Tag: Professional Development (Page 2 of 6)

Atlanta Azure DataFest #1 Recap

August 20, 2018 / jpries

I just recently had the pleasure of attending the inaugural Atlanta Azure DataFest #1 ,which took place Thursday, August 16th and Friday, August 17th at the Alpharetta Microsoft office. This two-day conference, primarily organized by Stuart Ainsworth, was similar in structure and content to SQL Saturday events, but with some interesting changes. The biggest of which was that the conference was held over two days instead of one (and on week days no less.) This allowed for more diversity in the structure of the offered sessions.

Day 1 included multiple sessions which were more “keynote” in nature, in which the entire conference attended the same sessions in one big room. Day 2 included a choice of 3-hour workshops for some in depth lab work, more similar to a traditional pre-con. Both days additionally had the three tracks of sessions allowing attendees to pick and choose the topics of interest. While all sessions were Azure themed, there was enough diversity that anybody should have been able to find something of interest. About my only critique of the sessions would be that too many of them were 3rd-party vendor-centric, spending the entire time going through the details of a non-free piece of 3rd party software rather than only using free or native tools. That likely speaks more to the gaps in the Azure ecosystem (and not being able to do everything efficiently without 3rd party tools) than anything else.

At $50 for the two days, both of which included an excellent hot lunch, the event was a bargain. Everything was very well run and hopefully this new event continues on to future years.

Organizer Stuart Ainsworth starting things off with some morning announcements and Trey Johnson presenting his “Whistle Stop Tour of SQL Server and Azure BI” on Day 1 of Atlanta Azure DataFest.

SQL Saturday Recap: #733 – Atlanta, GA

May 25, 2018 / jpries

This past Saturday, May 19th marked the 733rd SQL Saturday Event — SQL Saturday #733 – Atlanta. Being my home event, and consistently a large and well-executed event, I look forward to this one every year and also volunteer to help out with room proctoring and any other help that is needed. Since the loss of the GSU Alpharetta Campus as a venue, the event has bounced around looking for a new home. This year, it was hosted at the Alpharetta Campus of Gwinnett Technical College, which I felt was an excellent venue (though not quite as convenient to me as last year’s Duluth Campus).

Like previous years, I felt the event was executed very well — with an army of organizers and volunteers, it seemed like everything was handled well with only minor mishaps here and there. The new location was great and will hopefully end up being a new permanent home for the event. As I was helping to work the event, I didn’t get to attend as many sessions as I would have liked, but everything I attended was excellent and time well spent.

Marco Russo presenting “DAX Optimization Examples” — my favorite session of the day. He easily could’ve filled multiple hours with his content and I look forward to seeing him speak again whenever I next get the opportunity!

SQL Saturday Recap: #698 – Nashville, TN

January 28, 2018 / jpries

On Saturday, January 13th, despite a pretty snowy winter weather forecast, Nashville held SQL Saturday #698. I watched twitter like a hawk in the hours leading up to making the drive, watching for reports on the roads in the area. All-in-all, the roads ended up being in decent condition for the drive, and I only really encountered any ice in the parking lot when I finally arrived at the hotel.

Saturday morning was frigid and it snowed throughout the day, but that wasn’t enough to stop the event. The organizers did an excellent job enduring the stress caused by the weather and in my opinion the event was a great success and went off without a hitch. Lunch was hot BBQ, which was excellent and a great upgrade from the standard boxed sandwich lunches which are typical fare at SQL Saturday events. As an added touch (and part of the yearly tradition) after the end of day raffle, SQL Saturday customized pint glasses were given out to all the attendees to take home as a souvenir. Another one for the shelf!

It was a great day and well worth the drive up to Nashville. Looking forward to attending again next time.

The snow fell throughout the day on Saturday at SQL Saturday Nashville.

Fun Local User Group Presentations – 2017

August 26, 2017 / jpries

Going through my notes, I thought I’d highlight some of the most fun or innovative local user group presentations I’ve been to so far this year.

