Download link: STOP_Consolidate_and_Listen_24HOP (ZIP file)

If you have any additional questions around consolidation, virtualization or my general sanity feel free to leave them in the comments section below, thanks!

Felt a little something like this...

Alas, July 1st came and went with no email. Disappointed turtle was disappointed. Now I say I was disappointed since I knew I’d been nominated the last few quarters but hadn’t heard anything yet. And yes, I know “it’s the award you’re not supposed to want”, but still it’s stressful knowing you’re up for it but not hearing anything one way or the other. This time around I figured “oh well, keep it up and eventually…maybe”. Anywho, last week as I was at the JSSUG meeting when I got a DM from Ryan with the following: “Hi Jorge — Congratulations! You are a MVP. Call me so I can explain it all to you.”

Say WHAT?!? I checked and double checked the message to make sure it wasn’t some sort of sick prank. As soon as I got out of the meeting I gave Ryan a call to find out what was going on. I’d heard of folks getting awarded out of cycle before but I was still thoroughly confused as to what was going on! As it turns out, apparently I HAD been awarded MVP status in the July 1st batch but something went wrong with getting me the notification. For those not familiar with the process, Microsoft sends out the MVP emails en-masse to folks which seems to trip every spam filter around. Since this is the case, folks are told to check their spam folders on MVP day just in case. In my peculiar case it wasn’t a matter of spam filter black hole but rather an error in my contact information. Near as I can tell they had an invalid email address on file for me so they weren’t able to send me my notification!

Fast forward a few weeks and Ryan had gone on vacation and gotten sick during that period, when he finally got back to the office and catching up he somehow discovered that I had no idea I was awarded. That’s when he dug around and sent me a DM on Twitter as that was a guaranteed means of getting to me directly.

The Mushy Part

Story aside, I want to let you all know how truly grateful I am for this honor. It’s been a pleasure and privilege being a part of this amazing SQL community and this award just compels me to keep working even harder to deserve it. I want to thank everyone for the warm congrats and support, it means a LOT! I’d also like to send a special thank you to those who nominated me and sent me words of encouragement every quarter.

Speaking of working harder I got another piece of amazing news last week as well: I’ll be presenting for the first time at PASS Summit this year! What makes THAT even cooler is that the session is a Community Spotlight session, meaning you guys were gracious enough to cast your vote for me so I can bore educate the masses on Policy-Based Management at the Super Bowl/World Cup of SQL Server events! That being said thank you all so SO much for all your love and support and I look forward to continue serving this community for years to come!

We’ll have several tables, each with a dedicated expert in the field hosting conversations. Want to delve into some shop talk about PowerShell? Curious about how Analysis Services are being setup by other folks in the field? Care to swap architecture design ideas about SSIS with others? Well this is the place to do this and more! Here’s the list of folks who have graciously volunteered to host tables at this event:

Mike Davis (Blog | Twitter) – SSRS

Grant Fritchey (Blog | Twitter) – Indexing/Performance Tuning

Adam Jorgensen (Blog | Twitter)- SSAS

Devin Knight (Blog | Twitter) – SSIS

Andie Letourneau (Blog | Twitter) – Women in Technology

Brian Moran (Blog | Twitter)- Professional Development

Jorge Segarra (Blog | Twitter) – Administration

Ed Wilson (Blog | Twitter) – PowerShell

These are three different panel events being hosted by members of the SQL community. You have your choice of three cool events to choose from:

Mike Davis (Blog | Twitter)

Devin Knight (Blog | Twitter)

Adam Jorgensen (Blog | Twitter)

Patrick LeBlanc (Blog | Twitter)

In this full-day workshop, you’ll learn from the author team of Mike Davis, Adam Jorgensen, Devin Knight, and Patrick LeBlanc how to build a data warehouse for your company and support it with the Microsoft business intelligence platform. We’ll start with how to design and data model a data warehouse including the system preparation. Then, we’ll jump into loading a data warehouse with SSIS. After SSIS, you’re ready to roll the data up and provide the slice and dice reporting with SSAS. The team will walk through cube development and data enrichment with things like key performance indicators, which are essential for your future dashboards.  Lastly, we will cover how to report against the data warehouse with SSRS, including a primer in how to write MDX queries against the SSAS cube.

