Confession Time: I Never Taught You About B-Trees.
I work with databases for a living.
I teach people, and I help them via consulting.
Technical Presentations and Teaching
Preparing, rehearsing, delivering, and improving technical instruction.
26 associated posts26 primary posts
T-SQL & Development
I Hate The Way You’re Using “It Depends.”
Can I be honest with you for a second?
It makes my skin crawl when I hear database people smugly answer a question with "It depends!"
I Don’t Take Private Questions at Pre-Conference Classes.
When I first started teaching database sessions at conferences, I noticed a pattern.
When I finished the session, closed PowerPoint, and thanked everyone for attending, a big queue of attendees would instantly start forming at the podium. People would line up to ask private questions, one at a time.
Career & Community
Building My Dev/Prod Demon Hunters Session, Part 1: The Strategy
For SQLBits this year, I wanted to submit a performance tuning session about one of the most classic, timeless problems I run into: why is the same query fast in development but slow in production?
All of my regular readers - if there is such a thing - are now yelling out, "Parameter sniffing!"
Career & Community
Things To Consider When Submitting Sessions to Paid Online Conferences
Lots of paid conferences are happening online these days, so some of you will be presenting an online session or pre-con for the first time. I've done a bunch of these and been burned in a bunch of ways, so lemme save you some time and heartache. Does the conference own the recordings? And if…
How to Make Online Presentations Fun and Interactive with OBS Scenes
In my recent post about how I use OBS for training classes & webcasts, I mentioned that to keep things lively, you wanna have a variety of scenes that you can switch between to keep the viewer engaged. Imagine a TV show or sporting event that only used one camera angle and screen layout for 30-60 minutes on end: you'd be bored out of your gourd, and you'd tune out.
How I Use OBS for Streaming and Training Classes
I've written a lot about the hardware & gear I use for streaming, and now let's talk about the software side. There are a few thousand words in here. Don't think that you have to tackle all of this just to get started streaming, dear reader. I've been working on my streaming setup for months…
Tips for Better Presentations
Today's post is for those of you who give presentations to user groups and conferences. Upload your resources before the session starts. When you say "I'll upload the resources later," the attendee hears you saying, "I'm winging this, I barely finished this deck 15 minutes ago, and I didn't even have the time to upload…
A Presenter’s Guide to the Stack Overflow Database
You present on SQL Server topics at user groups and conferences, and you've been wondering how to get started with the Stack Overflow public database. Here's a quick list of things to know.
For stable demos, use StackOverflow2010. This smaller 10GB database has data from the first years of Stack Overflow's history. It doesn't change, so you don't have to worry about updating your screenshots and metrics every time Stack releases a new data dump.
Preparation, Is It In You?
Backups aren't just for databases. Back in 2012, I started on a journey of sharing my technical knowledge by giving technical presentations. Now this might scare the living jeepers out of most people, but I found it exciting and fulfilling. Since then, I try to speak at ten events a year. Recently, I had the…
Making Tables Look Good
I could be talking about the tables in my database - I do make them skinny by using the right data types - but in this case I'm talking about SQL Server Reporting Services tables. You've seen them before. The average table is bland and boring, with nothing to distinguish it from the next, and no reason for you to remember the data in it.
51 Questions About Your Conference Session Submission
Whether you're just getting started writing a presentation abstract, or whether you want to double-check it, or whether you want to understand why your abstract wasn't picked, it's always the right time to step back and ask some big picture questions about your conference submission. The blessing and the curse of the active database community…
Write a Note and Shoot Yourself Today
When I'm writing a presentation or blog post, I often start here:
It's a photo of me in my office in Dallas, Texas in 2004. When I look at that picture, I remember everything like it was yesterday. I can talk at length about everything on the bookshelf, on my desk, in my drawers (the desk drawers, that is).
Choosing a Presentation Tool
If your New Year's resolution is to start presenting at user groups and conferences, congratulations! You're about to embark on a fulfilling journey that will enrich the lives of thousands of people. It's a blast. Now let's put some thought into the tool you're going to use. You're going to be working on these same…
Conference Speakers – Check Your Room Size
When you're speaking at a conference, try to get the room schedules long before the event day. Right now, the PASS Summit conference schedule is available, and each speaker's room is listed.
Then, check out the building's floorplan - in this case, the Washington State Convention Center's floorplans page. Check out the seating capacity for your room.
T-SQL & Development
Become a Presenter, Change Your Life
I began presenting on SQL Server two years ago. At the time I was a Senior Database Administrator. My workdays were spent getting ahead of the next big performance problem in an environment where software changes rolled into production like gangbusters. I was under a lot of pressure to be super-technical, stay on top of…
The Presenter’s Bill of Rights
Bad news: you don't have any.
You THINK you have the right to all of this stuff:
Writing Better Conference Abstracts and Presentations
The conference season is coming - let's get you a speaker slot. Before you submit an abstract, do your research. Here's some of my past posts about presentations and abstracts: How to Write a Conference Abstract - the real goals of a session abstract is to get the right people into your room and keep the…
Define Your Presentation’s Attendee
When I first started submitting abstracts to conferences, I wrote bland, technical descriptions of what I'd be talking about. Later on, I thought being a good speaker meant having lots of people in my sessions, so I wrote spammy abstracts:
"SUNDAY SUNDAY SUNDAY! COME SEE THE MOSTEST SPECTACULAREST DISPLAY OF SKILLZ EVER! EVERY SINGLE DATABASE PROFESSIONAL - NAY, HUMAN BEING - SHOULD BE IN MY SESSION! I PROMISE YOU'LL BE AMAZED AND DUMBFOUNDED AND BETTER LOOKING!"
What Makes a Good Conference Session or Keynote?
One of our FreeCon Chicago brainstorming exercises was to talk about what makes a good training session, conference session, or keynote speech. I started it by asking a few questions. Does a successful session require a packed room? I was so happy to hear the attendees answer, "No." A packed room has absolutely nothing to…
