Tag: community

Blogging My Bits Sessions: MHMs (3/4)

Blogging My Bits Sessions: MHMs (3/4)

Welcome to the third blog in my four-blog series about the sessions I am presenting or co-presenting at SQLBits 2024. If you’ve been following along with the series, you may be thinking “Matt, aren’t these supposed to come out on Wednesdays?” – and you would be right! March is packed with massive data events – DataTune, Microsoft MVP Summit, SQLBits, and Fabric Community Conference – and the combination of my Centric Consulting client work and preparation for these events means I’m writing this blog on a Thursday. Pay no mind to the day of the week, and let’s get into the meat of my third session of SQLBits week.

On Friday, March 22, from 9:00-9:50 in Gate 4 I will be one of the presenters for Mental Health Monologues. Hopefully that solves the mystery for you on what MHMs meant in the title! These monologues will be short talks from a few members of the data community about the struggles we’ve had, the struggles we may continue to have, and ways that we deal with these issues and, hopefully, progress. We will have a mental health professional present during the session (SQLBits is amazing and make counselors available throughout the event as well), but I do want to alert potential attendees to the possibility of some of this content being triggering. Depression, anxiety, suicidal ideation, etc. are likely to be discussed and we all want to make sure that we are upfront about that.

To be honest, the prospect of speaking for a few minutes directly about topics this personal is terrifying. Sure, I have blogged here very honestly about struggles I’ve had but there is a big jump between hitting publish on a blog post and speaking live to an audience about topics like this. That said, I know how much sessions similar to this have helped me in the past and I’m hoping to be a small part of helping session attendees make progress with their issues or, at minimum, understand that others in our community deal with these issues. Speaking from experience, that knowledge in and of itself can bring a measure of relief. I hope you’ll join us for this 50-minute session and, if you do, I’m happy to chat afterwards if you think it will help in any way.

Stay tuned next week for the final blog in this SQLBits series, but until then, bye for now.

People Aren’t Highly Available

People Aren’t Highly Available

I had a great opportunity to present two sessions at #SQLSatJax (SQL Saturday Jacksonville for those who don’t hashtag) on Saturday, May 14. Both of my sessions talked about high availability as it relates to both on-premises SQL Server and all varieties of Azure SQL. Jeff Taylor (t) and his team did a fantastic job and it was wonderful to be at an event with so many familiar faces but, even better, many new ones! I enjoyed both of my sessions, received some complimentary and constructive feedback, and learned things from the hallway/outdoor courtyard conversations as well.

In fact, it is conversations like those at past events that led me to put a slight twist in at the end of both of my sessions. Make no mistake, both of these sessions (“HA/DR Fails and Fun: I Broke It So You Don’t Have To” and “This Is Fine: Firefighting for the DBA”) are technical. Topics covered run the gamut from Always On Availability Groups to replication, from fault domains in Azure to other gaps in the cloud’s “magic” and how to fill those to keep your data and applications highly available. We delved into rev.io‘s cloud migration journey and how making the decision to migrate to the cloud (as we have) can play into the evolving high availability and disaster recovery needs of an organization.

The twist I added, though, was some slides and discussion at the end of each session about the mental toll that being on-call and responsible for highly available environments can take on the individuals and teams involved in supporting them. I speak from personal experience here. I have triggered personal medical issues because of this. I have left jobs because of this. I have made mistakes that could have cost a company money had our customer decided to punish us (thankfully, they did not).

As I was preparing these sessions in late 2021, it occurred to me that, in all of the Azure SQL/SQL Server high availability sessions I have presented over the years, it never occurred to me to counsel people about the personal toll that it can take. I am glad I started doing this in Jacksonville and look forward to presenting these sessions at other events. They triggered some wonderful post-session discussions about ways to deal with the stress of positions like this and I look forward to having those in-person and virtually as the year goes on.

I write this sitting at the airport waiting to leave on a much-needed vacation. I’m grateful to work at an organization like rev.io with leaders in technology who understand that people need to rest and recharge and I look forward to doing just that. If you find that your current role (and the technical leadership there) isn’t prioritizing your wellbeing, my DMs are open @sqlatspeed or you can email me at matt@sqlatspeed.com. I’m happy to chat about some tips and tricks that have helped me through the years or make connections via #sqlfamily to help find you a new opportunity. Be well – remember that you are not highly available even if you think you are.

Data Platform Discovery Day Is Back!

Data Platform Discovery Day Is Back!

