NTSSUG is looking for Speakers for 2019!

The North Texas SQL Server User Group is currently looking for speakers for 2019. If you are a speaker and searching for events that are where you are headed for business, or if you’re looking to just fill your calendar with different user groups across the country, NTSSUG should be at the top of your list!

When do you meet?

We meet the third Thursday of each month. The following are the available dates:

1/17/2019 – Bob Ward!
2/21/2019 – Rick Heiges!
3/21/2019 – Dave Stein!
4/18/2019
5/16/2019
6/20/2019
7/18/2019
8/15/2019
9/19/2019
10/17/2019
11/21/2019

Who can speak?

Anyone!

Where do you meet?

We meet at the Microsoft office in lovely Irving, Texas.

What should I speak on?

Well, that’s a good question. Last year we took a survey to find out what members wanted to see at our meetings. The results were quite interesting.

With NTSSUG, interests vary.

Why should I speak for NTSSUG? Give me one good reason!

I will do you better than that…I will give you a few reasons.

First of all, we have one of the largest groups in the south central region with over 1800 members. Our meetings have an average attendance of 78 people, and occasionally we will see spikes in attendance – just this month we had a record breaking meeting with 141 people! Our group meeting is also quite active and you will typically get lots of questions from our membership.

In January we had Mexican food! We typically do something different in January in lieu of a December meeting or holiday party. For all other meetings we typically have pizza…but we are talking about maybe changing things up and maybe doing something different once a quarter.

We have our SQL Saturday coming up on June 1st. If you can’t make that then consider us for a user group speaking engagement. Or do both!

Dallas has two major airports – Love Field and DFW. Both are in reasonable proximity from our meeting location and typically you can get low-cost fares from the numerous air carries that serve our area.

We have Whataburger. Everywhere. And it’s awesome!

We also have In-n-Out Burger. You think you have to travel to California or Las Vegas for this? No way! There is even one close to our meeting location!

You are coming to the mecca of all that is BBQ (don’t listen to those other people…they don’t speak the truth…TEXAS is where it’s at!). Pecan Lodge. Make the time. Go. Eat. And experience some truly epic BBQ.

The North Texas area is a destination for many performers and traveling shows. Wanna know if one of your favorites is coming to the area and when? Check out GuideLive for concerts and evens across the DFW Metroplex.

If you want to come during the summertime, maybe make it a family trip and drive. There are so many different things to see and do in Texas – from the Magnolia Market and Silos in Waco to the state capitol in Austin and and the Alamo in San Antonio. You could even go to a dude ranch! To do some cooling off, you can head to Schlitterbahn in New Braunfels, or go tubing on the Comal or Guadalupe Rivers. These are just a few of the things you can do in Texas

In August the North Texas Fair and Rodeo is going on. Not to be confused with the State Fair of Texas, this staple of Denton, Texas is not to be missed – while smaller, it is still plenty of fun, with rides, vendors, midway games, live concerts and an actual rodeo!

If you have an interest in beer and German cuisine, Addison Oktoberfest is in September. Come speak at our meeting and then stick around an extra day or two and head over to Addison for this annual shin-dig.

Around September-October there is the State Fair of Texas. Our October meeting would coincide with the fair the best, but if you have never been before, definitely worth checking out if you are going to be in town anytime at all while this is going on.

If you are interested in speaking at NTSSUG, or have questions, shoot me an email at programs@ntssug.com.

I’m Speaking at PASS Summit!

On May 31st, I was shocked to find out one of my submitted sessions was selected for PASS Summit 2018. My response?

I didn’t see this coming. At all. I was stunned – walking around at the office, saying “Oh my gosh…I got picked” while co-workers looked at me like I had lost my mind. Literally.

I thought I would be going to PASS Summit this year, but not as a speaker. I thought I would be an attendee, learning a lot and having an amazing time. I thought it was far more likely that we see 10 feet of snow this winter in Texas than I would be selected for this year’s PASS Summit.

I am sincerely humbled and grateful to be selected. The competition was stiff. I should know – just like last year, I pulled all the data while it was still available. Once the selections were announced I was able to isolate the sessions from those submitted, and also isolate the ones that were not selected. I was able to determine one particular number – how many sessions were selected out of total submissions.

