter expert) for, and a good idea of what they need to know. Second, identify potential key people you may have in-house to fulfill these roles. Ideally you will have people in your organization from across many teams that you can assign to roles. Once you have assigned roles to people, you need to assess their skills. This will allow you to see what gaps you need to fill and then plan for how your org will both fill and monitor those domain gaps?
When possible, identify potential team members that either have the skills or can upskill. Build a skills readiness plan. Investing in your people is far cheaper than hiring outside help. Consultants are great – I know, I’ve been one, but there is no replacement for having in-house knowledge, particularly once those consultants have finished and walked out the door – potentially without much knowledge transfer. The people that will be maintaining and growing your systems need to have the skills.
That said, in some cases, you may want to hire outside help. Maybe many of your team members are really spread thin, or the upskill process doesn’t match the timeline – then definitely bring in consultants.
Strategy: Help with defining all things such as business strategy, business cases, and technology strategies
Plan: Help with discovery tasks, such as assessment of the digital estate and development of a cloud adoption plan.
Ready: Support with landing zone tasks.
Migrate: Support or execute all direct migration tasks
Innovate: Support changes in architecture
Govern: Assist with tasks related to governance
Manage: Help with ongoing management of post-migration tasks
Along the lines of consultants – help them help you. Does your company have standards or best practices that are specific to your industry or workflow? Share that with them. Share any and all documentation that is relevant to your migration and environment.
If your company is able – consider Creating a board for key team members to interact and meet regularly: like a Cloud Center of Excellence (CCoE). Key members are chosen from each IT areas to meet at a specified cadence to discuss all things Azure including identifying domain gaps. Those key members not only gain knowledge about technical aspects, but also get insight into projects that are going on through the different areas of the company. And they can take back that information to their team with a level of consistency. Which is super important when you are wanting establish best practices and standardize policies across teams.
Documentation
Now we need to find out what we have regarding documentation.
From the technical side you need to assess at what your current infrastructure looks like. What type of documentation do you have for your data estate and infrastructure?? Where is your data? What does your data require for things like storage and memory? What are all the components that connect to what you want to move? If you don’t know what your current infrastructure looks like, you need to determine how and who will document that for you.
On the business side: What are business requirements for your systems? Do you have regulatory requirements? SLAs mandating certain uptimes? What about other Business requirement docs for security, compliance, backup, Recovery Point Objectives (RPO) and Recovery Time Objectives (RTO)?
And finally – have you previously tried to do a cloud migration? What documentation is left over from that? Is it current? What were some of the successes and some of the failures? Any lessons learned?
You don’t have to know everything at this point, but you do need to find out what you have and what you don’t have. And if we are perfectly honest – what may be out-of-date. This is where you need an Enterprise Architect and some in-depth meetings with the different departments. Communication is key to getting the documentation and finding what you have, what you don’t have, and what you may need down the line.
Welp, that concludes Part 1: Pre-Planning and Evaluation. What would you add to this list? Have I missed any additional parts that you’d like to see in the over all series? I love to get feedback to consider so feel free to reach out.
Weekly Wrap Up:
New Stars Of Data shoutout
SQLBits 2023 Reflections
Planned upcoming content and activities
Favorite Items of the Week in the Wild
Bit behind on the blog, but I’ve made a couple of tiny improvements recently. My initial idea with the blog was “just get it up as quickly as possible” with little regards to formatting and functionality (beside just reading a post). If I’m honest, these are the things that have slowed me down in prior attempts to get content out there: gold plating. Now that it’s been up for awhile, I did some quick edits on the back end so you can at least jump to specific categories, tags, or do an easy follow. It’s still bare-bones, but right now getting more content out is my goal for the spring.
Weekly Wrap Up: New Stars Of Data shoutout SQLBits 2023 Reflections Planned upcoming content and activities Favorite Items of the Week in the Wild
New Stars of Data shoutout
This is super long overdue, but my ADHD makes me procrastinate often and things fall by the wayside. Not a great excuse, but I’ll own it.
First off, if you don’t know about New Stars of Data (run by Ben Weissman and William Durkin) and you love learning all things data virtually – then please take a gander. New Stars of Data is a fantastic program to get new speakers a chance to get out there. Speakers get one on one mentoring every step of the way and the program helps new speakers deliver great content and get them on the road to speaking. How do I know? That’s where I started! (So yes I have a lot of love and bias towards the program).
