I will be speaking at my first SQL Saturday on September 26th in Spartanburg SC. I am so excited to have been selected to give my session on Survival Techniques for the Lone DBA. After a year of, not so subtle hints from the SQL Family (John Morehouse (b|t), Rie Irish (t), Melody Zacharias (b|t), Mike Fal (b|t), Argenis Fernandez (b|t) , Kirsten Benzel (b|t), Andy Yun (b|t), Lindsay Clark (t)), I submitted my first session and got selected. I will be finally standing up before a room of colleagues and talking about my experience as a lone DBA for the last 15+ years.
What did I just do?
Unless you have ever submitted to a SQL Saturday, you have no idea how it feels to input your biography and abstract into the site and hit that submit button. It is exhilarating and scary all at once. You get this “Oh crap! what did I just do?!” feeling. Part of you hopes you get selected to speak and the other little part of you wants to say “Ok I submitted, let that be enough for now.“ I am very happy to have gotten selected and I’m looking forward to hitting that submit button on many more events.
Feedback
I gave this session last month at my local user group and I now totally understand why so many take the opportunity to speak. The thrill you experience as the audience engages in what you have to share is overwhelming. I loved to see the proverbial light bulb turn on, after showing another way of doing something. It was so much fun (yes I am a dork, I know). One of the best things I experienced after doing the session was reading the session feedback forms. If you are one of the ones that normally don’t give feedback I ask you to reconsider. The feedback is how we as speakers (yep me included now) can improve. I was pleasantly surprised at the comments and happy to learn they got more out of the session they expected. Mission accomplished in my book. I can’t wait to see the feedback from SQL Saturday! Hopefully I’ll get some feedback on what to improve upon.
Look! I am on the schedule! Come join me at 3:45-4:45.
I’m It – Survival Techniques for the Lone DBA
Abstract: Are you the only database person at your company? Are you both the DBA and the Developer? Being the only data professional in an environment can seem overwhelming, daunting, and darn near impossible sometimes. However, it can also be extremely rewarding and empowering. This session will cover how you can keep your sanity, get stuff done, and still love your job. We’ll cover how I have survived and thrived being a Lone DBA for 15 years and how you can too. When you finish this session, you’ll know what you can do to make your job easier, where to find help, and how to still be able to advance and enrich your career.
Why not attend?
So, if you are in the Spartanburg, SC area that weekend come out and get come free SQL Training and stop by my session that afternoon. You can register for the event at https://www.sqlsaturday.com/431/EventHome.aspx and here is the lineup of sessions https://www.sqlsaturday.com/431/Sessions/Schedule.aspx .
Hope to see you there; it’s going to be a great event!