Atlanta is fortunate to have many user groups, two specifically which I attend are the “Atlanta MDF” user group which usually meets the 2nd Monday of each month, and is typically focused more on the core SQL Server technologies and the “Atlanta BI” user group which usually meets the last Monday of each month and is focused on BI-specific topics. There are a number of other user groups, such as .NET and Excel, but its hard to find time to visit them all on a regular basis.

It is common for each user group meeting to have a main event, which is usually a speaker speaking on a topic for 1 – 1.5 hours or so. While it is great whenever anyone wants to volunteer their time to teach others, there have been a couple this year that really stood out to me, either for their creativity, content, or “fun” factor.

In March, a couple of the guys from Slalom, Dave Tangren and Nelson Davis, gave a talk on the benefits of Power BI vs. Tableau at the Atlanta BI meeting. This is interesting in of itself since these two products are direct competitors which are in an active battle, but what made this presentation really fun was that they modeled it as a political debate, with each product being a candidate. They had a moderator who would ask questions and then each candidate would give his answer. A really creative way to present this information!

Dave Tangren and Nelson Davis presenting “Comparing Power BI to Tableau” at the Atlanta BI March Meeting.

In April, Mike Bruce and Alex Higgins from Acuity Brands presented “Using Power BI to Track Software Development Performance,” in which they talked about their experiences using Power BI to connect to Visual Studio Online’s TFS repository to track their Agile projects. This was very interesting for a number of reasons — the integration between these sources of data, what they were trying to accomplish (and the road they’d traveled so far to get there) and their projects in general. Completely unrelated to Power BI, the store of how Acuity had transitioned from a manufacturing company (manufacturing lighting) to a software company (developing highly intelligent lighting technology, including lights which interface with retail store apps to locate a person in a store) was very interesting.

In August, Rob Collie presented “Ten Things Power BI Can Do For You” at the Atlanta MDF August Meeting. In this talk, Rob gave a history of Power Pivot (Project Gemini) from his time at Microsoft as well as his experiences in transitioning to a consulting organization specializing in Power Pivot. The entire presentation was non-technical and talked about the benefits of using Power Pivot (and DAX) with or without Power BI. A very interesting topic and Rob was a very good speaker, not afraid to call things as they are. I got a bit of an Office Space vibe from the style (in a good way!) I highly recommend you check out one of Rob’s presentations if he ever presents again in the area!

Rob Collie presenting “Ten Things Power BI Can Do For You” at the Atlanta MDF August Meeting.

Those are a few of the presentations from local user groups which have really stood out to me so far this year. Here’s to hoping for many more excellent presentations to come!

SQL Saturday Recap: #624 – Chattanooga, TN

July 9, 2017 / jpries

On Saturday, June 24th, I attended SQL Saturday #624 in Chattanooga, TN. I’m a bit behind in posting this writeup, so I’ll keep it short. This was my second time attending an event in Chattanooga (and I believe their 3rd overall). The event went very smoothly and had a very well selected schedule of speakers and topics. As with other Chattanooga SQL Saturdays, nobody leaves without being offered Moon Pies, which is a great and fun touch!

I attended a number of excellent sessions and really enjoyed my day in Chattanooga. With my crazy summer schedule, this looked to be the only summer event I’d be able to attend, so I’m glad it was a good one. Looking forward to visiting Chattanooga again some time in the future! See below for a few of my pictures from the event:

SQL Saturday Recap: #578 – Atlanta, GA (BI Edition)

December 12, 2016 / jpries

Saturday, December 10th marked the 2nd annual SQL Saturday Atlanta BI Edition. Atlanta is known for its massive SQL Saturday held every spring / summer, so I’m happy to see the smaller, more BI-focused winter event continuing on. With such a large number of SQL Server professionals in the area, there is definitely room for multiple events.