What you can expect to take away from this session:

1. Practical knowledge of building a Dimensional Model
2. Designing a simple ETL process using SSIS
3. Designing a Cube
4. Designing simple SSRS Reports
5. Building an integrated process that fully leverages the entire MS BI stack to load a Data Warehouse.

You can register here and pre-con fee is $199 (which includes lunch). This is a great deal so what are you waiting for? Sign up today as slots are filling up fast! See you at SQLRally!

So far the event has been absolutely awesome and the awesomeness continues today with the last 12 hours of the event, starting at 8am EST. If you missed yesterday, don’t fret, all of the sessions are being recorded and will be available on the PASS website within a month. Yesterday’s sessions went well, we had some sessions that actually had over 750 attendees (or as Tom LaRock refers to it as, the Jetliner line)! There were a few surprises as well, such as in Isabel de la Barra’s session, where we were treated to a presentation in Spanish (and translated by moderator Jesus Gil). At first we thought it was going to be a big issue but it turns out that over 300 attendees stuck around for the session and feedback from the Twitter stream seemed positive.

Speaking of Twitter, if you wish to follow along with the event you can do so by following the event hash tag of #24HOP. We are also using #sqlpass as well as #passwit to help promote and discuss the event. Day one is in the book and day two is looking to be fantastic as well, see you in the sessions!

First off we have an incredible deal with a pre-con we call Day of Data. We have two all-day training options for you at the incredible price of $99 (after today 1/5, price jumps to $109)! For the DBAs we have Denny Cherry (Blog | Twitter) presenting Storage and Virtualization for the DBA.  For the BI focus We have Stacia Misner (Blog | Twitter) presenting a Day of BI. This price includes coffee, juice and donuts, lunch, and course materials. To register click here and make sure to share this with co-workers and your boss! I guarantee the ROI on this training will be off the charts!

As for the main event we have an AMAZING lineup of speakers for this free (yes, I said FREE) training event. Check out the schedule (time/rooms subject to change):

And I guess it’s worth mentioning I’ll be there presenting my Policy-Based Management in a Nutshell talk so if you come to the event swing by and say hi (even stay for my session if you’d like!). So grab yo kids, grab yo wife, grab yo coworkers and get to SQLSaturday cuz everyone’s learning up in there!*

*I apologize for the horrendous addition to an internet meme to my post

Branding is a funny thing. It can go one of two ways: you can create a brand that resonates with your target audience, makes you memorable, and any continued associations with your brand and your audience are positive and meaningful. Or you can create a brand very much slanted the other way and any interactions or associations with your brand can bring negative results and damage you personally or professionally.

I’m going to make a quick confession here and tell you that I not only have watched the show “What Not To Wear” on TLC but I thoroughly enjoyed said show. Why confess that? Well on the show the hosts Clinton Kelly and Stacy London often tell their fashion-challenged targets that they need to realize that they’re trying to sell themselves. It’s all about image. This may sound a bit shallow but hear me out folks. You really are the image you project and this includes how you dress, how you act and in the world of blogging and presenting this directly relates to the brand you’re trying to sell: you!

Hokey or Genius?

It's what's on the inside that counts...wrong

I guess I can say I’m a pretty decent example of interesting branding in our crazy SQL world as I’ve chosen to represent myself not so much through my own name (which I do tout through other means) but rather through a cartoon chicken posing as a superhero. How exactly did THAT come about? Well to get the full origin story check out my very first blog post. What I don’t cover in that post, and haven’t really blogged about until now, is the affect of my branding  decisions and where it has gotten me today. As I mention in the other post I was originally inspired and guided by Brent Ozar’s (Blog | Twitter) series on How to Get Started in Technical Blogging. One of the things Brent covers is the selection of one’s brand. At that point I had chosen to go with a rather kitschy brand rather than using my own name as a brand.

