Rose will be a big loss and one that hits close to home.  My thoughts go out to her family. She will be very much missed.

Remember to cherish each day we have with our families, friends and everything else you take on in life.

However, there is a core ideal to loyalty regardless of how various individuals may define it and the author included it in his original article from the dictionary definition – unswerving allegiance. Within the workplace, we tend to view loyalty through the prism of how it may have worked in the past, though I remain somewhat skeptical that our memories of workplace loyalty may be somewhat rose-colored in much the same manner that we tend to remember things from our own youths. We have this romanticized view that people stayed with companies and all was good from that time on. Much of this may have to do with how corporations were set up in the past. Older generations did not have the education available in earlier times that exists today and that levels much of the playing field in terms of workplace skills. In the past, those who obtained the high-level skills were, in many ways, guaranteed good employment by their respective companies because there were few alternatives. Whether these were always happy marriages and whether that loyalty is because there were few alternatives (in either the employer or employee viewpoints) is beside the point. The companies kept faith with their employees and there was little incentive for employees to go elsewhere.

Fast-forwarding to the current day, there have been significant changes which have altered the dynamic of loyalty and how it is viewed by both companies and employees today. While the millennial author viewed the idea of loyalty through the prism of generational separation, I think the issue is perhaps more deeply rooted in the changing environment that exists today with its continued and rapid technical advancements as well as the flattening of the educational background that has created a wider pool of those able to acclimate themselves to this environment. Those of the older generations view themselves as loyal to a company in the vain hope that such a perspective will be reciprocated by the company. Unfortunately, as the world has evolved and technology has rendered many manual tasks irrelevant, those who have not kept their skills up to date or have not similarly evolved into new roles with new knowledge have found themselves in increasingly untenable positions as far as job security. And, in those cases, no matter how loyal you may have been to a company, when you are no longer as productive, your loyalty is less likely to be rewarded by said corporation.

Does this mean that employees should not be loyal to their employers? No. Those companies pay the salaries of their employees which should demand a certain amount of loyalty. However, it is important to consider the definition of loyalty in this case. Employees should not be blindly loyal with a belief that the company is looking out for their best interest. But they should certainly work hard and do their best, recognizing that there is a reward in doing so. In addition to that, many companies offer opportunities for continued education in order to learn new or updated job skills. From their perspective, it is often easier to add job skills to their existing staff than to hire brand new staff every few years (or however often their turnover may be) and train them from scratch. In some ways, this should be viewed as a symbiotic relationship where both sides gain – the employer by having staff that is up to date on their knowledge and skills and the employees by adding to their skillsets which continues to make them valuable to their existing company (and others should they need to move elsewhere).

But having loyalty to the company should not be the sole definition. Instead, employees should recognize that they also need to be loyal to themselves and their careers. As a company is typically loyal to its stockholders and its own self-interests, the employees should be equally committed to their own self-interests and development. Loyalty to one’s career, advancing yourself as well as your skills, and staying employed should be the cornerstone of loyalty. Furthermore, loyalty to one’s own self-interest also does not equate to disloyalty to external interests (in this case, the company). Indeed, furthering one’s own development can be seen as a form of loyalty to the company whereby both employee and employer benefit.

As this business evolution has occurred, so have the perceptions by both employers and employees toward the idea of loyalty. Few people today work for the same company over the course of their entire career. Indeed, a decreasing number of people (particularly within IT) will work in the same role over the course of their career. This perception of loyalty and how it is viewed would be better viewed through the lens of how business has changed, the greater use of technology and how education has become the great equalizer by offering more people the same opportunities to achieve better employment in a culture and environment that relies less than ever on manual efforts. The perception that loyalty is defined differently by each generation is misleading. The reality is that the difference is due to the changing business environment and, as has been the course throughout history, the younger generations adapt to that change far more quickly and easily than older generations. It seems likely that in another 40 years, the next two generations will be arguing over the antiquated notions of loyalty discussed today.

We had 241 attendees, an increase over last year. It’s been exciting to watch the Wisconsin SQL Server community grow over the past five years. Once upon a time we had one user group; now we have four, and have held two of these events. Many people have thanked us for bringing the community to this area!