As with last year’s event, this one was a well-run event with no flaws that I was aware of. This year seemed to be a bit of a “back to basics” theme. Many of the extras that are frequently seen at SQL Saturday events — lots of sponsors, attendee bags and printed materials, speaker shirts, paper session evaluations, and other extras weren’t present. Instead, the focus was purely on providing a full day of content across multiple tracks, and you know what, that’s just fine. (Many) free donuts were provided for breakfast and boxed lunches were purchased, and everything was adequate. The core idea behind SQL Saturday is free training and networking, and the event delivered! I particularly thought the session lineup for this event was a great mix of topics.

October Lunch and Learn Presentation – Intro to Data Visualization

October 31, 2016 / jpries

October Lunch n Learn Lunch and learns are a great way for a team to learn new things, share that knowledge with each other, and practice presentation skills. We typically do casual 30 minute sessions in a group of IT developers which range from .NET to SQL Database to Business Intelligence.

For our October, Halloween-themed presentation, I chose to give an introductory presentation on data visualization, titled “Avoiding the Horrors of Scary Visualizations: An Introduction to Data Visualization.” The presentation was targeted toward people with no background in data visualization and started with a quick history and some of the key players (Tufte and Few), bridged into some tips and best practices, and closed with a number of examples of “scary” visualization examples.

Overall, the presentation went very well and seemed to be well received. The full presentation is available here.

Microsoft Certifications and Beta Exam 70-768 First Impressions

September 26, 2016 / jpries

successfailsign Recently, I had the opportunity to participate in the beta period for the new Microsoft 70-768, “Developing SQL Data Models” exam. As part of the development process for new exams, Microsoft periodically offers invitations to take a beta version of the exam free of charge. Passing an exam while in the beta period results in passing the test officially when it is released. However, there are a few catches to this. The first of which is that these betas are designed to be taken by people who already have knowledge of a subject and work with it on a regular basis. Since the exam is brand new, there are no official study materials to study, and there is typically a short window of time between the announcement and close of the beta period, so there isn’t a lot of time to prepare. These exams also aren’t for those that feel the need for instant gratification, as it may take a month or longer to receive score results to ultimately find out if you passed or failed. But, the wait is for a good cause as the beta exams are used to determine the final versions of the exam as well as passing scores, which must be completed before the beta exams can the go through the scoring process to be officially scored.

For those interested in taking a beta exam and qualified to do so, I’ve found that Microsoft usually announces the availability of a limited number of seats via the Born to Learn blog which are available until the allocated number of exams are scheduled. For this last batch of SQL Server beta exams, 300 seats were made available for each exam. This may sound like a lot, but this is worldwide, so you have to act fast. I’ve found that if you don’t act within the first day or maybe two of the announcement, you will probably be too late. Once announced, you typically have to have the exam scheduled in a proctored environment within around a month of the announcement.

Like all Microsoft certification exams, the beta exams are covered by an NDA protecting the exam content, so I won’t go into exam specifics, but I do have a few general thoughts about the exam and process. It is interesting to see how the Microsoft exams in general have changed and matured over the years.

I’d classify this exam as “tough, but fair” with a heavy amount of reading. I underestimated the amount of reading, and was thoroughly exhausted at the conclusion of the exam.
Due to the length of the questions and answers, and re-reading questions and answers, I used almost all of my time allocated for the exam.
The published Exam Objectives were very representative of the exam content (shockingly so) and make a very good framework for preparing for the exam.
How an exam is scored is always a black box, but some questions do make mention of how they award partial credit, such as “1 point per part of correct answer” which I found to be a welcome change — nice to know for sure that partial credit is at least possible in some cases.
The test engine itself is new since the last time I took an exam and seemed to work well with one exception. An exam may be made up of a combination of “reviewable” questions in which you can go back and “non-reviewable” questions in which you cannot go back. I’m sure there’s an intelligent reason for this. The way the engine handled this, however, is to go through the reviewable questions first, then allow for the standard review and change process, then proceed to the non-reviewable questions with the remaining time — only it really didn’t do a good job of explaining this process. Instead, I saw the question count, such as “50 out of 60,” hit next, then it proceeded to the review screen, which I thought was a glitch in the question count, no big deal…so I spent a bit too much time reviewing, only to have it launch into the next set of questions with not much time remaining once I finished review. It’d work a bit better if the non-reviewable questions came first or it gave a can’t-miss screen of explanation to allow for better budgeting of time.
The question types are made available here . Not all types will necessarily be present in all exams and the Build List is definitely a type to be very familiar with, as it seems quite popular.