We are very happy to announce that Data Platform Discovery Day is back! We were pleased to receive a lot of positive feedback about the first edition in late April 2020 and are thrilled to be able to present its second edition on September 21, 2021.

Based on the feedback from our first edition, we have made some changes that we are excited to share. First, we will have a single day event with six 45-minute sessions spread across US and EU timezones. We are calling these “anchor” sessions as we’d like them to be on key data platform topics for people early in their data journey. We are also hoping that these sessions may help guide the panel discussions that follow.

That’s right, we have added six panel discussions to this year’s event! At both in-person and virtual events it’s likely not a coincidence that some of the highest rated sessions feedback-wise are panel discussions. They’re more free-flowing, often more welcoming to questions, and present the opportunity to hear from diverse perspectives as well.

With this second edition of Data Platform Discovery Day, we want to not only welcome and encourage people on their data career journey but we also want to present them the opportunity to hear diverse perspectives on a variety of topics. Panel discussions also give people the opportunity to speak when they’re perhaps not comfortable with the prospect of being the sole focus of attention as a presenter for an hour. We want to hear from them as well!

Does this sound like a great event to attend? Head over to https://dataplatformdiscoveryday.com/ and register!

Would you like to submit a session to be one of our six “anchor sessions”? The Call for Speakers is accessible here: https://sessionize.com/data-platform-discovery-day-2021/.

Finally, would you like to volunteer to be on one of our six panel discussions? Check out the panel descriptions here (DPDD 2021 panel descriptions) and, if you see one or more in which you’d like to participate, go to the Call for Speakers page, submit a “session” using the name of the panel you’d like to be a part of, and use the abstract field to tell us why you’d love to share your perspective on that topic with the community.

We can’t wait! Hope to see you there is some form or fashion and, most importantly, please spread the word to friends and colleagues early in their career journey.

Why I Am Running for PASS Board

Simply put, becoming involved in PASS events and the broader organization itself has changed my personal and professional life for the better in a massive way. I want this organization, and the community it represents, to be around for many years so it can provide to others the same opportunities that it provided to me. This year and this pandemic have presented massive, but not insurmountable, challenges to this organization and its future. I want to be a part of channeling everyone’s clear passion for the this community into clear-eyed and clearly communicated decisions that will put PASS on a firm footing for years to come. Connecting, sharing, and learning has never been more important. Let us do what we can to ensure that PASS is here to serve the community for years to come.

If you’ve arrived here from my campaign website on PASS.org, you’ll likely recognize that as my campaign platform statement. I’d like to expound on that, my background in this organization, and a bit more.

Before becoming aware of PASS Summit sometime in 2012, and attending my first Summit in 2013, I thought my life was a DBA would be an endless search of Google and Bing searches in pursuit of a solution for whatever our latest fire alarm issue was about. I didn’t know that there was a community out there to help, and I was intensely shy by nature, so that lack of awareness on my part was infinitely more comfortable for me. That said, we had encountered some difficult issues in our Always On Availability Group implementations and I read a blog mentioning the Microsoft Clinic at PASS Summit 2013. I told my boss that I needed to be there to discuss our list of issues with the engineers and, thankfully, he approved me for the trip. Not only were our issues resolved in the clinic, but my eyes were opened to an entire community of data professionals from different parts of the data platform world and different parts of the real world as well. My first Summit experience honestly blew my mind even though I stuck with the experienced introvert plan of never talking to anybody other than the folks at the clinic and never sharing a table with anybody at every meal. My curiosity had definitely been piqued.

From there, contacts I made at the next PASS Summit (where I actually talked to some people) led me to make some additional contacts at a SQL Saturday that led to me getting a job in consulting. My consulting job mandated that I present a webinar or a live session once a quarter to maintain visibility of the company and myself. Despite my occasional stutter and intense fear of public speaking, I started building sessions to present at virtual and in-person events. As those sessions improved in cohesion and quality, doors were opened to speak at events of many different sizes in different regions of the country and, eventually, all over the world. I was also awarded as a Microsoft Data Platform MVP in 2018 – something not even in the realm of possibility for me when I first became involved in PASS.

I owe nearly all of my professional success, my friendships around the world, and my ability to help mentor and elevate others in this community to PASS and its members. I want it to survive and thrive and I want to be part of the solution so we can, collectively, elevate so many others. Thank you for reading and, if offered, I appreciate your support and vote in the PASS Board elections.