90. 90 sessions were selected out of approximately 600 submitted. I might be off by a few, but I also checked this against ones that are there but I didn’t have in the data pull from immediately following the closing of submissions. For the most part, the ones that are there that didn’t match with a submission are pre-cons or sessions from what I am assuming were invited speakers.

I’m not saying any of this is bad. What I am saying is that the competition among PASS Summit submissions is growing and becoming more fierce. I see this as a positive for the community – we are developing more and more excellent speakers with awesome content to share.

I queried my data set further, looking for the names of the people selected and those not selected. I found the latter to contain many speakers I know personally, who would make amazing PASS Summit speakers, and may have already done so in the past.

I pulled the list of the speakers that had sessions that were part of the “Best Of” from PASS Summit 2017. Out of 36 speakers from that list, 13 of those are currently part of 2018 PASS Summit lineup. While it could be said that all of these people should be on this year’s roster because they were part of the “Best Of” from last year, I think the only thing that can really be taken away from this number is the fact that no one is guaranteed a speaking spot at PASS Summit, no matter who you are.

Are there invited speakers? Yes, but like the regular submissions selection, that list likely has some subjectivity to it as well. Maybe an invited speaker gets red carded in the previous year following their session (heaven forbid, but you never know) – do you think they would be invited back? I would hope not, regardless of the content they would provide.

As speakers in the SQL community, we are largely a very goal oriented, driven bunch of people. We might even be a tad competitive. It’s not lost on me how fortunate I am to have been selected this year. Looking back to previous years when my submissions didn’t make the cut, I know now that while this was something that I wanted, I wasn’t ready. I might have been grumpy about it, but that didn’t make me any more ready for this monumental task. For all the seasoned PASS Summit speaker veterans that were not selected, you of all people know how competitive this is. You also know that your time will come again.

Selected or not, I hope to see everyone at PASS Summit this year. If you haven’t registered yet, and need a discount code, I got one of those for ya!
LSDIS97QR

The price for PASS Summit goes up after June 29th so if you are planning on attending, get registered now!

Note: I am on the board of directors for the North Texas SQL Server User Group and this is our code. Registering with this code benefits our group. There are other discount codes out there but I just gave you this one. Like, right now. See? There it is. So go register and use it!

Being a Speaker

Back in 2013 I attended my first PASS Summit. I was a first timer and Bill Fellows was my “big brother.” I had no clue what I was getting myself into. This is my story on how I became a speaker.

At my first summit, thanks to Bill, I was meeting people just about from the moment I got there. Bill knew lots of people. He’s tall and bald and hard to miss. And wears shorts. Everywhere. Regardless of temperature.

Where was I…oh yeah…speaking. While at summit that year I met and talked to many people. A few of them asked me “Have you ever thought about speaking?” I politely replied that I hadn’t, but I really wanted to ask them if they had forgotten their medication that day, or if they needed to be examined by a professional. Me – a speaker. LOLOLOLOLOLOL! Bless their hearts!

But then I thought about it. Why not speak? What would I talk about? What was something cool that I had done that people would want to know about? Could I do this? I showed people how to properly gift wrap a present in speech class (oh yes I did…and there is a right way…and you’re probably doing it wrong) – could I teach them something that would actually have some career benefit?

Yes. Yes I could.

I started to think about what I could talk about. I submitted a session to a SQL Saturday event later in 2013…and I was not selected. I didn’t know it at the time but I had picked a topic that was rather niche and would not have a real following. I found this out when I went to the event (yes, I still went…I was going to this one regardless) and talked to the organizers. This also allowed them to know who I was, so when I submitted again, they would be able to put a face with the name.

The following year I submitted a panel to a different SQL Saturday…and they picked it! This allowed me to get my feet wet while having some other more seasoned speakers there to help drive the conversation. In the weeks leading up to the event, we met and ironed out the details of what we would talk about. During those meetings I learned a lot from them, and they helped make that first session for me a success.

As a speaker, there are good days…and not good days.