The next event is May 12, 2023 and I’m really excited about the line-up. Please consider joining the event not only to get great content, but to support and encourage new speakers. If you are unable to attend the event (or a particular session), then NSOD posts the videos later to the DataGrillin youtube page. Plus – if you are really serious about wanting to get more women into speaking – this is a part of it. After I spoke at NSOD, several user groups reached out to me to keep the ball rolling. All which resulted in my next topic: SQLBits 2023.
SQLBits 2023 Reflections
Confession time: when I submitted to SQLBits last year, I didn’t really expect my session be accepted. I had started a new job Dec 2021 after a long hiatus and I stopped speaking so I could focus on getting where I wanted to be for my new company. Seeing the call for speakers for SQLBits, I promised myself I’d at least submit and choose a topic that I thought would also be great for my company. Not knowing if I’d be able to travel, I submitted to do a virtual session, which I knew there were limited spots available
And then it was accepted.
Here is where I will give a tiny bit of advise: As soon as you are accepted – start working on your presentation. You have no idea what will come down the pipeline to derail you. Everything that could throw my schedule out the window – did. You have been warned: what you do with that knowledge is up to you.
Now a few weeks after the event, I can comfortably say it was incredible. Not just as a speaker – (WHICH WAS AMAZING), but also as an attendee. Even as a virtual speaker/attendee. While I did miss the interaction and fun at the actual location – the level of detail that was provided every step of the way was beyond my expectations. I still felt a part of the event (and yes even dressed up for my session!).
I can not express how much I appreciate the opportunity not only to speak at such a great event, but to do so virtually. As a woman in tech with children – traveling has been a great barrier for me and is a large part of what prevented me from speaking in earlier years. So thank you Organizers of SQLBits for allowing this option – I know it comes at great cost and work for organizers and volunteers. By having this option, it helps me represent women in the community and still be a part of something really special. The experience was one I will never forget, and while traveling overseas to present was never on my list prior – it is a new goal for me for future years.
Planned Upcoming Content and Activities
While I’m high off of speaking (and getting good reviews!) from SQL Bits, I’ve gone ahead and submitted sessions for a few other events and I’m considering another large one. That one is in person, so I’m still waffling a bit on it. More about that in a future post. Hopefully you’ll see lots more of me speaking this year. My main issue (besides traveling) is that I have so many ideas and I always want to do THE NEXT THING, so I haven’t really refined the art of reusing a session. And for me, creating new content is a really laborious process. Hopefully as I do it more, I’ll figure out how to get better at that.
That said, my slides for SQLBits session “Migrating data solutions to the cloud – a checklist” should be available soon through the SQLBits website. (The holdup is me.) An interesting thing I learned when creating my session was I had way too much content. Probably about 4 hours worth. And I had to go back and chop a lot out. So my goal over the next few months is to transfer that chopping into a series of blog posts. If you made the session – first-off THANK YOU – and secondly, the blog posts will be a more in depth coverage of each section I went over. Expect a lot more technical aspects in certain sections.
Finally, I’ve got 2 new other initiatives I’m working on that are specific to women in tech. They are both in the beginning phase so I can’t go into details on one of them, but the other one is Tracy Boggiano and Deborah Melkin‘s women’s mentoring program: Witspiration! For all the ups and downs of being a woman in tech, I have to say that it has made such an incredible difference in my life and I want to share that with others. From a kid that had so much going against her, being a woman in tech has given me opportunities that I would have never have had otherwise. Expect to hear more of about that in the future.
Favorite Items of the Week in the Wild
Yesterday I was thinking about this as a routine feature on this blog that includes both fun things and technical stuff, but for this week it’s only going to include 2 items – FUN STUFF. Mostly because I just started saving things late yesterday and also because I’ve far surpassed the time block I gave myself for today’s post.
At the end of last year I vowed to get back into speaking. I’m in a great place in my new job and have had some time to do some training I wanted to catch up on. And so, on a whim, I submitted a session to SQLBits 2023 (yes on the last day, don’t judge). For those not in the know, SQLBits is one of the largest data conferences in the WORLD (don’t believe me? Look at the stats on the website!). It’s also in Newport, Wales. And I’m not…
Traveling is not always an option with small kids and my husband’s schedule, but I noticed that the organizers were accepting a small number of remote sessions. Even better, you had the option to change to in-person if your situation changed. Thus the “I don’t know right now if I can travel to Wales at that time” excuse was eliminated.
Then came the theme. Having organized a fair bit of SQL events in Atlanta years ago, we always went big on the theme. My inner geek LOVES a good themed event! Can you guess what the theme is for SQLBits this year?
DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS.
IN WALES. (My kids actually have tiny red dragons from our friends that were living in Wales for a bit.) That settled it, I was going to submit: if only for the small chance that I would be able to do something – I have no idea what – along the lines of a D&D theme. So on the last day, probably the last hour, I went ahead and submitted a session.
AND IT WAS ACCEPTED. Hoolllly Guacamollllllle.
The official title: Migrating data solutions to the cloud – a checklist.
Session Summary: So you’re the data person in your company and you need to look to the sky. Maybe you’ve been wanting to do it for a while, maybe it’s a mandate coming from the top. What are the steps you need to think about? Where do you even start? What are the risks? How can you begin to wrap your head around all the different things you have to coordinate? Companies don’t just need the IDEA that they should move to cloud, but a guide on how-to-do it. This session will not only give you that guide to get you going, but a foundation to take to your bosses to show just how awesome you really are.
Put aside I was actually shocked, I’ll admit to getting a little teary-eyed. I’m incredibly honored to be speaking among many of my idols and droves of speaker friends that I admire. Like blown away honored. TBH, I’m was a little disappointed that I’d have to miss other sessions that are playing at the same time. Fortunately the sessions are recorded, so I’ll still be able to catch them at other times.
If you are interested in attending my session , it’s on Saturday March 18th (the free day!!!) at 8:40 AM CDT (that’s 1:40 PM Newport time). I’m super happy (for many reasons) to be presenting on Saturday – but the conference itself is from March 14th – March 18th: 5 whole days of data goodness with a side of D&D theme. (I went ahead a bought a basic D&D kit for Christmas to indoctrinate my littles.) The last day is free, but I will be attending virtually for multiple days because this conference really is filled with a lot of incredible training opportunities.
On that note, GO REGISTER. The Early bird pricing ends on the 13th. For the cynics among you, I do not get anything for you registering except the warm and fuzzy feeling that I’m helping the community. Here – I’ll even put a convenient copy/paste link for you: https://events.sqlbits.com/2023/pricing. For those of us that can’t attend in person, there is a virtual option at a 30% discounted price.
Well, that’s all I wanted to announce. I’m officially presenting for a major international conference. Little ole me. (Special thanks to New Stars of Data and others for getting me started – more on that later.) Hope to see you there on the screen or in some of the community portals. Or maybe even in-person with a little magic.
Note: I decided not to add all the links like I did in Part 1. That took a crazy amount of time and I’m not feelin it while traveling. It’s easy enough to log on to the PASS Data Community Summit 2022 website and check out the info or go old school and google it. I will let this fall in the mom lesson #124 of “don’t do for them what they can do for themselves”.Call it tough love.
PASS Data Community Summit Part 2: The Thursday/Friday edition.
Originally I thought I was going to post this over the weekend, but we had some unexpected trip-ups of a environment promotion I had to tend to: Ahhh – fun times of trying to get things done under the wire before you leave for a trip. You know not to do anything major, but the small emergencies can get ya too. And of course everyone wants THEIR thing done before you leave. Especially before the holidays kick in. I totally get it.
So while I’m sitting in the Chicago airport waiting for my [now] delayed flight, I wanted to get Part 2 in real quick. Well, at least before my battery goes kahpoot. I wrote part of this at the airport, but had to finish after a day of hilarity ensued. This is a somewhat shortened version
Thursday: November 17th, 2022
Thursday I decided to do a little different than Wednesday. I’ll probably be exhausted from late travel on Monday catching up with me and then intense focus on Tuesday and Wednesday and thought shorter sessions may more be inline. Again, this could and will probably change by Thursday – I make no guarantees.
Breakfast event: Breakfast with the Microsoft team: SQL Futures and Strategy. You had to sign up for this event separately, and thankfully I did a few weeks back because I saw today that the registration is now closed. This is an early morning event, but since it won’t require much focus I think I’ll be ok.
8:00 AM – 9:15 AM – Keynote: Doing More with Less: The Challenges Ahead for Every Data Professional– Steve Jones, Jakub Lamik, Kathi Kellenberger, David Bick, and Arneh Eskandari
This should be an interesting keynote as it is always on my mind. Knowing what to plane for is pretty essential in our field.