I’m currently eagerly awaiting my results, and probably will be still for some time as the beta period has just closed. Should I not pass, I look forward to attempting it again, possibly in the new online proctored format, which I’m curious to try out.

SQL Saturday Recap: #560 – Charlotte, NC

September 18, 2016 / jpries

SQL Saturday 560 - Charlotte, NC This past Saturday marked Charlotte’s 5th consecutive SQL Saturday event, and my 4th in Charlotte (I missed last year’s due to a scheduling conflict) — SQL Saturday # 560. Also fun, this happened to mark the 20th SQL Saturday that I attended over the past few years — a pretty cool achievement!

As a change to this year over previous years, this year SQL Saturday Charlotte offered 2 all-day precons on Friday, both of which would sell out. With a “go big or go home” type attitude, they made life very difficult and forced me to choose between two incredible spears and presentations: Adam Machanic’s (B | T) “Tuning Your Biggest Queries” and Jen Underwood’s (B | T) “Advanced Analytics” With two fantastic speakers to choose from, each with a great, and relevant, session, I had some decisions to make.

After an easy drive from north Atlanta to Charlotte after work on Thursday, I headed out bright and early Friday morning to attend Jen Underwood’s (B | T) “Advanced Analytics” The precons were held in an off-campus location, the Ballantyne Center, which worked out to be a pretty decent venue. Adam’s precon was held in a standard classroom and Jen’s precon was held in a computer lab, which provided each person a computer with a solid network connection and the ability to follow along with the presentation slides and run the lab exercises locally.

Jen Underwood presenting Advanced Analytics

Jen’s Analytics precon was an excellent session and a great introduction to the topic. The topic is far too deep to cover in a single day session, but Jen did a good job of hitting the highlights and getting people introduced to the material and inspired by the possibilities of the subject with plenty of resources for further learning. This was certainly time well spent!

SQL Saturday Recap: #521 – Atlanta, GA

May 22, 2016 / jpries

SQL Saturday Roundup: #521 – Atlanta, GA

This past Saturday marked the annual event that many of us look forward to all year long. Called by some to be the “Summit of the South,” SQL Saturday Atlanta is always a large and very professionally run event which draws hordes of SQL Server Professionals nationwide. Again, this year, the event did not disappoint. Despite the initial overcast and rainy weather which opened up the day, a record number of 590 attendees attended this awesome event!

For the second year in a row, I volunteered my time to help make the event as great as it could be. For the first time in the past few years, I was did not attend any of the event’s preconference sessions, which typically run all day on Friday. That being said, the sessions that were being given were excellent topics which were presented by some truly great speakers. I’m sure everyone who attended learned a ton and had a great time.

While I didn’t attend any preconference sessions on Friday, SQL Saturday Atlanta did still begin for me on Friday when I headed over to the site Friday afternoon to begin helping with prep. We had a great group of organizers and volunteers onsite to perform the bag stuffing and venue setup. Additionally, this year, the decision was made to pre-print all of the attendee admission tickets, name badges, and raffle tickets (rather than relying on attendees to pre-print their items at home prior to the event to bring them with). This allowed for nicer name badges and perforated raffle tickets to be used, but was a very laborious process collating and assembling the packets for the morning’s registration. I ended up spending all of my time Friday afternoon helping out with the registration packet assembly process.