We delivered 44 hours of free training throughout the day. To me, that's incredible. The primary objective of a SQL Saturday is to bring free training to a large group of people. If you’re planning a SQL Saturday, remember this – every goal should tie back to that objective. It’s hard for a DBA or developer to get approval and money to go to a week-long training class or conference. But there are many people who realize the value of investing in their career, and they are coming to these events. Those people are the reason I do this, year after year.

We couldn’t have training without people to deliver it. 34 speakers traveled from all over Wisconsin, Michigan, Minnesota, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Ohio, Texas, Washington, Winnipeg, and even the UK- quite a diverse group!

But for me, the most exciting and fulfilling part of the day was having six of these speakers be first-time SQL Saturday speakers. SIX! These are people that had started with presentations to co-workers and user groups, and were ready to jump into a bigger pond. That can be a scary experience. I’m so glad that we were able to provide the environment for them to do it, and have it be warm, encouraging, supportive. I’m glad they all had excellent audiences who paid attention, asked questions, and gave them feedback.

I can’t wait to do this again in 2014!

Here's a peek at our first-time speakers! (My deepest apologies to Jennifer Salvo, whose session I missed while cleaning up for the day.)

Frank Gill kicks off the day talking about the transaction log

Leonard Murphy had the crowd learning and laughing at the end of the day

Ken Stuber rounded out the day with a talk about SSDT

Gill Rowley presented to a packed room

Jim Dorame talks PowerShell and PSX - his first presentation ever!

I didn't think my first blog post on LTD would be for a T-SQL Tuesday, but this month's topic was so timely for me I had no choice but to participate.

In case you don't know, T-SQL Tuesday is a monthly blogging event, with a different community host each month. This month's host is Bob Pusateri and the topic is all about presenting. It just so happens, I've started doing a bit of that lately!

So, how did I come to love presenting? I starting doing it. It sounds so simple, right? Well, let me assure you, it was anything but.

Those of you who know me, know that I am not often at a loss for words and the term loud has been used to describe me on more than one occasion. I have an extrovert streak in me, but that only applies if I know you or I am quite comfortable in the group setting I am in. I was never driven towards public speaking when in school and it was not something I pursued on my own.  These are both things that I now regret.

Over the last couple of years I have been making a conscious effort to expand that extroverted streak and have become something of a compulsive volunteer. I am in my second year on the PASSMN board, during which time I have planned a SQL Saturday and now serve as Chapter Leader, which yes, includes some monthly speaking duties. I have volunteered in other capacities for PASS as well. Despite all of this, standing up in front of a large group, and putting myself out there to be knowledgeable enough to instruct others, was never something I had an interest in doing.  If push came to shove, it was something I could do.  I did not have a debilitating fear. I simply lacked the initiative/proper motivation to take those next steps.  So what helped changed my mind you ask?  This community.

I have been fortunate to be introduced to many, what I consider to be great, speakers over the last couple of years and many have shared stories with me about how they started out.  To my surprise their stories mirrored mine.  Is it possible that these experts were once in my shoes? Indeed.

Then came a couple of personal interactions, with current speakers, which turned the tide for me.

At SQL Saturday Portland 2012 I hung out with Jason Horner (t) a good deal.  Yes, I survived.  I'm not sure if he remembers this but he asked me twice "if you were going to speak, what would you speak on?".  He was a speaker at the event.  This definitely got me thinking and I started tossing around a few ideas in my head.  A few days later I found myself in Seattle at Summit 2012. At the PASS Volunteer Party I ran into Luke Jian (b | t). Luke had recently spoken at SQL Saturday Minnesota and I had first met him at SQL Saturday Madison 2011. Luke asked me point blank "when are we going to get you speaking!?".  I hemmed and hawed, somewhat avoiding the question, and actually answered with a well thought out "oh, I don't know". Luke's response: "how about Madison, next year?"  I wasn't sure of it at the time, but a timeline had been set.

Using PASSMN as my "practice venue", I delivered my first UG presentation in March and just delivered the same presentation at my first SQL Saturday, in Madison. Was I nervous, absolutely! Did I let it stop me, absolutely not.  In fact, both presentations went very well.  I am now, without a doubt, in love with presenting.