This decision actually had quite a bit of thought behind it and I have been able to groom and develop the brand decision over the past couple of years. For instance  when I first decided to go with the SQLChicken brand the only thing I had related to the chicken was the rubber chicken hanging in my office. Originally I hadn’t really planned to take my shtick “on the road” but as I began to present more and more my brand extended to these events as I brought the chicken with me. This let folks easily identify me and my brand, and probably also triggered a flood of calls to local security. Again, as my brand grew and more folks began to associate me with the chicken brand I took more measures to keep that association in folks’ minds. I decided to make my brand more fun by handing out chicken-related items (i.e. squeezy chickens, flying/screaming chickens) to those who attended my sessions. From there something unexpected happened: unsolicited people started associating things related to my brand to me in their daily lives! For example I’ve had folks tweet at me pictures of random chickens they come across which caused them to think about me! I’ve also had people refer to my username when they’re having chicken for dinner which makes for some unnerving tweets (I’m looking at you Lady Runa!).

So given all this I guess I can say my branding has been a successful one. Thanks to my brand I’ve been afforded to opportunity to present for folks all over the world (thank you LiveMeeting), write a book (shameless link to Pro SQL Server 2008 Policy-Based Management), and go to events I never thought in a million years I’d be a part of. As my career continues to unfold and develop I’ll continuously hone and perfect the branding, especially since now I’m part of a larger brand with Pragmatic Works. It’s an interesting balance but ultimately I think it’s very much worth all the effort put in to it.

Not Just You

In my case I’ve actually managed to work my own brand with ANOTHER brand I’ve created and that’s SQL University branding. Doing a high-profile project for the community is certainly another way to sell your brand. For instance Arnie Rowland’s Project Phoenix for developers is not only letting him do something extraordinary for the community but also building up his brand as well. Now before you start tearing in to me about “well he’s doing something selfless, not building a brand!”. You’re right…and wrong. Even if the intent is purely selfless, you’re going to be associated with said project so in essence this brand is an extension of your brand. This isn’t a bad thing folks (unless your project is to go punch babies in the face and post said video on Youtube for fun). Just remember you are what you do and given the nature of today’s information-rich, easily accessible data world it’s all that much more important to be aware of these things.

Not All Unicorns and Rainbows

Mistakes...We all make them

So far I’ve talked about the good side of branding but let’s talk a bit about the other side as well. As I mentioned in the last section your brand can be affected by projects and affiliations. Sometimes a brand will come up that has several notable (and positive) folks associated with it and then something goes terribly wrong and all of a sudden everyone involved takes a hit. I’d like to cite the (now dead) baconbitsandbytes site. This was an off-color joke site put together by a few well-known individuals in the SQL community. Their humor is definitely edgy but they’ve always strayed on the good side of the line. BBB was kind of a steam release valve where they could disassociate themselves from their brands for a bit and have fun. The problem with this is that everyone knew who the guys running it were so the brand extended itself anyways!

Well one fateful day a certain article was posted that definitely crossed a line with certain folks and one of the members was given an ultimatum by their employer to either take down the site/content or face repercussions. Even though this guy didn’t even write the content, he was associated with the brand and thus his association was an extension of his company’s brand. Long story short the site’s plug was pulled by the guys, everyone learned their lessons and went on their merry way. The important part here is all parties involved learned a valuable lesson on brand identity and its subsequent effects on branding.

Conclusion

I could sit here all day writing about what you should or shouldn’t do but what it basically comes down to is common sense. If you’re blogging from an employer’s blog, remember you can’t just spout off whatever you want to say no matter how badly you want to. If you’re going to publicly state something realize that nowadays this stuff is out there forever. Building a brand is fun but there will be lots of work involved if you want to do it right. There are tons of ways of monitoring your online brand out there, just read up on the rest of the Un-SQL Friday posts to get a sense of how everyone approaches this. Just remember, you’re selling you so make yourself something worth buying!

Watch closely...

I mentioned in my last post that the Turn is the point in the act where the magician executes his illusion, leaving his audience captivated and in wonderment. Sometimes the magician will even make something disappear in to thin air. Funnily enough, this past week I had a little bit of everything I just mentioned!

