Tag: NewStarsOfData

Open Invitation for Women and other underrepresented groups to speak

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.

Back to being a Community Organizer: The (Virtual) Kansas City SQL Server User Group

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.

AI generated renaissance image of a seasoned female IT worker.
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)!

New Stars Of Data #5 – March 12th!

In case you forgotten, New Stars of Data is back! Bounce bounce bounce.

Tigger bouncing
Credit: https://disneyjuniorpedia.fandom.com/wiki/Tigger;

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.

Picture of Kristina Mishra (me), Ben Weissman, and Johan Ludvig Brattås at PASS DCS 2022
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!!!!

Weekly Wrap Up – April 7, 23

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.

Cat GIF putting paw to mouth

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!).

Kristy dressed up as Elf with little friend on shoulder

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.

With that I give you:
1.) Ian Coldwater‘s adventures into Kubernetes erotica by ChatGPT. If you don’t already follow Ian, you should. They are full of all kinds of awesomeness.
2.) Generative AI by Auralnauts : Your favorite 90’s song “Ice Ice Baby”, performed by the cast of Matrix. And Wilford Brimley for some reason.

Have a great weekend!

Presenting… Me! At SQLBits 2023

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?

Some random picture I took in Denmark at some place I forget now.

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.

SQLBits agenda with my session on it: Migrating data solutions to the cloud - a checklist.

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.

Picture of female wizard from D&D
Copywrite: https://www.wargamer.com/dnd/wizard-5e-class-guide