9:30 AM – 10:00 AM: Architecture Options in Data Warehousing and Modeling – Leslie Weed
Alternate/On-demand options:
Implementing Intelligent Edge Solutions with Azure IoT & AI – Mihail Mateev (9:30 AM – 10:45 AM)
Storytelling with Data in Power BI – Pragati Jain (9:45 AM – 10:45 AM)
Database DevOps in Azure: Prepare for Ludicrous Speed! – Pete Benbow (9:30 AM – 10:45 AM)
How to Maintain the Same Level of utilities in Cloud Deployments – Denny Cherry (9:30 AM – 10:45 AM)
Use your Baseline to find Problem Queries – Allen White
Moving an Availability Group to a New Environment without Downtime – Steve Hall (9:30 AM – 10:45 AM)
Securing and Protecting Content in Power BI: Practical Tips – Melissa Coates (9:30 AM – 12:30 PM)
10:15 AM – 10:45 AM: Getting Started with Database DevOps – Liz Baron
Alternate/On-demand options:
How to Use PowerShell to Get Data From Any Power BI REST API – Gilbert Quevauvilliers
Azure Data Factory Essentials for SSIS Developers – Tim Mitchell
11:15 Am – 11:45 AM: Modern Data Warehousing with Azure Synapse Analytics – Ginger Grant
Alternate/On-demand options:
Monitoring SQL Server at No Cost – Danilo Dominici (11:30 AM – 12:30 PM)
Performance Tuning for Azure Cosmos DB – Hasan Savran (11:15 AM – 12:30 PM)
Women in Tech: Becoming the Ally – Deepthi Goguri (11:15 AM – 12:30 PM)
Getting Started with Database Source Control – Kathi Kellenberger
Kusto Query Language – The Next Query Language You Need to Learn – Hamish Watson (11:15 AM – 12:30 PM)
Stabilize Query Performance without Changing Code – Erin Stellato
Durable (non-technical) Strategies for Success with Analytics – Tom Huguelet (11:15 AM – 12:30 PM)
Useful Insights into Azure Synapse Data Explorer – Warren Rocchi (11:15 AM – 12:30 PM)
Azure Data Factory ABCs – David Alzamendi (11:15 AM – 12:30 PM)
12:00 PM – 12:30 PM: Implementing a Datalake House in Azure Databricks – Jeff Renz
Alternate/On-demand options:
Getting Started With Unit Testing in tSQLt – Sebastian Meine
12:30 PM – 2:15 PM: Women as Tech Leads – Tackling the Challenges – Shabnam Watson, Jen McCown, Anna Hoffman, Blythe Morrow, Leslie Andrews
2:30 PM – 3: 45 PM: I’m still undecided here. 2 great ones on completely different topics.
Keeping your data fresh in Power BI – Patrick LeBlanc, Adam Saxton
Data Driven Disease Damage Control – Helge Rege Gardsvoll
Alternate/On-demand options:
Automate Development Database Refresh from Production – Andre Quitta (2:30 PM – 3:00 PM)
Finding the Right Data Types – Kevin Wilkie
Using Power BI with Lots of Data – Paul Turley
Fold on Tight – What is a Query Folding and Why Should I Care? Nikola Ilic (3:30 PM – 4:00 PM)
Getting Started Building Data Solutions on Azure – Hugo Barona (3:30 PM – 4:00 PM)
Practical Data Engineering with Spark – John Miner (2:30 PM – 3:30 PM)
Unit Testing T-SQL – Jay Robinson
Coaching for Managers: An Introduction – Eduardo Gregorio
Practical Experiences from Working with Synapse – Mathias Halkjær and Brian Bønk
Choosing the Azure SQL DB Tier: Tales from the Trenches – Reitse Eskens (2:30 PM – 3:00 PM)
Better Data Governance with Purview – Kelly Broekstra (2:30 PM – 3:30 PM)
Better Together: Power BI and Azure Synapse Analytics – Bradley Schacht
VLTs: Very Large Tables – Problems, Options, THE Solution! – Kimberly Tripp
4:15 PM – 5:30 PM: Deploy a Self-Service Analytics Sandbox in Azure Synapse Analytics – Oscar Zamora and Tahir Abdullah
Alternate/On-demand options:
How to use Data Lineage in Azure Purview? – Erwin de Kreuk
How to Tune a Multi-Terabyte Database for Optimum Performance – Jeff Taylor
Migrating your Data to the Cloud? Look Out! Here’s What you Need to Know – Emanuele Meazzo
Kusto Query Language – The Next Query Language You Need to Learn – Hamish Watson (4:15 PM – 5:15 PM)
From SQL Server to Cosmos DB in 75-Minutes – Martin Catherall
Friday November 18th, 2022
Sadly on Friday, my flight time was changed to 2 hours earlier. Meaning that I’ll really only have morning to grab some sessions. If I leave by about noon, then I should be ok – so after the keynote and first session, I’ll probably be only attending the hall-sessions I keep hearing about. A layover in Phoenix may be allow me an online session – but I also may be completely done by then.