Monday was the day of pre-con sessions and I was fortunate enough to be able to attend Brian Knight’s (Blog | Twitter) session entitled ETL Bootcamp: End to End SSIS. What better way to kick off my BI career than to learn SSIS from the master himself (also doesn’t hurt that he’s my boss!). I, and everyone else in the audience, thought this was just going to be Brian presenting this session. He started off talking about doing the day’s demoes using the standard AdventureWorks databases when all of a sudden Patrick LeBlanc (Blog | Twitter) stood up in the back of the room and very boisterously did not agree with going that route. He asked the audience if they wanted to see something else, something not so boring, as he approached the stage…

Surprise! This was going to be a joint session starring Brian AND Patrick using data collected from the NFL instead! Both guys donned their respective team jerseys, Brian in Jaguars garb and Patrick in Saints. They claimed one half of the room for themselves and this session was going to be a football game and the audience were the team! As they progressed through their demoes they would ask the audience questions that were worth certain amount of points as in American football (i.e. 3 points for a field goal, 2 for a safety and 7 for a touchdown). The whole session was REALLY entertaining and chock full of SSIS awesomesauce (and for what it’s worth, my side won ;-P )

That night was the PASS first-timer’s session (that’s right folks, up until this year I was a Summit n00b) at which I got to meet some great folks such as business intelligence guru Stacia Misner (Blog | Twitter) and her lovely daughter Erika (Blog). Pretty cool fact I learned, they work together! The family that queries together stays together. I also got to finally meet Douglas McDowell (Blog | Twitter). It’s an odd feeling meeting someone face to face for the first time that you’ve been working/volunteering with over the course of a few years and feel like you already know each other through your interaction.

The next few days were a blur of ridiculously, awesome, inexplicable, can’t-put-into-words-but-I’ll-do-my-hardest-to-try chain of networking, learning and just plain having fun! I’ll use my last post in this series, the Prestige, to give a synopsis of everything but all I can say is that PASS Summit is worth every penny you can muster to get there!

So when I started this post series I did say this was going to be a magic –themed post series. What’s a magic trick without a disappearing act? Well unfortunately we’re at the part of the trick where an object disappears (aka “the Turn”). In this case what disappeared was my laptop as I had left it unattended briefly at a Starbucks in Seattle and “whoosh”, it was gone like Keyser Soze. After coming to grips with the fact that I’d never see my stuff again, I went on attending the conference hoping to make the best of the rest of the week. For what it’s worth, trying to live blog/tweet from an iPhone is an art form and apparently my ability to write messages at blazing speed on my phone took Michelle Ufford (Blog | Twitter) by surprise!



Demon Thumbs: Now available in iPhone 4

Anywho, so the laptop disappeared but fear not! After all, this is a magic show and strange and magical things will and do happen. In tomorrow’s post you’ll hear the exciting conclusion of how I actually managed to get it back! Stay tuned for the exciting finale, or Prestige if you will!

From Summit site:

You voted, and the results are in: Dr. David DeWitt will be speaking on Query Optimization 101 during the most anticipated keynote of PASS Summit 2010!

“In two short years, giving a keynote at the PASS Summit has become a highlight of my year,” noted Dr. DeWitt, Technical Fellow with Microsoft’s Jim Gray Systems Lab. “This year, I am excited to have the opportunity to talk about SQL query optimization, why it is hard to always produce good plans, and new technologies that offer the promise of better plans in future releases of SQL Server.”

Query optimization is the process of compiling a SQL query into an executable plan that is as efficient as possible. While the basic fundamentals for cost-based query optimization were first described in a seminal paper by Pat Selinger of IBM Research in 1979, optimizing complex queries continues to be very challenging 30 years later. In this talk, David DeWitt will describe the fundamentals of query optimization, why it remains a very hard problem today, and present several recent research results that promise to improve the quality of plans produced in the years to come.

David J. DeWitt is a Technical Fellow in the Microsoft Data and Storage Platform Division. DeWitt’s role is creating and leading the Microsoft Jim Gray Systems Lab, a new advanced development center in Madison, WI, for Microsoft, in association with the University of Wisconsin-Madison Computer Sciences Department. DeWitt came to Microsoft from the Computer Sciences Department at the University of Wisconsin, which he joined in September 1976 after receiving his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan. He served as department chair from July 1999 to July 2004 and held the title of John P. Morgridge Professor of Computer Sciences when he retired from the University of Wisconsin.

Click Here for live blog!