For me, 2013 was one of the most interesting and busy years of my life. It was a good year for me, especially on the career front, and it’s certainly been the busiest year in several years. Among the highlights of 2013: Going independent The most significant event for me this year was when I fulfilled a long-time dream of…
OK, I’m not really going to break it. I’m just going to beat it up a little bit. This Thursday evening, I’ll be working my home turf at the North Texas SQL Server User Group monthly meeting, presenting “When ETL Goes Bad: Handling Errors and Anomalies in SSIS” at 6:15 at the Microsoft campus. In this hour-long presentation, I’ll go…
I’m happy to announce that the North Texas SQL Server User Group will be hosting our fourth SQL Saturday event this fall. SQL Saturday #163 will be a BI-focused event similar to the one we hosted in the Fall of 2010. We invite you to join us at the Microsoft campus on Saturday, October 13th for a full day of…
It’s been a busy couple of weeks for SQL Server community and PASS related news. First and probably most importantly is that the location for SQL Rally 2012 has been chosen, and we are happy to announce that it’ll be right here in Dallas! After several months of research and evaluation, PASS awarded next year’s event to this area based…
Like clockwork, another year has come and (almost) gone. It’s been a wild year on many fronts: major happenings included the devastating Haiti earthquakes, the signing into law of a landmark healthcare reform bill, a major debacle over the use of body scanners and intimate pat-downs at TSA airport security stations, the personal crash and burn of golf star Tiger…
This past Saturday, our NTSSUG group hosted SQL Saturday 56, which was our second SQL Saturday of the year. This event was a departure from the typical SQLSat in that it strictly focused on BI, and featured topics including SSIS, SSRS, SSAS, SharePoint, MDX, and other disciplines in and around the Microsoft BI stack. Due to space and logistical issues,…
At the MVP Summit last week, I was talking with fellow Dallas-area tweep Sean McCown about our local SQL Server user group membership. I think our group is unique because of its sheer size; we typically have between 70 and 90 people at our monthly meetings, with a mailing list that goes out to between 600 and 800 people. So…
The new year is less than 24 hours old and I’ve already been blessed with two different honors. I shared earlier this morning that I received word of my selection as a Microsoft SQL Server MVP for 2010. Just four hours later, I was notified that I have been elected to the board of the North Texas SQL Server User…