Blog Posts

Blog Posts I Couldn’t Write in 2014

blogging, writing
5 Comments
Every year, I finish up by emptying out my list of blog post ideas. It’s a freeing feeling, letting go of these ideas that I just couldn’t find a way to flesh out, and lets me feel better about new ideas in 2015. Here’s the ideas I just couldn’t hit Publish on in 2014: Database Administrator Warning Labels – you know those big cigarette warning labels in black and white print? Wouldn’t it be cool if Books Online carried similar warnings on certain pages? WARNING: TRIGGERS MAY CAUSE LONG, PAINFUL TROUBLESHOOTING. How to Publish Scripts – whenever you put a…
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From Blog to Business: Rethinking My Attitude About Community

12 Comments
Over 13 years ago, I started BrentOzar.com as a personal blog. Since then, I slowly turned it into a SQL Server focused blog, then an evangelism platform when I worked for Quest Software (now Dell), and finally into a consulting company when Jeremiah, Kendra, and I started the company. Today, it’s a seven-figure company with full time employees, vendors, lawyers, accountants, contracts, intellectual property, and tens of thousands of subscribers. Wowza. Part of the fun of being a company rather than just a blog: we can do stuff like this. I don’t have a big head – totally the opposite.…
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How to Do a Successful Lightning Talk

lightningtalks, presenting
2 Comments
Ten-minute presentations aren’t easier than 60-75 minute sessions. They’re much, much harder. Start by writing the first sentence and the last sentence. If you only have ten minutes, you don’t get the luxury of an agenda slide or a recap slide – you get a single sentence for each. Ideally, the first sentence describes a pain or a frustration with not understanding a concept. Here’s examples I’ve used: Database administrators often wonder what the term CXPACKET means. Are you stumped about SQL Server licensing under virtualization? Why are we supposed to make sure Page Life Expectancy is over 300? These sentences can seem cryptic…
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How to End Every User Group and Conference Presentation

marketing, presenting
10 Comments
“To learn more, go here.” Say this while pointing at the screen, which is displaying a short link to a page on your blog. That page has your list of resources – not just things you’ve written, but things you find interesting about the topic. Why? Because you just got done presenting about a topic you love, and you’ve gotten the audience excited about it too. They already picked your session because they needed help with something, and you’ve shown a few ways to get started. Now they see you as an expert, and they want to keep the learning going.…
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Why I’m Not Learning Analytics

analytics, career
18 Comments
Business analytics is a hot career right now. Here’s why I’m smiling and nodding as it goes whizzing past: Analytics projects start as short term experiments. This sounds awesome at first for consultants because you can parachute in, jump on the data, and give the business actionable information. You can use whatever tools you want right now – and boy, do you have choices. There’s an analytics gold rush, which means many competing tools. To make money during a gold rush, you don’t mine gold – you sell mining supplies. Companies see the rush to analytics, so they’re slinging all kinds of tools out there…
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Survey Says: the PASS Summit 2014 Session Ratings & Comments

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After conference attendee feedback comes in, I like to blog about it to talk about what worked and what didn’t. Here’s the abstract PASS selected this year: Developers – Who Needs a DBA? You store data in SQL Server, but you don’t have enough work to keep a full-time DBA busy. In just one hour, you’ll learn the basics of performance troubleshooting and index tuning. Brent Ozar, recovering developer, will teach you the basic care and feeding of a Microsoft SQL Server 2005, 2008, 2012, or 2014 instance and give you scripts to keep you out of trouble. I keep…
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My Favorite WordPress Tools: 2014 Edition

blogging, marketing, wordpress
No Comments
I keep my How to Start a Blog post updated, but here’s some of the more advanced tools I’ve been using lately. These aren’t really install-and-go – they require a weekend of work to set up and configure in total, but the payoff is worth it. MailChimp email subscriptions – free for up to 2,000 subscribers, and really reasonable above that. MailChimp makes it easy for people to keep up with you by watching your RSS feed for updates, then sending those updates as nicely formatted emails to your mailing list. Plus, when you want to promote something else like an…
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How to Have a Great Time at Conferences Like #SQLPASS

conference, presenting, sqlpass
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One of the things I love about conferences is that I’m suddenly surrounded by hundreds or thousands of people who do exactly the same thing I do for a living. We work in kind of a loner field – data professionals often have to work alone in an organization, with nobody else to understand what we do. It’s incredibly therapeutic to suddenly be able to talk to someone else who gets it. We can vent together about how tough our work is (and how rewarding it is when we get it right.) Before you know it, you’ve made lifelong friends…
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Why I’ll Miss SQLBits XIV (Updated: I’m Going!)

presenting, sqlbits
8 Comments
UPDATE 30 Oct – Good news! The SQLbits organizers reversed course on this decision and let presenters opt out of the pre-con recordings. I’ve submitted sessions (including pre-cons) and I’m crossing my fingers that I’ll get accepted. Hope to see everybody in London! Here’s the original post: I’ve glowed about how much I love SQLbits, but I’m going to have to miss the 2015 version. Session submission is going on right now, and the speaker contract includes a tricky line: “If I am selected to present a Training day, then I understand that SQLBits may record the session. Distribution of…
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On Business

business, career, consulting, marketing
12 Comments
Quick background: I started BrentOzar.com as a blog over a decade ago, and today it’s a successful consulting company that gets tens of thousands of spam comments per day. I failed at a few other side projects before that. This post is a brain dump for IT people who are thinking about starting their own thing. Most of the people who start businesses do it for the love of what they do, not because they want to go into finance, sales, and management. Most founders (myself included) have no idea what they’re getting into. That doesn’t mean they’ll fail, though, because passion…
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Hi. I’m Brent.

That's me, Brent.

I live in Las Vegas, Nevada. I'm on an epic life quest to have fun and make a difference.

I co-founded Brent Ozar Unlimited to help make your SQL Server go faster. I also maintain sp_Blitz® and the open source First Responder Kit repo.

My current car collection includes a 1986 Ferrari 328 GTS, a 1964 Porsche 356, a 1971 VW Type 3 Squareback, and more.

profile for Brent Ozar on Stack Exchange, a network of free, community-driven Q&A sites