09Oct 2014 by Grant Fritchey No Comments

Speaker of the Month: October 2014

Professional Development
I saw a whole bunch of great sessions last month. I was all over the place from Las Vegas to San Diego and then Antwerp and Utrecht at Connections, two different SQL Saturday events and SQL Server Days. The speakers just seem to keep getting better, making this more difficult. But, I was privileged to see someone's very first time presenting and he did a great job. My speaker of the month is Enrico van de Laar (LinkedIn, Twitter) and his session No More Waiting - An introduction to SQL Server Wait Statistics. Let me say up front, I messed up his plans when he asks right at the start "Is there anyone here who doesn't speak Dutch?" and I was the lonely hand going up in a room of about…
Read More
07Mar 2014 by Grant Fritchey 3 Comments

Speaker of the Month, March 2014

Professional Development
This never gets easier. I was able to attend a bunch of sessions in the last month from a number of speakers that I'd never seen before. A lot of them were good, very good. In fact, I'd go so far as to say I think the general level of speakers within the SQL Server community is improving. Which means we'll all need to up our games. I also saw several that I've seen before because I always learn from them. In short, my cup runneth over. Anyway, the person I picked this month, well, I'd never seen him present before. But, I have hung out with him. He's got this incredible, fast, sharp wit and he'll protect you from dangerous objects in orange. I'm picking Mark Vaillancourt (b|t) and his…
Read More
07Feb 2014 by Grant Fritchey No Comments

Speaker of the Month, February 2014

Professional Development
I didn't get out to many events in January, so I was somewhat limited in the pool of presenters that I could choose from. Luckily for me, that pool primarily consisted of the entire Caribbean since I was on the SQL Cruise. There I got to see some of the best in the business doing serious teaching (and networking, and water slides, and rum, and beaches, and rum). I could easily cop out, cheat, and name the Cruise as speaker of the month, but I have not yet sunk that low (plus, the rum is gone). Every speaker I saw was great too. Tim Ford doesn't let just anyone present in his watery venue. So, I could pick from any of them and be 100% right. But, I had to…
Read More
03Jan 2014 by Grant Fritchey 2 Comments

Speaker of the Month, January 2014

Professional Development
A whole new year. Cool. I was at SQL Saturday DC, #233, at the beginning of December. I sat through several really good presentations. I could honestly give the award this month to any of the ones I took notes on, but I have to pick one person (although, not always, my award, my rules). So, speaker of the month for the brand new year is Konstantin Melamud (li|t). Yet another speaker without a blog. Maybe I should enforce my own rules at some at some point. <sigh> Anyway, I enjoyed Konstantin's presentation. Let's talk about it. Performance Tuning - Index Optimization was an excellent presentation. Konstantin came at the topic very carefully. He started off with a knowledge level baseline, right at the start. I thought that was a…
Read More
06Dec 2013 by Grant Fritchey No Comments

Speaker of the Month, December 2013

Professional Development
This will be my fifth speaker of the month post. Do a search to see the others. I try to find speakers that people may not have heard of who are out there, working hard, doing a good job. But, sometimes, I'm going to see a presentation by someone who is a community speaker, and... well, it just might stand out so much that I don't have a choice but to award them (remember, my contest, my rules, and the rules are utterly arbitrary). The speaker of the month is Ami Levin (b|t). The session I attended at SQL Saturday Dallas was called Physical Join Operators. It was all about hash match, loop and merge joins. Stop yawning. I'm into that sort of thing. What I expected was, hopefully, an…
Read More
04Nov 2013 by Grant Fritchey 3 Comments

Speaker of the Month, November 2013

Professional Development
Yeah, I'm a couple of days late. Tough. My blog. My rules. Speaking of rules. Speaker of the Month is chosen by me based on my whims, interests and the direction of the wind on every other Tuesday at 3PM. No whining. I saw a ton of excellent sessions during the month of October. I was at SQL in the City, SQL Saturday Charleston, and the PASS Summit, so I had an embarrassment of riches to choose from. One session stood out. It's on a topic that, frankly, I find incredibly dull. But not this presentation. Without further ado, for November I'm picking Chris Bell (b|t) and his presentation, Indexing Encrypted Data (oh stop yawning, this is good). Chris went to town on the slides. He's clearly very carefully built…
Read More
04Oct 2013 by Grant Fritchey 4 Comments

Speaker of the Month, October 2013

Professional Development
This month I saw several good speakers talking on a variety of topics. Making this choice was hard. I'm really glad people don't know who I've decided not to pick because I would be singularly unpopular. The rules for speaker of the month are simple. This is an utterly arbitrary and random decision made by me based on criteria that crosses the gamut from careful evaluation of speaker skills, to reading chicken guts, to the random coin toss. In short, I pick, my way, no whining. But, I really, really want you to have a blog (or something like it) that I can point people to. That said, I'm making an exception this month (see arbitrary and random above). I'm doing this because I really enjoyed the session, Stop That,…
Read More
02Aug 2013 by Grant Fritchey 6 Comments

Speaker of the Month, August 2013

Professional Development
I'm trying out a new blog post series, mostly for myself as an exercise. I'm going to pick one speaker each month that I've seen present recently and tell you what I thought of them. Now, don't panic. If you stunk up the place, I won't abuse you... by name. Kidding. This is going to be endlessly positive and supportive. I'll try to find places where you can go to see these speakers in the future, if I can (Lanyrd.com people). If not, maybe they'll notice this post and tell us themselves. For those interested in getting picked, don't bother me. This is arbitrary & random. However, be sure that you have a blog (or equivalent) that I can direct people to or I'll skip over you. If you don't…
Read More