A few months later I did my first solo session – and it did not go well. This was a tough pill to swallow. What happened? Simply put, my session didn’t reflect my abstract. I was disappointed in myself. It takes a few days for me to get over things like this, but since this was my first solo attempt, it really made me question whether or not I wanted to do this. Could I be good at this? I went home and re-wrote the session. Then looked at it and re-wrote it again. The next time I gave this session it went much better, and my feedback reflected it.

I love things that challenge me. Speaking does this, and does it in ways I would have never imagined. It takes me out of my comfort zone. No matter where I am for the foreseeable future, I will be speaking.

Speaking has taken my love of learning new things to the next level. Not only am I learning for the sake of a problem or making a business case for something, but now I am learning with a goal or being able to facilitate the learning of others. When I refine my skills, my session material gets better too.

My passions have found an outlet with speaking. It’s thrilling and sometimes frustrating. When you are speaking you never know what’s going to happen. Sometimes you have a lot of questions from the audience. Other times you have none. Sometimes you don’t know the answer. As much as you practice, it doesn’t change the fact that as many times as you give a certain session, no two of those are alike because no two audiences are alike. The one thing that is consistent is that the more times I am able to speak, the more people I am able to reach and help improve their SQL Server skill sets or adopt a new skill set with PowerShell. I don’t know where speaking is going to take me, but for now, I’m down for the ride to find out.


If you are interested in speaking, and would like to find out more, here are a few blog posts I found on this subject.

Paul Randal (via Grant Fritchey) – I think this one lays it out pretty good.

Cathrine Wilhelmsen – A really good post on when things don’t go as you had hoped.

Thomas La Rock – Once upon a time, he was a mere SQL fanboi.

Kevin Hill – On starting to speak and then after his first time speaking at SQL Saturday.

These are what I could find. If you have a blog post on speaking leave a comment and I can add you. 🙂

T-SQL Tuesday #100 – Predicting the Future!

For this T-SQL Tuesday we are asked to look into our crystal SQL Server ball and predict what will be happening at the time of T-SQL Tuesday #200. I went to the garage, dug that thing out, cleaned it up, and boy it had a lot to say!

Assuming we’re all friends here, and there is some fun to be had with this…

T-SQL and JSON had a baby. All queries in SSMS resemble a hybrid of the two languages.

SSDT has been replaced by VSDT. Nothing has really changed but the acronym. As always, you can still expect some things to break when you do updates.

Microsoft bought NHibernate. You still have all the same issues as before but now you post them to Microsoft Party (it replaced Collaborate…after that replaced Connect) and actually watch them not get fixed. And you can’t post work-arounds in MS Party (so it’s not much of a party).

MS NHibernate still generates SQL queries that are long and redundant, but it’s not handling the TSQL-JSON baby very well. So there’s that.

Microsoft acquired ActiveBatch and it is now called SQL Server Batch and has replaced SQL Server Agent for scheduling jobs in SQL Server 2026. Consequently, companies have been reluctant to upgrade from SQL Server 2023 (especially the ones that have used ActiveBatch).

For the companies that are upgrading, they have found that calling PowerShell scripts from scheduled tasks to be a good way to bypass using SQL Server Batch. Increase the in the demand for DBA’s with extensive PowerShell experience sky rockets!

The rumors back in 2018 proved to be unfounded – DBA’s are still in high demand. All the talk of SQL Server tuning itself turned out to be DTA 2.0.

Microsoft brought back the MCM. And then killed it again the next year.

Azure has been replaced by Rainbow. Data is no longer in the “cloud” – it is in “rainbows.” Pricing is based on the colors of the rainbow and the color names are garnet, citron, lemon, lime, azure, and violet.

PASS still exists. Due to some bylaw changes, elections have not been held since 2019. Grant Fritchey [B|T] is still president and attends meetings remotely from his nursing home.

Just kidding – Grant’s not in a nursing home. That’s just where he says he is. There was some backlash when PASS did away with SQL Saturday events. Grant’s really in witness protection and goes by the name Thomas LaRock [B|T].


Thanks to Adam Machanic [B|T] for hosting the T-SQL Tuesday this month, and for coming up with this whole thing to inspire all of us to write more and continue to share knowledge. While there was absolutely no knowledge in this post, I do hope that I got a giggle from at least one person.

 

Quick and Dirty UPDATE STATS Job with T-SQL and PowerShell