Swimming through the Sea of SQL
I am so happy to announce that I have been selected to speak at SQL Saturday Victoria on March 14, 2020. This will be my second time speaking at this event.
I will be delivering my Data Types Do Matter session. I love giving this session, it’s not anything new or sparkly, but it’s so important. Get the data type wrong and you can cause yourself a world of hurt later.
If you’re in the area, stop be and say, “Hello”, I’d love to see you and chat a bit.
I am excited to announce that I have created a new session, Intro to Azure Data Catalog. This has been a long time in the planning and it’s about to be executed for the first time on Tuesday, January 28, 2020. I will be presenting it for our local user group, Triad Microsoft Data Platform User Group (f.k.a. TriadSQL). If you’re in the area, please stop by, I’d love to see you, get your feedback and chat for a bit.
I am happy to announce that I will be speaking at SQL Saturday Raleigh this Saturday, April 27, 2019. I have been part of the organizing team for this event for the past few years so have never been able to speak (those of you who are fellow organizers know why!). This year we had a last minute cancellation of an afternoon session, so I decided to step up and fill the slot.
I will be presenting my What is Power BI? session at 2:30pm. If you’re in Raleigh with some time on your hands, stop by and say, “Hello”, I’d love to see you. You can also check out some other great sessions as well, we still have registration slots available.
I am so happy to announce (and honored to be selected) that I will be speaking at SQL Saturday Spartanburg (#681) on September 23, 2017. I will be presenting my What is Power BI? session at 8:30am. I know it’s early, but I’d love to see you if you are in the area.
I’ve only been to Spartanburg once and that was a few years ago. I attended the US Masters South Carolina LCM State Championships, where I walked away with a second place medal in my age group for overall meet performance. It was an exhausting two days, but so worth it. I’m hoping my SQL Saturday trip will be just as successful.
Hope to see you there!
On Saturday, March 18, 2017, I spoke at my very first SQL Saturday. I have been an attendee, involved in organizing and volunteered at many over the years, but this was the very first time I was a speaker. My session, What is Power BI?
I have presented this session twice before, once to my local user group and once at the Triad Developers Conference, so I was fairly comfortable with my content. Richmond had 245 attendees registered with 5 different session tracks. I had about 25 people in my session. Of those 25, I only saw one nod off, but it was the first session of the day (8:30am), so I’m going to chalk that one up to not enough caffeine prior to the session. There were some great questions and I had several people approach after the session with more detailed questions and to tell me how much they enjoyed my session. Some were so excited they would be able to take action when they got back to work on Monday based on my session. It really doesn’t get any better than that.
With my session in the rear view, I was excited to attend other sessions. I was able to make it into two other sessions, both of which were fabulous. The organizing team for SQL Saturday Richmond did a fabulous job. The event appeared to run like clockwork, I think maybe they’ve done this before 
One thing I really liked about this event is that they did not have a typical speaker dinner and gift, they did a speaker event. It was at G-Force Karts which was so exciting for me because I’d never driven a go kart before. I’ve always fancied myself a race car driver in another life (much to Martin’s dismay) so this was my opportunity to see if it was true. All I can say is, “Yes, it’s true.” I had so much fun. I wish more SQL Saturday organizers would consider doing something like this. A nice dinner is always appreciated and a gift is a thoughtful gesture, but the memories I made with my #SQLFamily at G-Force Karts are something I will NEVER forget.
I just want to thank the organizers of SQL Saturday Richmond, all the volunteers, sponsors and spouses who made this event happen. It was truly amazing and something I will remember my entire life. Well done.
SQLSwimmer 