So what is my advice for someone, like me, just starting out?  Throw yourself, head first, into the SQL Server community. Find a speaker you respect and pick their brain a bit. Odds are they won't bite and are willing to provide valuable insight. Feel free to ping me anytime for advice!

Thanks to Bob for hosting this topic.  As I said.... it is very timely for me!

Again, speaking is this month’s topic.  Bob has this lined up as, “This month the prompt is how did you come to love presenting? What was the first time you gave a presentation in front of a group and really enjoyed it? Was it something that was required of you in school? Something you did in the workplace? Were you inspired by other SQL community members and thought “I think I can do that too”? Whatever your story is, I’d love to hear it. Not a presenter? Not a problem! Feel free to chime in with whatever you like that’s related to either presenting or SQL Server in general.” As I usually do, I’m going to take the last option and talk about a part to speaking that is completely outside the questions asked.  I’m fully taking advantage of, “Feel free to chime in with whatever you like…”

Picking a Topic

There are a ton of great topics out there and deep dives into how SQL Server works, from page internals to extremely in-depth optimizer information.  These topics are excellent and a must in terms of learning when you truly get down and dirty in the mud with SQL Server.  However, there is another method you can rely on and have great success in when picking a topic; pick topics that people will use in real life from small to large sized SQL Server installations.

What does that mean?  When you’re picking a topic, think about your normal workload or tasks you typically would be performing.  Don’t limit this to daily tasks but projects that take some time to plan and implement.  A great example is a presentation I recently wrote and have given a few times, “Upgrading to SQL Server 2012 with Limited Downtime”.   Everyone at some point will be upgrading SQL Server.  In the real world, almost everyone can retain some value from attending this presentation that goes over real life, executed designs, preparations, implementations and methods to accomplishing the upgrade.

Execution plan tuning is another idea.  I’ve done a 100-200 level session on tuning in real life patterns.  These sessions have always drawn off what would be reality in a normal administrative and development team.  Of course, this doesn’t mean it is not a good idea if you can spend 75 minutes talking about how, why and what happens when a WorkTable is introduced into an execution plan, to write a session like that.  That information is just as valuable as any session.  However, think about your audience at the same time.  Will the entire audience gain some real return for investing their time attending?  You may get a room of 100 people that will get that from a 500-level session but you may have a better result and build a platform to the 500-level session by implementing a presentation that can be utilized in a broader team set and SQL Server installation base.

So, when you are thinking about what session to write, what the topic should be, don’t spend time thinking about if it will make you look smart enough, be hard enough to follow or be the cat’s meow to the most internal and in-depth topic around.  Think about making an effort to return a higher ratio of the attendee’s investment sitting in your presentation by giving them something that they truly can take away and utilize immediately.

Practice doesn’t always make perfect

I like to think of my presentations as TED.com talks, not so much a timed point and click technical session.  Everyone has their own method and way to practicing a session.  Some practice a session to the point that almost every word is repeated, sequentially and timed to the minute.  You may also think that everyone does that and that is the only way to be successful.  Honestly speaking, that isn’t always true.  I’ve had many sessions that have not been practiced at all.  Well, practiced beyond the morning of the presentation, a run through the slides and a few keywords to make sure the session flow continues as it should.

Practicing simply isn’t for everyone.  A lot of people find that presenting is something that really does come naturally.  Getting in front of a group of people and letting the presentation flow as it should base on how the presentation fits to the group that is sitting in front of you.  I believe each presentation evolves during the time is it presented based on the group that is in the room.  You should take in the expressions on attendee’s faces, listen to the questions they are asking, note if the group is made up of DBAs to Developers.  If the session is on execution plan tuning and I’ve ended up with a room of developers, I’ll manipulate the session as I discuss the best practices and ways to tune execution plans based on how a developer would use it best.  If the room is primarily DBAs, then it will look to that side.  If the room is a good mix, include that mix in how you present things.  Include statistical information as much as coding changes to make plans change.

Now, this does not mean you can change demonstrations per each group, or not practice and prepare demonstrations.  Demonstrations are, and should be, static and functional.  Set them up before hand, ensure they function, back them up, and make them easily recreated on other machines (in case your machine dies 10 minutes before you are going on stage).  Practice the demonstrations but don’t make them the presentation. Make your experience and stories the reason you are advancing your knowledge to the group.

