SSC Editorial: Don’t Understand? You’re About to Learn Something

Don’t Understand? You’re About to Learn Something was published March 9, 2015, and it’s about the mindset of being comfortable with learning, or more accurately, with not understanding. It’s a lesson I’m trying to teach my daughters who are elementary school. Like many beginners they are zoomed in on syntax and details and just trying […]

An Update on My Everki Backpack

Back in September 2012 I ordered an Everki Flight Checkpoint Friendly backpack. I think it was $72 at Amazon at the time. I’ve used it daily since then and been really pleased with it. The orange interior is very nice, I instantly notice the difference when I use a different bag. The zippers are solid, […]

SSC Editorial: Holidays as Benefits

Are holidays benefits? If you’re not sure, imagine your reaction when you no longer get paid holidays! Or that first sad day as a consultant when you realize you can’t work Monday because the client’s employees have the day off. They get paid, you get no billable time! One of the comments mentioned being reluctant […]

SSC Editorial: Upgrade and Refresh, or Not?

Upgrade and Refresh, or Not? was published on Friday and as I write this hasn’t had a lot of comments. Friday blahs? Or bad title? Both perhaps. I definitely wish I had worked on the title more – why is picking a title my least favorite part? In any case, as I wrote about upgrades […]

A Forever License–Not! Visual Studio 2013

This morning I needed to run one of my Azure hosted VM’s for a few minutes to use Visual Studio and found this amusing message: Dividing that by 365.25 days yields a whole lot of years! Yet for all those days, it did require me to refresh the license (by logging in with […]

Not All Ideas Are Great and Not All Great Ideas Get Implemented

I try to remember that not all my ideas are great. If anything, most are not, and that applies to most people. Even great ideas don’t always get implemented, due to politics, poor marketing, poor timing, and more, but perhaps mostly due to it being really hard to tell which ideas are great until after […]

Changes to the SQLSaturday Numbering System

Tim Ford has a post on the PASS blog today about Feedback Requested on SQLSaturday Numbering System that is worth a quick read and comment. Basically the idea is to remove the numbers from the event title to make it easier to reuse marketing materials. My feedback on the change: Joe Healy suggested the numbering […]

My Role at SQLSaturday Orlando This Year

Last year I took on the marketing of SQLSaturday and a good time doing it, with some nice results for the extra effort I invested. As I thought about what I wanted to do this year and what I had time for, I realized I couldn’t make the long commitment marketing requires (months of continuous […]

From a SQLSaturday Volunteer: There Was a Lot More To This Than I Ever Knew

This past weekend in Tampa I spoke with a first time volunteer who had attended the events before (in Tampa and other cities) and he said that he had been really surprised and impressed by the amount of work that the event requires. I think he was disappointed a little that he had not realized […]

Product Based Communities Are Easiest To Build (Not Easy)

Part of a discussion from this past weekend prompted me to write down some quick thoughts on building community. Building communities is a lot of work and a lot of magic. It starts with a shared interest though, and while it’s never as simple as always, I think that it’s easiest to build communities around […]

SQLAndy

Month: March 2015