David Curlewis

Tag: teched

  • Tech Ed done, bring on PASS Summit!

    I’m feeling somewhat human again after having caught up on some sleep back at home after 4 days in Auckland at Tech Ed New Zealand.

    Thanks again to those who came to our session (DBI207 – Trade Me: 0-70 million pages in 0.34 Gigaseconds) – and specially to those who took the time to leave feedback.  Overall we got a good response, with the only gripe being that it wasn’t technical enough.  Probably a fair enough observation.

    It was classified as a level 200, but that was set before we actually knew exactly what we were going to present on – so in hind sight level 100 might’ve been more accurate. I also spent a little longer on some of the preamble than I wanted to, which meant the more technical stuff had to be rushed a little. This is something that will improve with speaking experience I think.  So, if you didn’t get what you wanted from it, I apologise, but I’m keen to do a technical session at a later date so keep an eye out for that at a conference or user group near you. 🙂

    Simon, another work colleague, also presented a session (WUX207 – Releasing Trade Me’s Latest Project) which was awesome. My excuse is that he’s spent a fair amount of time on-stage in a past life doing improv. :-p  Needless to say there was some healthy competition between Matt & I, and Simon as far as feedback scores were concerned.  He won…

    The rest of the conference seemed to go pretty well – congrats to those involved in organising it.  I didn’t get to see as many sessions as I wanted to, but enjoyed the few I did attend, and heard mostly positive feedback from the other guys from work who attended.

    Here are all the recorded sessions from this year, including our session, and Simon’s.

    So, the next thing on my calendar is PASS Summit in Seattle in October. Super excited! Never been to the US before, and can’t wait to attend pre-cons and sessions presented by folks who I’m sure will explode my brain. I’ve signed up as a “first timer” (my “big brother” is Craig Purnell), and I’ll probably also be up for the Monday night dinner at Lowell’s, so might see you there!

    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