Summary

One of the best presentations I have ever been in was one that Jessica Moss (B | T) gave years ago in Iowa for a SQL Saturday.  Jessica’s presentation was on SSAS and just when the session started, the projector in the room basically blew up and would not work.  Without skipping a beat, the session evolved rapidly and Jessica made that session work without the projector.  Not only did Jessica make it work but, she evolved it into a session that fit the group.  Once Jessica started talking, she noticed the group wasn’t really with the level or the track she was on.  Based on that, she altered the entire hour and evolved the session into what the group really needed to understand the topic.  That, to this day, is still the most impressive show of presentation skills I have seen and I learned from it.  I can draw off evaluations and feedback to say, it seems to be working pretty well and people enjoy the way I present.  Now, just because I present this way successfully, does not mean you have to or will.  Use this and what I’m sure will be countless other recommendations from other common speakers in our community, to build your own method of handing off our wealth of knowledge the best way we can to keep the attention there, the gratitude afterwards and the rewards of what it means to provide a truly good presentation.

Standing up in front of a room of people and talking, especially on a technical topic, can induce nightmares. Think about everything that could go wrong. Your laptop could stop working. Your demos could fail. You could forget everything you were going to say. You could fall off the stage. (Oh, no, that’s just me.)

But once you get past the fear, you’ll realize that presenting is pure joy. You get to teach other people. You get to share your knowledge. You get to see people’s eyes light up when they “get it”. It’s very rewarding.

The best way to deal with the nerves and the fears is to follow the Boy Scout motto: Be Prepared. Presenting is about more than the 60 or 75 minutes you are on stage. It takes preparation.

We’ll take a look at some of the important steps that I take to help me be successful in speaking.  Some tips, if you will, on the pure joy of speaking.

Craft the Presentation

Take time to carefully craft your presentation. You will have a better end product, and will be less frustrated, if you sit down and write out the goals of the presentation – before you write the first slide or demo. You’ll know what you want to talk about, and can refer back to them.  After writing a few of these, you’ll find how much easier it makes writing the presentation altogether.

Build your slides and demos thoroughly and test them every way you can imagine. Be aware of how to create good presentations, and make sure your demos are technically accurate.  Imagine your demos are running in production.  Make them as stable and solid as possible.

Make sure you have a good opening and closing. An opening will draw the audience in and encourage them to stay for the entire presentation. A good closing will wrap up everything you talked about and give the audience a call to action.

Practice, Practice, Practice

I am not saying you have to know every word. If your presentation sounds canned or rote, it won’t interest people either. But you need to know how your presentation will flow.  There is nothing worse than a presenter reading the next slide word for word before saying anything, because she doesn’t know what she’s talking about. (I’ve seen it happen.)

I try to have the first five minutes of every presentation down flat. That helps with nerves. (Yes, I still get nervous every time I present. I consider that a good thing.) But if I can get through the first few minutes, where I introduce myself and my topic, and find out more about the audience, I am calm enough to get through the rest.

You need to know your demos, and know them well. Have them prepared, and tested. As both a presenter and an attendee, I can’t stand unexpected errors. As a presenter, if a demo fails, you have to be able to let go. Don’t hang on to that thought, trying to fix what’s wrong. Move on. For the sanity of your audience, don’t try to fix it then and there.

How I Practice

When I’m preparing a presentation, after I’ve written the slides and demos, I run through it, start to finish. I have a text document open on my computer and I note what I think was rough, where I might need to adjust a script, what needs to be thrown out, and what can be added in. I time myself. Then I go through, make the adjustments, and practice again. I’ll do this until I’m satisfied it’s a good presentation. The day before or day of, I open the slides and demos and take a quick peek at them so they are fresh in my mind.

The more technical a topic is, the more time I’ll spend on those tasks. However, I give the same attention to every presentation, because every one is important. People come to learn from me. I want to teach them, and I want to present myself well. It takes practice and there is an acquired amount of skill to it.  But that skill can be achieved with work.

Deliver

If you’ve prepared your presentation by giving careful thought to the flow, practicing and timing, and writing good demos, you’ll be successful. Simply, be prepared.

