Join me (virtually) in Adelaide!
I will be presenting a session to the Adelaide SQL Server User Group on April 15th, 2020, and if you’re awake at that time (it’ll be 9pm on April 14th for me), you’re welcome to…
On the continuity of business
With entire countries shutting their borders, and people being forced to stay home and isolate themselves for as long as possible while health departments ramp up to handle this pandemic, the question of business continuity…
Join me in Victoria this Saturday
I will be presenting a new session, “Database administration through the ages,” at SQL Saturday #950 in Victoria this coming weekend. This is one of my favourite SQL Saturdays of the year because I love…
Join me at SQLBits 2020 (maybe)
(Last edited on March 11, 2020) The SQLBits conference, which was to take place in London between March 31st and April 4th, has been postponed because of the COVID-19 pandemic. SQLBits will now take place…
Dealing with rejection
“Dear speaker This serves as notice that your session submission was not selected for our upcoming event. We had a lot of sessions to sort through, and unfortunately there were not enough spots available to…
Did you know we have another SQL Server book coming out?
SQL Server 2017 Administration Inside Out was the first technical book I contributed to, and all its authors were very happy with how it turned out. All the content was written from scratch, which made…
Speaking at SQL Saturday Oregon
SQL Saturday Oregon — in the city of Portland — is taking place next weekend on Saturday November 2nd, 2019, and I’ll be presenting a revised edition of my session “Back to the Future with…
Gatekeeping and Accessibility
In my final post about gatekeeping in technology, I have to come clean about something. Let’s go through this journey together. [Edit: At the end of August 2020, Grace Anderson — president and co-founder of I…
Gatekeeping and the lack of diversity in the workplace
Recently I have become more vocal on Twitter and on my personal blog about my social activism. For the record, I have been an activist for LGBTQIA+ rights since 2001, so if this comes as…
Gatekeeping and why language matters
This is the second in a series of posts about gatekeeping in Information Technology and other fields. Negative terminology The language we use matters. In the first post I wrote that a number of words…
All the signs were there, but we didn’t understand them: an essay on gatekeeping in IT
This is the first in a series of posts about gatekeeping in Information Technology and other fields. I am not the first — nor will I be the last — to say that the terminology…
The third time’s the charm
Thank you to Microsoft for awarding me a Microsoft Data Platform MVP for the third time in a row. Unlike previous posts on this topic, I have very little to say except “thank you.” It’s…
Speaking at PASS Summit 2019
I am delighted to announce that I have been selected to speak at the largest Microsoft Data Platform conference in the world, PASS Summit 2019, in Seattle WA, USA. As our database community has extended…
SQL Saturday 840 in Edmonton next weekend
As I mentioned last month, I will be speaking at SQL Saturday in Edmonton Alberta next weekend. I have been selected to speak for three separate sessions, on the following topics: 10:45 Managing and monitoring…
Using a home-grown Azure Blob Storage solution for SQL Server backups
I’m here for the small organizations, the shops that can’t afford expensive solutions to maintain their environments. I’m here for them because that’s me: the one-person consultancy. I’ve built stuff that’s useful to me, and…