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Conferences and Classes

How COVID-19 Affects Conferences

March 11, 2020

Conferences and Classes

SQLBits just postponed their event, and I’m stepping out of SQL Saturday Iceland as well. I’ve had the unusual position of being a conference attendee, speaker, and sponsor, all at different times of my life, so I wanted to do a quick brain dump explaining some of the gotchas involved behind the scenes. Canceling a…

What Should I Submit to the PASS Summit?

February 12, 2020

Our industry’s biggest conference, the PASS Summit 2020, just opened their pre-conference workshop call for speakers. I’m going to submit a couple of sessions, but I want to hear from you first: if you were going to try to convince your boss to buy you a pre-conference workshop at Summit, what would be the topics…

How to Pick a 2020 Microsoft Database Conference

February 10, 2020

Conferences and Classes

As a consultant and speaker, I’m lucky enough to go to a crazy number of SQL Server conferences. Here’s what I think of each mainstream conference out there – who they’re for, and who they’re not for. SQL Saturdays 2020 dates: all over the world, size varies by city, typically 200-300 attendees Length: Friday pre-conference…

Voting Open for #SQLBits Sessions, and Here’s My Oddball Idea

December 19, 2019

Voting is open now for SQLBits sessions, and I have to warn you that there are a LOT of sessions to choose from. Bits doesn’t just flat out take the top vote-getting sessions – they use votes as part of the session selection factor – and I don’t want you to think I’m campaigning for…

Mastering Index Tuning

Join Me in London for My SQLBits Pre-Con Workshop: Mastering Index Tuning

December 16, 2019

Company News, Conferences and Classes

I’m teaching an all-new hands-on workshop, Mastering Index Tuning. I’m taking my favorite, toughest modules of my 3-day online class and condensing them down into a 1-day workshop. You’ll learn quick, easy techniques to use the right nonclustered indexes, filtered indexes, indexed views, and columnstore indexes that will work on SQL Server 2019, 2017, 2016,…

Performance Tuning in 21 Demos

I’m coming to SQL Saturday Stockholm! Registration is open now.

November 15, 2019

Conferences and Classes

Hello again, Sweden! I’m coming to SQL Saturday Stockholm in May 2020. I’ll be teaching my Performance Tuning in 21 Demos workshop: You’re a developer or DBA who wants to tune indexes and queries to make your application go faster. You don’t like learning by watching slides or reading white papers – you want to…

Stockholm, Sweden

I’m coming to Gothenburg & Oslo next summer.

October 1, 2019

Conferences and Classes

The Nordic countries are some of the most beautiful places I’ve ever seen. Erika and I are scheduling a few trips over there in 2020, and the first one I can announce is SQL Saturday Gothenburg and SQL Saturday Oslo. I’m teaching my one-day workshop before each event: Performance Tuning in 21 Demos. You’re a…

Live Class Season Pass

How to Set Up Your Own Mastering Class VM

September 11, 2019

Conferences and Classes

When you buy one of my Live Class Season Passes, you can save a lot of money by building your own VM to follow along with the labs. Or, you might just wanna re-run the labs later to see if you can do a better job, or if you’re still mastering a concept. You’re going…

Performance Tuning in 21 Demos

Registration Open for My SQLSaturday Sacramento Workshop

March 28, 2019

Conferences and Classes

I’m coming to Sacramento this year for SQLSaturday #885. On Friday, I’ll be teaching a one-day pre-con: Performance Tuning in 21 Demos – You’re a developer or DBA who wants to tune indexes and queries to make your application go faster. You don’t like learning by watching slides or reading white papers – you want to…

Performance Tuning in 21 Demos

Registration Open for My SQLSaturday Boston Pre-Con

March 19, 2019

Conferences and Classes

I’m coming to Boston this year for SQLSaturday #877. On Friday, I’ll be teaching a one-day pre-con: Performance Tuning in 21 Demos – You’re a developer or DBA who wants to tune indexes and queries to make your application go faster. You don’t like learning by watching slides or reading white papers – you want…

Poll Results: What Conference Schedule Did You Prefer?

