Expanding our Horizons

peggycovelighthouse

Expanding Horizons

It has been kind of quiet here. Too quiet actually & it is my fault.

I have been working hard expanding horizons this summer and have not been keeping up to date here as much as I feel I should be.

To break the long hiatus of posts and info sharing, I am throwing this post together to update you as to what has been going on that has taken my time away from the blog for a while.

A lot has been going on, so I think a quick list will be the easiest to deal with.

Over the last couple of months the following has been happening:

 

Presenting at SQL Saturdays

I have been getting picked up by more and more SQL Saturday events to present my “Indexing” Encrypted Data session. It has resulted in my traveling (driving) all over the place, and is actually continuing all through the fall as well.

So far I have presented in Rochester, Philadelphia, Indianapolis, and New York City. Coming up I will be in Orlando, Charleston &  Charlotte. I am also starting to hunker down into coordinating the Washington DC event for this year as well.

Preparing for PASS Summit

This year I get to attend the PASS Summit! I am very excited. I have heard so many things about it, and I’m sure it will be a life & career changing event like SQL Cruise was for me. Hopefully I will get to see a lot of you there as well!

If you are insterested in attending, I even have a discount code to give you $150 off of registration! The code is: SUM258CH

Getting PASSDC up and running

In April I teamed up with Matt Velic (T|B) and Paul Rizza (T|B) to form PASSDC, the official PASS chapter in the Washington DC area. We work along side NOVASQL and BSSUG. We have been working to get some new ideas up and running and are quickly growing. Last check we were nearing 40 members in just 5 months. It is an exciting activity! If you are interested in free training and socializing with other SQL users in the Washington Area, join us! We meet the second Thursday of each month. More info can be found here.

Creating and recording online training courses for SQL Server

I teamed up with LearnNowOnline in July to create and record an 8 hour training session on becoming a SQL DBA. It was stressful as I was on a condensed timeline of 3 weeks rather than the standard 8 weeks, but it all worked out. It is odd to see and hear yourself on video, but it has inspired me to possibly record some short SQL videos to host on this website. More information will be posted when this comes together.

Presenting outside of PASS Groups and Events

My “Indexing” encrypted data presentation has been picked up to be presented at the Information Security Summit 2013 being held in Ohio this fall. I am excited and terrified at the same time. I am used to presenting this to PASS groups and events where not a lot of people are using encryption. This time I will be presenting in front of people that focus on encryption and security of data. I am honored to have been selected and know the experience will only help make the presentation and myself even stronger. If you are interested in the security of systems this seems to be a great event for a great price. More info & registration can be done at their website.

PASS Board of Directors

This year PASS has 3 spots on the Board of Directors open and many an email & tweet went out encouraging folks to apply. At first I was hesitant, then after chatting with a couple of SQL friends decided to throw my hat into the running. I completed the application and was shocked (in a good way) to hear I was one of 9 selected to move to the next round of Interviews. On August 19th I had my interview. I had no idea what to expect and hope I did decently enough with it. I know a few other candidates up for consideration and don’t envy the Nominations Committee at all for having to figure out who is on the slate for voting next month. I should be hearing results of the rankings soon and will hopefully be on the slate. Then it will be in the hands of the PASS community.

Egret 2.0 developmentEgret

Egret is a custom monitoring solution I developed as part of the Concierge DBA™ care services the WaterOx Consulting Provides. With the prospect of may new clients I figured it was time to start looking into making Egret 2.0 happen. I have started sketching out the concepts and methods to make this happen and am working with a new Intern, Mike Salmon, to get things developed. The goal of Egret 2.0 is to make it  a service based application that uses the cloud (Azure or AWS, not sure just yet) to store scripts and data in a secured way. This should help reduce the footprint of the monitoring tool as well as open up some doors to some neat enhancements in the future for our clients. It is something that’s been in the back of my mind pestering me for months and I am very excited to be able to start moving it forward.

 

So, there is a quick summary of some of the main things going on. I continue to look for new clients and expand the business. There are some new campaigns I am working on as well, and I hope to be announcing those before too long too.

Also, if there are any topics you would like to see me blog about let me know. It can be SQL, entrepreneurship, development, projects, PASS, events. Drop me a line and I’ll be sure to see what I can get put together!