sql social
SQL Social No. 21 – The MVP Edition
The next SQL Social event is this week, Wednesday 11th December in fact. As usual we will be at the Governor’s Lounge at the Royal Melbourne Hotel, 629 Bourke Street, Melbourne.
This month we are spoiled by having 2 SQL Server MVP’s (one from our generous sponsors) giving us a few words of wisdom from their experiences.
This Month’s Speakers
Peter Myers
Peter Myers has worked with Microsoft database and development products since 1997. Today, he specializes in all Microsoft BI products and provides mentoring, technical training, and training course content authoring for SQL Server, Office, and SharePoint.
Peter has a broad business background supported by a bachelor’s degree in applied economics and accounting, and he extends this with solid experience backed by current MCSE and MCT certifications. He has been an MVP since 2007.
Peter will be presenting on Power BI, and specifically Excel’s Power Query. This talk will include some demos.
Rob Farley
Rob Farley is the Owner and Principal Consultant of LobsterPot Solutions Pty Ltd. He has been consulting in database technologies since completing a Computer Science degree with first class honours in 1997. He is a regular conference presenter both around Australia and overseas, heads up the Adelaide SQL Server User Group and holds several Microsoft certifications including Microsoft Certified Master in SQL Server. He is a Microsoft Certified Trainer, a recipient of the Microsoft MVP Award for SQL Server every year since 2006, and a past Branch Executive Committee member of the Australian Computer Society. Rob is director of the PASS organisation, and is a published author, his books including Professional SQL Server 2012 Internals and Troubleshooting, SQL Server MVP Deep Dives and SQL Server MVP Deep Dives 2.
Rob will provide some tips on query parameters – passing parameters into queries, functions and stored procedures is a thing we all do, but if you’re not careful about the data types, you could find performance becoming a problem, even if you’re just getting the length of a string wrong. This quick tip will give you ammo to take back to your developers to make sure they code it right the first time.
As usual, food and drinks are provided courtesy of our sponsors.
Registrations are open, so please use the link below to let us know that you will be attending
http://www.eventbrite.com.au/e/sql-social-no-21-tickets-9519528165?aff=eorg
We’ll also have some giveaways of one month Pluralsight subscriptions …. so something maybe for best networker of the evening, best questions or even just if you wear something Christmassy.
C3 Business Solutions – New SQL Social Sponsor!
C3 Business Solutions
C3 Business Solutions is an award winning Australian Information Management, Business Analytics and Business Intelligence company that delivers measurable business improvements for our clients.
C3 specialise in developing and deploying successful strategies end-to-end for large public & private sector organisations. While remaining vendor independent, C3 work with clients to establish current as well as future needs. Their team of top tier consultants continuously focus on delivering measurable business change.
“According to a client survey conducted last year, compared to other IM consultants our clients say we’re more collaborative, better at stakeholder management, have a ‘can-do’ attitude and are flexible, and we’re focused on quality.”
C3 Business Solutions will be sponsoring our next event, to be held on November 13th at the Royal Melbourne Hotel. Chris Benson will be speaking on their behalf about the Myths & Misconceptions of Agile Data Warehouse Projects. This promises to be a great talk and I am sure will lead to a hearty discussion. As a BI Consultant working on one the largest Agile Data Warehouse implementations in Melbourne (that I am aware of) I am thoroughly looking forward to this talk.
Chris Benson
Chris Benson is a Managing Consultant with C3 Business Solutions. Chris specialises in data warehouse and business intelligence applications, business process management, office development and general software development for Business Intelligence and Data Warehousing applications.
Chris is a Certified SCRUM Master, Microsoft Certified Trainer, and is also certified in a range of Business Intelligence tools and platforms on the Microsoft platform, and has authored white papers on security planning and strategy in the industry and has presented on Business Analytics at major conferences in South Africa.
Chris can be contacted via LinkedIn.
Details for SQL Social No. 20 can be found on the Eventbrite & MeetUp websites. Please register if you plan on attending the event.
See you next week!
SQL Social No.18 – In the bag
What a fantastic evening!
By my reckoning SQL Social No. 18 has to be the best social event that we have hosted this year. With a +80% turnout, an excellent speaker and attendees that were engaged and willing to get deep into discussion, this event ranks highly on my list.
What made this event work? Well, for me, there are a number of factors that I believe contributed to the success of the event:
- The weather played ball (it was warm and dry!)
- We have a core attendance established through our (ever growing) contact list
- A great speaker with an interesting topic
- Attendees that are engaged and willing to participate
- Sponsors to make it all happen
Thanks must also go to our speaker, Tara Shanka Jana, a Microsoft Premier Field Engineer who presented on the topic of Extreme Transaction Processing (XTP). Tara’s presentation generated a number of good questions and subsequent discussion, keeping the focus for nearly an hour. It was great to see the attendees really engaged and learning a thing or two about Hekaton.
I had a lot of good feedback at the end of the evening, with some attendees commenting that this has been the best SQL Social yet. These are the things that I like to hear!
Our next event is penciled in for Wednesday, October 9th. So keep your calendars clear and keep an eye out for invites and registration in a couple of weeks time.
Want to speak at one of our events?