8:00 AM – 9:15 AM Keynote: 30+ Years of Innovation: How Do We Keep Up with Technology? – Kimberly Tripp
Another pretty on-point keynote on a subject that I continue to hear people talk about through the years.
9:30 AM – 10:45 AM: Building a Regret-free Foundation for your Data Factory – Meagan Longoria
Alternate/On-demand options:
GitHub + You + Microsoft Docs – William Assaf
Power Up Your Data Warehouse with Pre-ETL Processing – Erin Dempster
Power BI Composite and Hybrid Models – Alex Whittles
Query Shaping – Advanced Query Tuning – Edward Haynes 9:30 AM – 12:30 PM
Power BI: From Self-Service to Enterprise – Just Blindbæk 10:15 AM – 10:45 AM
Data Transformation Magic with Power Query – Jackie Kiadii
SSDT Methodologies for SQL Server DevOps – Eitan Blumin 9:45 AM – 10:45 AM
Intro to SQL Server Tools – Deborah Melkin 10:15 AM – 10:45 AM
Performance Monitoring, Tuning and Scaling Azure SQL Workloads – Deepthi Goguri and Surbhi Pokharna
Introduction to SQL Audit and Audit Reports – Daniel Maenle 9:30 AM – 10:00 AM
The rest of these will have to be on-demand options for me, but I still wanted to list them since they were are part of my favorites group.
On-demand:
Tracking History: Temporal Tables vs Ledger Tables – Ed Leighton-Dick 11:15 AM – 11:45 AM
How to Fix a Report I didn’t Build – An Ugly Baby Story – Reid Havens 11:15 AM – 12:30 PM
Improve Performance by Automating the Query Store – Chad Crawford 11:15 AM – 12:30 PM
Analyzing Azure Monitor Log Data for Azure SQL Database – Taiob Ali 11:15 AM – 12:30 PM
Creating a career portfolio using GitHub – Joshua Higginbotham 11:15 AM – 12:30 PM
Azure Synapse Analytics and the Power of Datamarts – Joanna Podgoetsky 11:15 AM – 12:30 PM
Enterprise Semantic Models in Power BI Premium – Christain Wade and Kay Unkroth 11:15 AM – 12:30 PM
Power BI – Discover DAX Fundamentals Through Common Mistakes – Fowmy Abdulmuttalib – 11:30 AM – 12:30 PM
Pro Tools for Performance Tuning: Baselines, Monitoring and Workload Tests – Martin Guth 11:30 AM – 12:30 PM
Can Microsoft Purview Answer All your Data Governance Needs – Angela Henry 12:00 PM – 12:30 PM
How to Run a Successful Proof of Concept (PoC) –John Martin 2:30 PM – 3:45 PM
Data Lakehouse, Data Mesh, and Data Fabric (data architecture soup!) – James Serra 2:30 PM – 3:45 PM
Handle Azure SQL Auditing With Ease – Josephine Bush 2:30 PM – 3:30 PM
Architecting for High Performance SQL Server on Virtual Machines – Anthony Nocentino 2:30 PM – 3:00 PM
Testing your Data Factory – Benjamin Kettner and Frank Geisler 2:30 PM – 3:45 PM
The Autistic Data Professional’s Guide to the Job Search – Chris Voss 2:30 PM – 3:45 PM
Migrate Your SSIS Skills to Azure Data Factory – Koen Verbeeck 3:30 PM – 4:00 PM
When to Stop Tuning a Query – Milos Radivojevic 4:15 PM – 5:15 PM
The Dream Team: Synapse Analytics Serverless SQL Pools and Pipelines – Andy Cutler 4:15 PM – 5:15 PM
Power BI Model Development Best Practices in a Team – Mathias Thierbach 4:15 PM – 5:30 PM
Performance Mythbusters – Paul Randal 4:15 PM – 5:30 PM
That’s it. That’s the full shabang. If you are at Summit and see me – feel free to say hello! I’ll be the short lady that looks kinda mom like.
