June 11th is next week. It’s a Tuesday, the second Tuesday of the month, making it T-SQL Tuesday! This is your opportunity to write on a specific topic, along with countless* people from around the SQL community (* at least until the end of the day, when it will be quite easy to count how many people joined in). This month marks 3.5 years since it ...

Red Gate rocks. If you didn’t know that already, you know it now. The latest evidence to support this claim is the publication of the schedule for US SQL in the City events. They are: 9 Oct – Pasadena 11 Oct – Atlanta 14 Oct – Charlotte Registration for these events opens 24 May. :{>

I’m excited to be offering a beginning PowerShell session at SQL Saturday #211 in Chicago on Saturday, April 13. This time we’re making it a family weekend, bringing our two boys. I haven’t been to Chicago for many years, and it’s, of course, an Architecture dream world, so it should be fun to look at some buildings again! Emil Bach House, ...

Louis Davidson just asked me why I write, and now Bob Pusateri (@sqlbob) is asking me why I present, which is his question for this month’s T-SQL Tuesday. If you didn’t follow the link to see his actual question, you’ll need to know that he actually posed the question “How did you come to love presenting?” Well, sometimes I don’t, but on the ...

Tomorrow will mark another chapter in the 24 Hours of PASS series.I am involved once again - this time in a moderator role. The event begins at 8am ET for me.  I will be introducing Alberto Ferrari who will be speaking on ''Excel 2013 Power Pivot in Action'' which is a great self-service BI story. This 24hop event will be in a different ...

The last PASS board meeting for the year has happened, and the portfolio handovers are well under way. Sadly, having new board members elected means having existing board members step down, and this last board meeting was the last one for both Allen Kinsel (@sqlinsaneo) and Kendal van Dyke (@sqldba). In 2012, these guys had the portfolios of ...

Last week I attended the PASS Summit in Seattle. I blogged from both keynotes (Keynote #1 and Keynote #2), as well as the WIT Luncheon - which SQL Sentry sponsored. I had a fantastic time at the conference, even though these days I attend far fewer sessions that I used to. As a company, we were overwhelmed by the positive energy in the Expo ...

I posted a few hours ago about a reflection of the Summit, but I wanted to write another one for this month’s T-SQL Tuesday, hosted by Chris Yates. In January of this year, Adam Jorgensen and I joked around in a video that was used for the SQL Server 2012 launch. We were asked about SQLFamily, and we said how we were like brothers – how we ...

So far, my three PASS Summit experiences have been notably different to each other. My first, I wasn’t on the board and I gave two regular sessions and a Lightning Talk in which I told jokes. My second, I was a board advisor, and I delivered a precon, a spotlight and a Lightning Talk in which I sang. My third (last week), I was a full board ...

Bill Graziano takes the stage at 8:15. He talks about how 3,894 attendees (and 5,611 total registrants) represent 57 countries at the 14th summit. There are over 127,000 members worldwide. Note that you can watch the keynotes and many sessions through Pass TV. PASS serves SQL Server community - expertise, support, commitment. He talks about ...