How the Company-Startup Thing Worked Out For Me, Year 4
It’s time for my annual update on the wild ride. A brief recap of what’s happened so far: Typical partner meeting in year four, Vegas April 2011 – started the…
Should You Be a Generalist or a Specialist?
James Rowland-Jones doing the SQLSaturday Vienna keynote At SQLSaturday Vienna last month, James Rowland-Jones (SQLbits organizer, former MVP, consulting company founder, and now Microsoft principal program manager, which is a…
How to Measure Your Career (SQLSaturday Israel Keynote)
My name is Brent Ozar, and I help people make SQL Server go faster. That basically means I measure things for a living. If I’m going to make something faster,…
Building a Company Is Like Multi-Player Katamari Damacy
In the video game Katamari Damacy, you roll a ball through the world, slowly picking up objects by running over them. You can’t pick up big objects right away –…
Road Warrior Packing Tips
Put a folding travel toothbrush and travel-sized toothpaste in the outside pocket of your carryon. When the plane starts to descend, go into the bathroom and brush your teeth. You’ll…
The Experience of Switching from VMware to Hyper-V
I’ve got a confession to make: I’ve been using Windows 10 on a Vaio. I don’t have to use dongles? It just has…the right ports? What is this sorcery? My…
Secret Meeting Minutes for the SQL Server on Linux Decision*
After today’s bombshell announcement that a subset of SQL Server functionality will run on Linux, I got curious and went dumpster diving. I hopped a flight over to Seattle, rummaged through…
Epic Life Quest: Level 7 Achieved.
Following Steve Kamb’s lead, I treat my life as a video game with a series of levels. Whenever I unlock five new achievements, I count it as a level-up. Level…
How I Sell SQLSaturday Pre-Cons
If you’re a community SQL Server presenter who wants to travel around to regional events, SQLSaturday pre-conference classes can help pay your expenses. I’ve settled into a sales routine that seems…
Fail Small and Often, but Keep Pushing
The Lean Startup methodology basically says: Come up with a hypothesis Build the cheapest, smallest thing you can to test the hypothesis Measure, and learn as much as you can from…
Hi, I’m Brent Ozar. I live in Las Vegas, Nevada. I’m on an epic life quest to have fun and make a difference.
Some of my projects include Brent Ozar Unlimited, PollGab, and Smart Postgres.
I love teaching, travel, laughing, and collecting vintage sports cars. You can follow me on Instagram, Threads, TikTok, Bsky, Facebook, LinkedIn, Github, whatever.