Monthly Archives: December 2017

T-SQL Tuesday is a monthly blog party started by respected SQL Guru Adam Machanic. I was honored with hosting this month’s party. I picked a topic that is important for me at this time of the year – setting learning goals. I was surprised and somewhat overwhelmed to see the number of responses. I learned a lot reading what every person had to say. Below is the summary.

1 Rob Farley talks of tuning learning to what customers look for – which is a good idea for most of us. He also explains being interested in certifications and Microsoft EdX course for data science. This seems to be a certification many people are interested in. (Rob may not need as much ‘learning’ to do it as some of us as he is one of those who passed MCM without a lot of prep 🙂

2 Andy Leonard talks of learning more on cloud based offerings. He also explains challenges with managing businesses, home-schooling children and various challenges it presents with managing time. Andy is considering getting up at 5 AM to find time to learn – I must confess that I went ‘wow’ reading that because am not a morning person and that speaks for so much dedication. There is no shortcut to hard work and here is a prime example.

3 John Deardurff talks of finishing what he started – John is the certification guru of #sqlfamily, he has every cert imaginable under his belt and has listed a few more to go, in addition to finishing a college degree. Again, nothing short of inspiring.

4 Bert Wagner talks of learning more DBA skills as a developer to architect solutions better. Bert has also included a fun little video talking of his goals, very worth watching and very creative. He mentions the importance of creating demo-s as a way of learning.

5 Blogging rockstar and my own personal inspiration to blog – Brent Ozar talks of learning and creating  gamification techniques  around technology design such as cloud deployment strategies. Gamification techniques are intended to leverage people’s natural desires for socializing, learning, mastery, competition, achievement, status, self-expression, altruism, or closure, or simply their response to the framing of a situation as game or play. (Yes I had to google that and read up on what it was!). I can’t wait to read more of what he comes up with in this regard and I’ve always found his ideas to be incredibly creative.

6 Michelle Haarhues talks of learning more on Microsoft Azure and passing related certification exams. She compares tech learning goals to fitness goals and likes learning at Starbucks compared to home. She ends her post with a well-worded crisp mission statement on her goal.

7 Jeff Mlakar talks of one of my favorite topics – time management. His post includes a very good video-lecture on this topic. It is very worth watching. Jeff’s goals include MCSE, blogging,speaking at various sql saturdays and networking.

8 Steve Jones, one of my best friends and mentors in the community talks of various challenges that come up with setting structured goals in general, following a book or a course to the end (his experience with powershell is almost exactly the same as mine), and tracking goals. Steve’s post resonated with me in many ways.

9 Deborah Melkin aka Deb the DBA talks of learning better automation of testing techniques and her own style of learning – visual and kinesthetic. She explains the importance of matching how we learn to our learning style and has also included a link on learning styles.

10 Chris Voss talks of completing his MBA program and focusing on skills he needs as a data architect. He mentions the importance of DBA fundamentals as well as using the SQL community slack channel.

11 Long time sql community member and security guru Brian Kelley talks of maintaining MCSE and CISA certifications, as well as doing the data science certification.  He talks of the difference between just getting a certification and gaining knowledge as part of the process.

12 Garland McNeill talks of list of skills to gain as a DBA and the importance of working complex problems as a way of assimilating the learning.

13 Tracy Boggiano talks of being inspired by Andy Warren’s talk on ‘Building a Professional Development Plan’ at the summit. I’ve heard Andy deliver this talk too and have been similarly inspired. Her goals including getting better at unix, talking at more events (she has spoken at 18 sql saturdays last year – well done Tracy!) , and learning more on SQL Server 2017.

14 Marek Masko talks of earning MCSE on cloud platform, speaking at double the number of conferences than he did this year and attending local events in Poland. He also has a great list of books on database engineering that are worth considering for any of us.

15 Taiob Ali’s goals include Microsoft Big Data Certification,Architecting Azure solutions and learning more on powershell. He also wants to contribute more to #sqlhelp answers and stack exchange.

17 Melissa Connors from SentryOne writes on learning more on documentation and communication – she includes links to courses on EDx related to this, it is a very interesting list. She also includes some pictures of getting to her goal of baking macaronis (yum!) and training her dog Trekker.

18 Samir Behara’s goals include technical certifications and learning more on cloud technologies. He has made an interesting analysis of correlating website traffic and speaking engagements, showing that speaking increases visibility to the blog as well.

19 Glenda Gable’s goals include getting technical certifications, learning more using Brent Ozar’s training, blogging and using MSDN for labs. Glenda is also interested in being partners for accountability towards our goals.

20 Todd Kleinhans wants to learn more on Linux, Hekaton and do the Microsoft Data Science program, in addition to a number of personal goals. Todd has a lovely habit of writing hand written notes of thanks or appreciation for any number of things and posting it on social media. He did one of this blog party too which I will share towards the end.

21 Former PASS Community Evangelist and BI Architect Cathrine Wilhelmson talks of her goals that include learning more BIML, speaking, blogging, teaching and researching. She wants to revisit her post in December too to find out how she did.

22 Lucas Kartwidjaja talks of learning more of AWS/Azure via online courses and also do more of cloud architecture.

23 David Hiltenbrand has many interesting things to learn on his list including CosmosDB, graph databases, Adaptive Query processing via several online courses. He also plans to attend SQL Saturday Nashville (hope to see you there David!).

24 Martin Catherall from down under talks of general trends around learning and the importance of learning something deeply.