Note: Sessions listed here are ones I am specifically interested in for one reason or another at the time of this writing. It’s a mix of one part stuff I think will be helpful to my company, one part things I’m SUPER interested in, and one part sitting in sessions with a group of speakers that I know and want to hear. Sessions that were in-person had a higher priority when I had to choose between different sessions, which is perhaps unfair, but with traveling I want to be in-person as much as possible. Sessions not listed have zero baring on their quality – there are simply only so many hours in a day – even with the on-demand option.
Inspired by Louis Davidson‘s post: The PASS Data Community Sessions I am Most Excited For, I decided to write my own. Because all that time I’ve obsessedspent looking at the schedule should be put to some use AND I’m hoping it will help me get over my writers block. That said, after looking at the schedule I created with the Favorites I tagged, I realized that this post would probably be best in multi-parts. Part 1 will focus on Tuesday and Wednesday activities.
All the sessions!
There is a lot of sessions in this post, but basically I’m trying to plan for next week and the next 12 months. Also with 489 sessions, obviously my choice can and will change over time. But I like to have a plan. LIKE REALLY REALLY like to have a plan. An initial one and one I can pivot to quickly if needed.
I’m not going to rehash what PASS DCS 2022 is, you can get all the info here: https://passdatacommunitysummit.com/. If you can’t attend in-person for any reason but still want to attend – there is a great online option and an option for on-demand recordings. I attended online last year (which was the only option) and was pretty impressed with the ability to interact with others, even outside the sessions. This year I will be in Seattle for the event, (thanks awesome company that I work for!) but they also purchased the 12 month on-demand recordings option. That way I don’t have to always choose between sessions: just which ones I see during the summit. (Note: links to sessions probably require you register for the site. You are on your own for that.)
I’m guessing that a lot of people choose the All-In-One Bundle, but I did a more ala-carte registration. 3-day conference + One Day Pre-Con + On-demand recordings for 12 months. My company saved a whole 7 dollars going this route – but I really wanted the on-demand recordings and I wasn’t sure how great I’d be at pre-cons. <insert record scratch>
I’ll be honest – pre-cons kinda scare me. I’m neuro-diverse and 8 hours is a long time to hold my attention and I get big anxiety about it. That said, I made it through grad school with a 3.93 (dangit worldwide pandemic) learning Python/R, analytics, statistics, AI, etc., so I realize that it may be all in my head. [so’s everything 1:49]. I signed up for one pre-con, and if that goes well, than I may go for 2 next time.
Tuesday
Choosing between Pre-cons was pretty difficult. Like SUPER DUPER difficult. Ones that particularly interested me were:
Ultimately I went with Denny’s Azure Infrastructure pre-con as it aligns best with key initiatives for my company. I’m on a small Cloud CoE team and we are planning some complicated moves to the cloud; I want to make sure I have my ducks in row – particularly with best practices. I’ve been privileged to see many of Denny’s presentations back when I was an organizer for SQL Sat in Atlanta, and I’m super excited to get to attend one of his pre-cons. Also, I’m studying for several certification exams (which one depends on the day), and this will reinforce topics that may be outside some of my current experience.
Just by happenstance, I have also signed up for Denny’s PASS Karaoke Party 2022. I’ve only been to Karaoke once in my life, and even then I was just a backup dancer (if you can really even be a backup dancer to Gangsta’s Paradise“), so this should be interesting. Truth be told, haven’t been out-out since about 4 years ago, so I’m game. Just don’t expect me to sing or stay out too late (I’ve got a big next day!)
Wednesday
Here is where it gets super complicated. Mostly because I keep changing my mind. Some sessions I initially planed on, I saw later were online and I went back and changed them for in-person sessions. I have some internal conflict doing this for multiple reasons (another post for another day) , and I may go and change things 10x by Wednesday (or there may be times that my “overwhelmedness” kicks in), so nothing is really set in stone.
Luckily I purchased the 12 month on-demand option (I get nothing for writing this in case you are wondering), thus I have a pretty sizeable list of alternates. For any of the times listed below, you will sometimes see a different time listed in the alternates section. This is because the session has a slightly different time than the original. I will spare you the different colored highlights in my original OneNote doc, because I don’t need to expose all the crazy.
Keynotes are always good for “big picture” info and this one is right in line with my company’s needs: integrating databases, analytics, and governance.
9:30 AM – 10:45 AM: Confession – I still haven’t made up my mind on this one yet. Here are my 2 main choices. I have some experience in both, but I feel like I need a reset.
Data Work Mom 