Now get your ass out there, write a session, and deliver it at a user group, SQL Saturday or go for the mountain peak and submit to PASS Summit!

What are you waiting for?

One of my goals with the chapter is to try out new, exciting ideas. One of my favorite community projects is to grow the pool of speakers. I thought, “How can I combine these two?” I decided to try an Open Mic night – anyone could sign up to talk about any SQL-related topic for 5-10 minutes. I encouraged our members to talk about anything they enjoyed, their favorite tool or T-SQL command, or a real-life scenario they learned from.

I didn’t know how well this would go over. Getting up in front of a room full of people and presenting - especially on a technical topic – can be terrifying, and I didn’t know if people would be up for it. I was delighted when five people signed up!

The FoxPASS crew showing off their Red Gate swag

Last night we kicked off the meeting with a demo from our great sponsor, Red Gate. Then we heard from our members!

Josh gave us an overview of Microsoft Data Quality Services. I didn’t know there was an Excel plug-in, so I learned something new there!

Ken talked about error handling in PowerShell. I love PowerShell. I want more presentations on SQL and PowerShell.

Adam and Jeremy talked about how they handled a very large database (over 5 TB today) with partitioning and storage. This real-world example was top-notch.

Jeff gave us a demo of SQL Prompt, which was great. Every time he mentioned a feature, I nodded and thought, “Yep, that’s my favorite feature.” Then I realized, they can’t all be my favorite. But they are.

As a user group leader, this was one of the best things I’ve done yet. It was inspiring to hear from members of the community that hadn’t spoken before. It was fun to hear about multiple topics in one night, too.

I would encourage every user group to try this. Give your users three to four months’ notice. Mention it repeatedly. Send emails asking for volunteers. Let everyone know that any topic is fair game – administration, development, BI, professional development. Let them know it’s a low pressure environment. You can decide if there will be feedback given – or not.

It’s a great way to grow our pool of speakers – and what user group doesn’t want that? It’s also a great way to grow the people – public speaking skills are so important! I’ll be making this an annual FoxPASS event, and I can’t wait for next year’s!

SQL Saturday in Madison – This is our second SQL Saturday in Madison.  Last year was a screaming success (I say that because Jes is on the organizing team ;-)  This year will be as good if not better than last year.  The location is the same, speakers and schedule looking awesome and the Wisconsin SQL Community just has a great time networking and learning together.  I have the honor of presenting with the famous Jes Borland too!!!  I may have to get her signature while we’re up there.  I may also get it for saying that.

PASS Business Analytics Conference – The window sticker, “Immerse yourself in the world of data-driven insights with over 60 sessions by top Microsoft and industry experts – including award-winning economist and Freakonomics co-author Dr. Steven D. Levitt. Gain real-world insights, prescriptive guidance, best practices, and strategic vision to expand your ability to predict business performance.”  The non-window sticker:  this conference is looking better and better each time I look over the sessions.  This is coming from a not-so-BI-driven-SQL-Guy.  If a conference geared towards the BI space of SQL Server can intrigue a diehard internals SQL MVP, you shouldn’t be missing this one.  If you are cringing at the cost, make the case to have your company send you.  The ROI and value is there.

The week comes to an end on a high note with SQL Saturday in Chicago.  This SQL Saturday was one of the first I helped organizer and one of my favorite.  The team, the location, sponsors and schedule are always amazing.  The best part, like any SQL Saturday, it’s free and still Summit level content.  I’ll be helping DeVry again by teaching students in their IT programs but also ending the day with a session on upgrading to SQL Server 2012 with limited downtime.  This session was given recently for the Chicago SQL Server User Group and a great session.  Not so much for my side as a speaker, for the discussions and interaction it sparks with everyone wondering just how easy it should be to upgrade to SQL Server 2012.  I’ll have demos on upgrading from SQL Server 2008 to SQL Server 2012 already setup with Availability Groups and a quick application review of utilizing connection strings to show mirroring at work for upgrade usage.

If you want to stretch the week out even longer, Fargo is holding its first SQL Saturday on April 27^th!  This event was the brain child of good friend Jason Strate.  I was lucky enough to have helped as an organizer and can with complete confidence say, this SQL Saturday is going to be a huge success and one that will become an annual event for another great region.