March 18, 2019

Conferences and Classes

Last week, I asked you a couple of questions: When you attend a 1-day conference like a SQLSaturday or SQL Relay, what is your preferred session schedule? You said: 31.8% (211 votes): 6 60-minute sessions 31.3% (208 votes): A mix of 45-minute and 90-minute sessions 25.3% (168 votes): 7 45-minute sessions: 25.3% 11.6% (77 votes):…

Brent getting caffeinated

Poll: what conference schedule would you prefer?

March 13, 2019

Conferences and Classes

There’s a vibrant discussion going on amongst conference attendees and organizers, and you can help. Take this 2-question poll about your preferred session schedule, and see the results.

What sessions do you want to see at GroupBy next month?

March 6, 2019

GroupBy Conference

GroupBy.org is a free online conference run by the community, for the community. You get to pick the sessions by voting. Voting is open now through March 15 for the next event, happening April 11. Here are some of the sessions you can choose from: Just Enough Database Theory for Power BI Linux OS Fundamentals…

Mastering Index Tuning

The Next Mastering Series is About to Start. Wanna Save $2,000?

February 6, 2019

Company News, Conferences and Classes

Ever wanted to take my Mastering series of classes? I recommend that you take ’em in a specific order because each class builds on the next. If you try to parachute in out of order, you’re gonna have a bad time. The next rotation is about to start: Fundamentals of Index Tuning – Feb 13…

Wanna see Erik Darling as Freddie Mercury at #SQLbits?

January 18, 2019

Erik Darling is raising money for the Mercury Phoenix Trust, fighting AIDS worldwide to help save lives. If we raise $5,000, he’ll present his SQLbits indexing session dressed like Freddie Mercury: If I hit my goal on this, I'm gonna deliver my @SQLBits indexes session dressed like a proper Freddie. Working hard on my AY-YO.…

From The Server To The SAN

January 3, 2019

Hardware, SQLBits, Storage

Enter SANdman When people buy SANs, it’s often quite a large investment. Whether it’s all SSD, all flash, or there are tiers of storage that different types of data live on, those disks aren’t cheap. When people visualize their SAN, it’s usually just the server and the pool of drives. But there’s some important stuff…

Erik Darling and Joe Obbish

The Pleasure Of Presenting With Joe Obbish

January 3, 2019

Execution Plans, GroupBy Conference, Indexing, Videos

Grouple On At the December 2018 GroupBy I had the honor of co-presenting with one of the smartest guys around, Joe Obbish. Here’s the video of our session, “The Problems With Optional Operators”, and a link to the resources. Enjoy! Resources: Slides and Demos

Going to SQLBits in 2019? Come to my pre-con!

November 20, 2018

My Favorite Conference I love SQLBits, and not just because it gets me out of the country for a week. It’s about the best conference a training buck can buy. There’s tons of great technical material without a lot of the marketing schtick that tends to sneak in. Head over here to register now. I’m…

PASS Summit 2018

PASS Summit 2018 Keynote Day 2: Live Blog

November 8, 2018

Today is the second day of the 2018 PASS Summit, the largest annual gathering of Microsoft data professionals. Yesterday, we got the marketing keynote that caught attendees up with the current state of SQL Server 2019 and Azure services. The attendees I talked to yesterday were impressed with the demo amounts & topics, too. Today is…

PASS Summit 2018

PASS Summit 2018 Keynote Day 1: Live Blog

November 7, 2018

Today is the opening day of the 2018 PASS Summit, the largest annual gathering of Microsoft data professionals. Every year, thousands of us gather at the Seattle Convention Center to connect, learn, and share. On this first day of the conference, all the attendees go to the same room to watch the keynote speech. To…

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