Blog Posts

This Year’s YouTube, Web, and Twitter Analytics

August 5, 2014

Every year, Microsoft MVPs have to fill out some paperwork describing what they did on their summer vacation. Each time I do this, the numbers boggle my mind, so I’m sharing some of the fun ones with you data junkies. (These numbers aren’t necessarily the ones I use on my community contribution forms because they reflect things the whole company is doing, not just me.) YouTube Channel Stats We record our weekly webcasts and post them up on our YouTube channel. You people continue to watch them in crazy numbers: YouTube Channel Stats That’s 49,452 hours of video watching time…

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Donate to Doctors Without Borders, and I’ll Wear…

July 29, 2014

doctors without borders, pass, sqlpass

Donate to this Doctors Without Borders campaign before the PASS Summit and check out what humiliating things we’ll be doing to ourselves: $5,000 Total Donations: Argenis Fernandez will wear this unicorn hoodie at PASS. Update: reached, woohoo! $10,000 Total Donations: Adam Machanic, Grant Fritchey, Steve Jones, and I will wear these furry rainbow leggings. That’s right, the Scary DBA and the Scary Parallelism Guy and, uh, me, who’s not really scary at all. Kirsten Benzel will also run the 11-mile SQL Long Run in the unicorn hoodie. Update: reached, woohoo! $15,000 Total Donations: While wearing the leggings, Adam, Grant, Steve, and I will line dance…

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Why I Love the SQLBits Conference

July 22, 2014

conference, sqlbits

I’m ridiculously lucky to be able to attend so many conferences around the world as part of my job. (Hey, we’re self-employed, so we get to decide what our job is.) My favorite one out of them all is SQLBits, and since I just got back from SQLbits Telford, I should tell the story so you’ll understand why I like it so much. The SQLbits Planning Process Steampunk costumes at SQLbits (including Andrew Fryer and Grant Fritchey) Before anything is announced, the volunteers behind SQLbits start by secretly picking a unique UK venue every year – plus a unique theme…

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I Need Your Help Improving #SQLPASS

July 15, 2014

conference, pass, presenting, sqlpass

Read this if you’re a #SQLPASS attendee – you’re the one I’m trying to help. Last week I wrote about how conference organizers pick sessions, and I closed by talking about how there’s no clear right or wrong way. However, some ways are wronger than others, and today let’s talk in general terms about what happens when things go wrong. I can’t possibly discuss this subject with actual speaker names lest I hurt people. (Disclaimer: that’s a dark music video about drugs and violence, but the song is insanely danceable and catchy, and it’s been stuck in my head for weeks. You’re welcome.)…

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Partners? What Partners?

July 11, 2014

microsoft

A few related news posts made me chuckle (in a good way) this week: Microsoft unveils storage arrays with ties into Azure – Their StorSimple 8100 and 8600 can migrate your infrequently-accessed data up to the cloud, sorta giving you infinite capacity for archival. I doubt EMC and NetApp are quaking in their boots, but it still puts hardware partners on notice that Microsoft is willing to brand all kinds of hardware – not just tablets and phones – and use its cloud capacity as a feature. Microsoft possibly working on Azure-in-a-box – it’s not clear yet whether these will…

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How Conference Organizers Pick Sessions

July 8, 2014

conference, presenting

As we reflect on the #SQLPASS selection process this year, let’s take a big step back and look at a lot of possibilities. When you’re building a conference or training class, there’s so many ways to build a good agenda. There’s no right way or wrong way – it’s all up to the organizers. Let’s pretend you’re building an all-new event from scratch. Will the final decisions be based on numbers or personal curation? Sounds like a loaded question, but there’s absolutely nothing wrong with picking sessions based on feelings. Heck, that’s how we do it as a company – when Jeremiah, Kendra, and…

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My #SQLPASS Abstract Feedback (And How to Get Yours)

July 3, 2014

pass, presenting, sqlpass

When volunteer speakers submit a session for the PASS Summit conference, volunteers on the Program Committee have the tough job of ranking them and picking winners. In the past, this has been done completely in private, and speakers had no idea why their sessions weren’t accepted. This meant they couldn’t work to get better. Thanks to requests from the community, that’s changing this year! Amy Lewis, the Board of Director member responsible for the process, writes in her blog post announcement: “If you submitted a session proposal for Summit 2014 and would like the comments from the abstract review team,…

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How to Plan a Training Class

July 1, 2014

consulting, presenting, training

It looks so easy from the outside – just slap together a title and an abstract, set up a web page, and the money just comes rolling in, right? Nope. I’ve done training classes around the world, from conferences to private classes to cruise ships. Since we just launched another one, I figured it’s a great time to share some of the logistical questions you’ll want to consider. It’s not a complete guide on how to plan a training class – it’s just a starting point: Who will attend your training class? Who’s your target audience? What’s their job description? What’s the pain they’re facing?…

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Fact-Checking the 24 Hours of PASS

June 25, 2014

24hop, fusion-io, sqlpass, vendors

I woke up this morning, excited for the 24 Hours of PASS, and the slide decks are already online! Let’s check out the slides for the first session, Field Testing Buffer Pool Extension and In-Memory OLTP Features in SQL Server 2014. They start out by talking about how the SQL Server world has changed: Things Have Changed – note the memory Things definitely have changed – 4-8GB used to be normal for SQL Server, and now 32GB is pretty much the bare minimum for physical servers as the slide notes. I see smaller VMs a lot still though. Then they start…

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My Favorite Online Services for Consultants

June 24, 2014

consulting, productivity

Here’s some of my favorite stuff. No affiliate links, just recommendations. The One Service Every Consultant Should Use Internet plumbing glue as a service: Zapier – from free to $99/month. I have to start with this one because it’s the service we use to tie everything together. It listens for triggers and takes actions. For example, when you buy an online class from me, Zapier registers you for the webinars you picked, subscribes you to your chosen email newsletters, and makes an entry in our customer relationship software. All of that without any web development work whatsoever – now, there’s still plenty…

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Blog Posts

Hi. I’m Brent.