David Curlewis

Tag: presenting

  • SQL Saturday is coming to Wellington

    The title pretty much says it all; we’ve got a SQL Saturday event confirmed for Wellington, on the 14th of April 2012! Rob Farley and a few other folks from PASS are organising 6 SQL Saturday events in a row across Australia and New Zealand (well, 1 in New Zealand), and are calling it the “ANZ SQL Saturday Tour”.  Visit the website to register your attendance, or to find more information regarding the venue, sessions, etc.

    I’m helping to organise things from this end, and the thing that’ll make this an awesome event is getting top-notch speakers lined up to present.  So whether you’re a seasoned veteran, or you’re nervously thinking about getting into speaking, get in touch (or go directly to the SQL Saturday website to register your intended session’s details).

    If you’re new to speaking, give me a shout and we can talk about organising a “trial run” at the local SQL user group, or we could look at putting a “lightning talks” session together where each speaker only presents for 5-10 minutes.

    If you need help deciding on a topic to present – keep in mind that we’re hoping to get a good spread of “traditional” DBA and DB dev topics, as well as a range of BI-related stuff – so pretty much anything (SQL-related) goes. 🙂  There’s also a whole raft of SQL 2012 topics that would be very relevant.

    Keep an eye on the Twitter hash tags #sqlsat136 (specific to this event) or #SQLSatANZ (specific to the tour) for more information as it unfolds.

    See you there!

    Cheers
    DB Dave

     

  • Wellington SQL Server User Group

    A few weeks ago I was asked to take over the running of the Wellington SQL Server User Group by the original founder of the group.  I had been wanting to get more involved in the local SQL community, and last year kicked that off by speaking at 3 different user groups and Tech Ed New Zealand. So I was pretty keen to take the reins – even though it’s going to add to an already hectic work life.

    In case you’re wondering what this user group thing is; its the Wellington chapter of PASS, and we’re a volunteer group who organise monthly presentations or training sessions on topics related to Microsoft SQL Server – from database administration and development, to business intelligence and data mining.

    I’ve been meeting with a handful of the other volunteers over the past 2 weeks to discuss new ideas, how to freshen things up, etc; and now the job begins of lining up speakers. We usually take a break over December & January, so the first scheduled meeting is the 3rd Thursday in February – which is approaching faster than I’d like (so if you’re keen to present on a topic related to SQL Server in some way, or database development in general, then please get in touch with me!).

    Otherwise, if you live in or around Wellington, New Zealand, then please sign up for our mailing list and come along to our monthly sessions. I’m sure you’ll meet enough new people and learn enough new things to make it worth your while (plus there’s pizza and beer, so what’s not to like?).  You can keep an eye on either our PASS or MS Communities websites for updates on speakers, dates, and venues.

    Cheers
    DB Dave

  • Getting ready for Tech Ed New Zealand

    Sky Tower, Auckland
    Sky Tower, Auckland

    Tech·Ed NZ kicks off the day after tomorrow at the Auckland SkyCity convention centre.  I’ve been to a few in the past, so nothing new there – but what makes this year different is that myself and a colleague will be presenting a session:

    DBI207 – Trade Me: 0-70 million pages in 0.34 Gigaseconds

    Its not a terribly technical session, but rather a session about our (i.e. my employer’s) infrastructure & architecture.  Given the nature of our architecture it is a fairly database-centric session, although we’ll cover the network and application layers briefly as well. It’s at 13:55 on Wednesday if I’ve whet your appetite.
    Oh, and if you don’t know what a “gigasecond” is, then Wikipedia is your friend.  It sounded better than “0-70 million pages in roughly 11 years“. 😉

    It’s a tweaked and updated version of the session I presented at the Wellington SQL Server User Group (along with my colleague, Moana), then at the Christchurch .Net User Group, and most recently the Auckland SQL Server User Group.

    Simon, our head of dev is also presenting a session this year. His will be about our development and deploy processes, culminating in the live launch of a new Trade Me “thing” (I can’t really describe it any more accurately without hinting at what it is, and it’s super top secret squirrel and I’ll be shot if I let it slip early). His session is at 13:55 on Thursday, so it’ll be worth a look-see.

    So yeah, hopefully it all goes well! If you’re coming along be sure to say hi before or after the session. There will be around 10 of us from Trade Me attending this year, so the chances of bumping into one of us is fairly good. 🙂

    Cheers
    DB Dave

  • Public speaking jitters

    Public speakingThe week before Easter, a colleague and I presented at the Wellington SQL Server User Group.  It was a first for each of us, and its fair to say neither of us was jumping with joy at the idea of it.  To ease into it we did a few things which I think helped make it go pretty well, which I’ll run through below:

    1. Most obviously, we did a joint presentation (strength in numbers, or something) 🙂
    2. Our topic wasn’t an in-depth technical one, but rather a “day in the life” type of talk, which made it easier because essentially we were talking about the stuff we do every day, with a  few interesting tidbits thrown in to keep people from nodding off.
    3. We prepared reasonably well before-hand.  But we didn’t have any dry runs before the real deal because I took the week leading up to the presentation off to go on holiday!  Masterful timing I must say.
    4. I mentioned it before, but it’s worth mentioning again; its important to have some lighter/interesting stuff thrown in to keep the content at least slightly more entertaining than watching paint dry.

    So yeah, it went well. We had some good feedback, as well as some constructive criticism (made even more constructive by the fact that it was delivered over several beers), so I’m keen to keep the ball rolling and will try to organise some more speaking opportunities soon.

    If you’re thinking about making the jump yourself, I can highly recommend it. In the immortal words of Nike’s advertising agency; “Just do it!”

    Cheers
    DB Dave