As always, we on the look out for new speakers. If you haven’t had the opportunity to speak before then this event is the perfect platform to get started. We operate in a relaxed, informal atmosphere that encourages discussion. We want you to present on just about anything data related, whether that’s DBA hot tips, Business Intelligence best practices, data visualisation, T-SQL performance tuning, SharePoint, Data Career paths, Certifications, etc. You name it, we want to hear about it. And if you do speak at SQL Social, you won’t go away empty handed. You will receive a one-month subscription to Pluralsight – Hardcore Developer Training. Pluralsight is an amazing resource for online learning, covering just about every developer topic under the sun; including SharePoint, Business Intelligence, SQL Server, PowerShell, Android, iOS, Windows Phone, Virtualisation. The list goes on.
So get in touch with us (luke.hayler at mopani.com.au / sqlsocial at outlook.com) or on twitter @lukehayler , @martin_cairney or @jim_mcleod and we can set a date for you to speak at one of our SQL Social events.
SQL Social 17 – We can now predict the weather
Yes. It’s true. SQL Social is now the official weather forecaster for Melbourne.
Why? Well because for the last 4 events it has rained (heavily I might add) at the precise moment everyone leaves their cosy offices and begins to make their way down to SQL Social. This puts a lot of people off attending. Although I personally don’t see why; we are located right next to a tram stop and but a 150m from Southern Cross Railway Station, AND we have free drinks and pizza!
SQL Social 17 was at least well turned out despite the weather, even if we had a 50% drop-off. With about 25 people in attendance and Dr. Greg Low doing a wonderful job at explaining all that Red Gate Software had to offer, we had a great event. Most of the attendees walked away with a little something from Red Gate, including two lucky people who took home SQL Server Source Control licenses!
The Royal Melbourne Hotel has once again played host to our event and I must thank them again for providing us such as great venue with such wonderful staff. A big thanks also to Lobsterpot Solutions for the ongoing support of SQL Social.
SQL Social No. 16 – Recap
The weather didn’t play nice again last night and so we only had a handful of attendees at SQL Social No.16, held at The Royal Melbourne Hotel on Bourke Street. More’s the pity as we had a couple of great presentations lined up from Jim McLeod and Martin Cairney.
Jim presented on the new features of SQL Server 2014, recently announced at TechEd 2013. The presentation itself was kept to about 10 minutes, but the discussions that it spawned carried on for nearly a hour.
Martin had a demo planned on the use of the PAL tool-kit for consolidating and analysing Performance Monitor traces to give you a quick indicator of performance issues in your SQL Server, but with all the talk about SQL Server 2014 we ran out of time. It is always great to see conversations flow between peers about technology that we love & enjoy.
Call for speakers
We are currently looking for speakers to give 2-3 short presentations (5-15 minutes) at each of our future events. These presentations can be on anything data related and needn’t be constrained to just technical how to’s. We are also very keen to hear about case studies involving issues that you faced and how they were overcome, careers in the data industry, etc.
It’ll be worth it too, as each speaker/presenter will earn a 1-month Pluralsight subscription!
Enjoy the next couple of Month’s while we revamp SQL Social and bring you new content and a better format. As always, we are open to suggestions, so if you have an idea that you think will improve the event we would love to hear from you.
SQL Server Social No. 9 – New Format!
SQL Server Social No. 9 is just around the corner, if you haven’t already you should go and register right now. This month we are introducing a new format to the event: Ask The Experts.
Ask The Experts
Our Ask The Experts format incorporates the best bits of any networking event: keeping it social, relatively unstructured but with the bonus of having industry experts on hand to answer YOUR questions. These industry experts have kindly agreed to be at the event for your benefit. So do your homework, and come prepared with some good questions.
This Month the focus is on Business Intelligence. Our experts are three of the best. Boyan Penev, Darrren Gosbell and Simon Selves will be at hand to answer your questions and provide advice on the vast topic of SQL Server Business Intelligence and GIS.
Boyan Penev
Boyan is a SQL Server MVP who specialises in all components of the Microsoft SQL Server Business Intelligence stack.
Boyan’s topics of conversation will include Microsoft SQL Server BI Stack, Microsoft Office and the future roadmap of these products, their current capabilities and features, as well as Business Intelligence and Data Warehouse Best Practices and concepts.
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Darren Gosbell
Darren Gosbell has over ten years of practical experience in building and implementing data warehousing and business intelligence solutions for some of Australia’s largest corporations. Darren has been awarded as a Microsoft MVP SQL Server since 2006 in recognition of his contribution to the community specially in the areas of Analysis Services and MDX. Darren contributes to a number of open source projects including BIDS Helper, AS Stored Procedures, PowerSSAS and Dax Studio. Last year he was accredited as one of the first 11 Analysis Services Maestros...
Simon Selves
Simon is a GIS Masters Graduate with 14 years of Spatial Industry experience in both the UK and Australia, with strong expertise in the use of MapInfo and ESRI systems.
Simon specialises in Spatial Data Warehouse design and implementation using MS SQL Server 2008 R2 technology, Retail Network planning and analysis, Socio-demographic modelling and analysis for targeted marketing campaigns.
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So come to SQL Server Social next week and meet our experts as well as other Melbourne data professionals. And don’t forget that this is a sponsored event, so we will have food and drinks available for registered attendees.
SQL Server Social No. 9 Event Details
When: 2012/08/08 From 6:00pm onwards
Where: The Bull & Bear Tavern, 347 Flinder’s Lane, Melbourne
How much?: Free!
Duration: ’til late!
See you there!
SQL Social 