Tag: Witspiration

Weekly Wrap Up – April 28, 2023

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.

Matrix: Check yourself before you wreck yourself meme.

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.

<end rant>

DPWIT-DEI Mental Health and Wellness Day

If I haven’t mentioned it, and I don’t think I have, I’m presenting the session How to NOT DO all the Things – My challenges with Neurodiversity at Data Platform WIT-DEI Mental Health and Wellness Day – May 5th, 2023.

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.

Happy 51 to me!

Picture of me!

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!