Month: February 2024

Blogging My Bits Sessions: The AI One (2/4)

Blogging My Bits Sessions: The AI One (2/4)

It’s another Wednesday on the run-in to SQLBits 2024 so that means it’s time for another blog from me about the sessions I’m so happy and honored to be presenting at SQLBits this year. My second session on Wednesday will see me in Gate 9 from 16:00-17:50 presenting “Flying into the Future: Using AI To Help Do Your Data Job”.

I’m really excited to present this one as I’ve been working in the Azure AI space since 2017 and it really seems like this whole AI thing is here to stay! 😉 In all seriousness, it’s been a tremendous amount of fun to be presenting on this topic since early 2018 and see how the tools and services have matured and grown massively in that time. It also means my sessions have more and more cool stuff to show you as well. This is a longer version of a session I’ve given at several events and that session has improved with user feedback from those events and is in a really good place now, I believe. Having 100 minutes also allows me to risk the wrath of the demo gods by including even more demos!

I don’t want to spoil the surprise, but if you work with SQL Server and/or Azure SQL at all and have even barely a passing interest in AI, you’re going to want to stay until the very end to see my final demo. It’s something I’m really looking forward to showing everybody because A) it’s really cool and B) I really think it will spark a lot of great ideas from the group on how to carry forward what I show into everybody’s day-to-day data jobs.

For my, my favorite sessions are the ones where attendees walk away with the spark of an idea (or a few ideas) that they can apply to make their job easier and/or more fun…and sometimes those ideas and the knowledge you gain in pursuit of them lead you to your next role. I’m hopeful this session will do all that and more – looking forward to a great group. See you there!

Blogging My Bits Sessions: Part 1/4

Blogging My Bits Sessions: Part 1/4

As there are four Wednesdays left between now and SQLBits week, this seems like a great day to kick off my first blog series of 2024! I have the honor of presenting or co-presenting four sessions at this year’s SQLBits conference. Starting today, and continuing for the next three Wednesdays, I’ll publish a quick read previewing each of my sessions at this year’s event. If you want to see the full agenda and review both virtual and in-person attendance options, click here to have a look at the event website. Now that I’ve committed to the full series of blogs by publishing this first paragraph, let’s taxi to the runway and get ready for takeoff (you may have already guessed that the SQLBits theme this year is aviation)!

My first session (currently from 11:10-13:00 local time in Gate 11) is entitled “When to Wave Off Landing Data in PaaS Services” and I’ll be co-presenting it with Joey D’Antoni (b | t). Joey is a tremendous source of information on all things cloud and he and I both bring a wide variety of cloud migration project experience to the table. While this session will certainly have a structure, much of it will be spent talking about how our real-world experience in cloud migration projects can help inform your choices as you embark on your cloud data journey. We know a good bit of what you should do and a fair amount of what you shouldn’t do as well!

Particular to PaaS database services, on the surface they sell themselves in a lot of ways. They provision quickly (except when they don’t, but more on that during our session), the infrastructure is managed for you, and backups and high availability are largely baked in. What’s not to like? As it turns out, every service has its nuances and quirks and either Joey or I have encountered many of them. We gave this session an initial runthrough for that North Texas SQL Server User Group last week and it was well received, so we’re looking forward to sharing it with you at SQLBits 2024. Hope to see you there (and see you back here next week for the next blog in the series)!