As you can see, there is a lot in the North-Central to Midwest PASS regions this coming week.  Plenty of reasons to learn some new things about SQL Server and network with people that have that passion about this product line just like you do.

I hope to see everyone at one of these events.  They all should be a great success.

Part of the way through the show, a conversation took place that I couldn't get out of my head.

Here's the situation:

A business person is asking IT to implement a blog using a specific NoSQL database solution and we push back and try to examine why they want it, and oh by the way we have this great business opportunity for you (around 29:30).

Which reminded me of a related question I heard (I thought in the show, but apparently it must have been earlier in the day):

Why it is OK for the IT person to talk business to the business person, when it's not OK for the business person to talk IT to the IT person.

What bothered me the whole drive home is the built in assumption that the business and IT are separate entities. The panel went deep into value streams and hypotheses-driven development from here, but I think there was something wrong with the root of this story, where we accepted the separation of IT person and business. This may seem overly detail-oriented, but I think far too many IT people see themselves exactly this way.

And it's wrong.

Here's the flaw in this story (and every other place we talk about IT vs the business):

Joe Random Executive doesn't know all the intricacies of accounting, purchasing, warehousing, marketing, sales, law, human resources, or any of a dozen other areas. They will probably know a couple in detail, but they are no more an expert in the rest then they are in IT (and of course we assume they didn't have an IT Background). These are all skills or roles that get casually lumped under the "business" umbrella. Because somehow all areas but IT are business, while only IT is non-business.

Is this ego or laziness? Some of both. Only in the IT department do we somehow think our role gives us a magic ticket to be totally ignorant about the company we work for.

This is absurd.

It makes no more sense then suggesting that accounting is far too intricate to spend time learning how the business around them works. Or that the ever-changing logistics and supply market supersedes understanding the products we are purchasing or shipping. Or that knowing what markets we sell to has any importance to the lawyers. Or that our business growth strategies should take any time away from HR activities around screening and hiring,.

Maybe the whole company is siloed, but seeing it as IT vs The Business is silly (see Gene Kim's point 25 minutes in).

But wait, these are IT ops people talking, surely this is different, right?

I'll give you a hint, Gene Kim talks early on about how The Phoenix Project was influenced by The Goal (Eliyahu Goldratt), whose main character is a plant operations manager. So no, IT Ops, IT QA, IT Technician, you are no more off the hook then the enormous variety of lawyers a business may need to work with over the course of it's life.

There are two types of workers, and they aren't IT and non-IT, they are engaged and not engaged.

Are you doing your job?

Are you doing the job, or just playing with technology?

An engaged worker knows how the company works, at some level. They can discuss the strategies the business is executing, what their company does, and who their customers are. They may not be able to discuss these things with equal facility as the executives or experts in specific departments, but they can have an intelligent conversation about their business.

The not-engaged worker is just there to do a job and go home. They are the protectors of turf, the ones that deny every request they can get away with, or the ones that simply don't care.

So the reason an IT person (even an IT Ops person) can speak to a non-IT worker about the business is because "the business" is the common language they share. IT, accounting, purchasing, human resources, whoever ... when we need to discuss why something is important, we discuss it's impact on the the business, the strategies or targets it effects, etc. In fact, being in IT typically requires a higher level of day-to-day, cross-functional contact then any of the prior examples. More, not less.

Engaging the business has come and gone as part of many buzzy things, and in DevOps it's rising again. Regardless of it's current popularity, if you work for a company, being an IT person doesn't magically separate you from the goals everyone else is working towards. Engage, learn the business, help them succeed, you'll find that you're company is doing some really interesting things and works with some really interesting people. If it's not, find one that resonates with you and learn what they're doing. Either way, you're part of the business, an you chose whether you're competent or not.

That's because LessThanDot is now no longer hosted on a dedicated server over at godaddy.com but we moved to host4geeks

You might be interested to know that we have moved up in the world.

Our old server was a dual core intel processor with 2GB RAM and 2x300GB disks with linux on it.

To our new server being a similar dual core intel celeron processor with 8GB RAM and 2x250GB disks. We needed the RAM more than anything.

The transition was smooth and not too many people noticed. Except for Ted who lost a few views on his last post, sorry Ted.

Enjoy.