25 Stuart Moore blogs about doing more networking, improving his writing skills, doing more automation (everybody should!) and getting better at marketing himself. I could see eye-to-eye with every one of those goals myself.

26 Doug Purnell has a very interesting link on tendencies when it comes to goal setting – there is a test there that seems informative (mine came up as ‘questioner’, which I am) – I guess one needs to read the book he recommends to find out how this helps in setting a plan and making it work.

27 Andrew Tobin writes on getting into a new job that is 100% sql server, learning more related sql server stuff online, blogging without ‘getting personal’, answering questions on Stack Exchange and doing videos on performance tuning. Good luck Andrew!

28 Shane O Neill uses a joke to explain the many things he has on his list to cover next year including Azure, CosmosDB, containers, python and so on. It is a really creative way of presenting a plan and fun to read.

30 Jason Squires talks of many things he wants to learn including XEvents, Powershell and  Availability Groups – he also includes his goals to improve on blogging and speaking at online events.

32 My good friend and mega blogger Kenneth Fisher writes on his own ‘eclectic’ learning habits and includes cloud,t-sql,performance tuning and learning more on metadata. Ken recommends starting to blog slowly to build up momentum – a great tip for new bloggers.

Thank you to all of you for taking time to contribute. I like the suggestion made by Glenda Gable on being partners to help with accountability on our goals. If anyone feels up to this just leave a comment below, we can set up a slack channel or something similar to help each other.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

This month’s T-SQL Tuesday is hosted by…er..yours truly. I picked a topic that usually comes up for me every December – learning goals for the next year. This is the first time that I am blogging about it.

Usually this review is accompanied by a strange combination of imposter syndrome, guilt and thoughts like ‘how about not having goals’,’who cares’,’I want to retire’,’I am never going to be as good as so-and-so’ and so on. In short, it has rarely been a pleasant experience.  A lot of people me included, want to learn a lot in the little time we have. We underestimate other life challenges that get in the way, and also our own power to assimilate and actually use what we learn.  We also have different degrees of focus and methods of learning that work for us and there is no one fit for all. This year I decided to be more pragmatic and take all of those things into consideration while making a learning plan. I took into consideration below:

1 I can devote about an hour a day to learning on a normal day – this excludes days when I am on call and have had a late night, or some kind of a personal stressful situation.
2 I learn best by in person classes, followed by podcasts and videos.
3 My areas of interest are wide – DBA work with BI/Data visualisation. I need to pick what I want to learn carefully.
4 I consolidate well when I apply at work(true for almost everyone), teach/present and blog.
5 I network better in small crowds and familiar places.
6 I usually walk for about an hour in the evening. I can use that time to listen to podcasts.
7 My ‘lab time’ is the time I spend actually putting what I learn to actual practice – is typically about 2-3 hours late Saturday afternoon.

Keeping all this in consideration, my plan is as below:What to learn:My areas of focus are as below:

• SQL Server: Azure, Powershell and Extended Events
• Non SQL Server: CosmosDB or MongoDB, Beginner Level Python, Mid level R
• Data Visualisation: PowerBI
• Certification: Microsoft Professional Program in Big Data

How to learn:

1 Pluralsight will be my main tool to begin with since it is easy and affordable. The goal is to try and get in 1 hour of pluralsight training per day on good days.
2 I will be attending select sql saturday precons as a second option, particularly for Azure and Data Science related training. I’ve set aside a budget for this and will only be able to do those events that fall within the budget. Chances are that none may.
3 I will be watching PASS Summit recordings and Ignite recordings for additional info. I don’t consider either of these as in depth learning but more as informative sessions.
4 I will be using Edx for the Microsoft Professional Program in Big Data.
5 I will be attending TechOutbound (formerly SQL Cruise) in March and the PASS Summit later in the year for networking. Additional networking will be possible with sql saturdays if they happen – most definitely with my own sql saturday event in July.
6 I found a treasure of podcasts that are out there that I can listen to on my evening walk. My favorite site for them is sqldownunder, by Greg Low. But there are several others – list here. These are my insurance that I get *some* learning in even if all the rest of the stuff does not work out. Listening during exercising is easy and exercising is something I do with a passion.

How to apply:
1 I am somewhat limited in terms of how much I can travel, for many reasons. So, I will be presenting at several virtual chapters and also user groups that allow remote presentation. Right now the goal is 5 presentations, more depending on time.
2 I plan to blog at the rate of one blog post per week. I’ve come to this as a result of a lot of experimentation and this works well for me. Every other week will be a non technical post since I have a lot of non technical info to blog about.
3 I do not consider application of learning to work as something I can blog about, so not writing more on that.

I also plan to journal weekly on how I did in the past week and tune myself as I go.By ‘journal’ I don’t mean writing pages – just a simple excel sheet where I review what I learned versus what I wanted to learn. If I go for three weeks without meeting any goals I am doing something wrong and need to re adjust. Am hoping to keep my pace with this better and do better as I go.  I think this is vitally important. It is not a bad thing that we failed to meet our goals but it may be bad if we never even considered tracking our progress through an entire year.

One of my favorite movie scenes is from ‘Gone with the wind’, where there is a garden clock with the lines ‘Do not squander time, it is the stuff life is made of’..right next to it is a cat sleeping blissfully. That sums up time management in general – you can’t force it. You have to take little steps, be consistent, and factor in all the other things that go into how you use your time. I hope to be better at it this year than I was in the years before.