Here are some things I’ve run across in the past few weeks you may find interesting:

• FailCon. Billed as a one-day conference for technology entrepreneurs, investors, developers and designers to study their own and others” failures and prepare for success. Talking about and sharing failure is powerful, I think…

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It was interesting to watch an event that started 17 months ago with Dallas, Nashville, and Denver submitting applications to the be host city, a long selection process, a long site selection process, and then all the rest that lead up to a successful event this week. I know that… Read more

• Started the day early, heading to the Convention Center to be at Starbucks at 6:45 for the networking event I was hosting with Craig Purnell (and with coffee paid for by the Dallas SQL Group!). Craig brought some ‘coffee tickets’ so we had some control over the budget and we…

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• Arrived at the convention center about 7:30, managed to arrive at the right end of the convention center and walked right into the end that had the room for the welcoming session. No coffee available yet.
• Welcoming remarks were ok, covered PASS, other event formats, chapters, schedule changes, delivered by…

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Ran across this recently, YourLogicalFallacyIs.com is a site that lists all the ways you can apply logic badly, and they’ve put it into a pretty nice poster. Seems like this should be up in every meeting room!

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• Had a nice lunch at On The Border at Orlando International before my flight, used that time to finish some writing
• Checked in at the self service kiosk at OIA for my America Airlines flight, was interesting that when I clicked ‘change seat’ I could move from window to aisle…

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It’s been just over two months since I started my small  home garden. The initial work to clear the area wasn’t much fun, but after that it wasn’t bad. We bought seedlings at Home Depot this time, I think next time we’ll try starting from seeds (browse the Burpee site… Read more

It’s been not quite two years since I moved from a Blackberry to a Droid X. The X turned out to be a good phone and a good device overall, and I enjoyed the large screen, a big change from the postage stamp display on the Blackberry. Other than wanting… Read more

The first conference I went to back in 1999 I attended every session, the bonus sessions, the breakfasts, everything. It wasn’t a desire to get the maximum value for the registration cost as much as a desire to get the maximum value. I was new to IT and this… Read more

I blogged a while back about not having the ability to easily disable purchasing on the Kindle. Until recently we managed ok, but then my youngest child started clicking on the ‘not-free’ games to the tune of about $100 in a day. I can live with the occasional $1.99 purchase,… Read more

I’ve deliberately waited a bit to write this after the event, just to see what stood out after a week – what would still seem interesting? In no particular order:

• Great venue. It’s a high school, and while it wasn’t fancy, it worked – and that’s what we need.
• Speaker…

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I had a chance over the weekend to finish reading the Verizon 2012 Data Breach Investigations Report. It’s a compilation of data about 2011 data breaches and they try to call out what they see as interesting in addition to showing a few different views of the data. It’s… Read more

I ran across this list of Sharepoint blogs by Rene Modery while doing some Sharepoint reading. He has an OPML file of the list, making it easy to add to your reader. Thought some of you might find it useful.

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We’re about to start our second experiment over at The Mentoring Experiment and we need mentors. Last time we picked a handful of people as mentors so that we could control that portion of the experiment. This time we’re just asking people that are interested to apply to be a… Read more

I’ll be spending the day with the 2011 Idera ACE’s (aka the old aces) and the 2012 Idera ACES (the new ones!) as we share lessons learned, work on being better at presenting and networking, and in general talk about ways to have a positive impact. Then tonight I’ll be… Read more

American Icon: Alan Mulally and the Fight to Save Ford Motor Company ($18 at Amazon) was a good read, with some good background on the history of Ford making good decisions and bad ones, ultimately leading to Ford truly being in a fight to survive. Bill Ford (of the Ford… Read more

I suppose there is an almost limitless number of mistakes that managers can do and do make, it’s the nature of any work by and about people. My list today is from the perspective of someone that often gets to watch teams work – the outside observer.

1. Thinking their… Read more

Just got the email, Orlando will be having its sixth annual SQLSaturday this year on September 29th, 2012, at Seminole State College. There is no doubt that it’s my favorite event of the year, and it’s now officially on my calendar. Call for speakers is now open, and it my… Read more

Craig Purnell and I are hosting an informal networking event at SQLRally this year on Friday May 11th from 7-8:30 am. I’ve done this for the past couple years at the Summit with good results, networking over coffee seems natural and approachable. If you’re attending SQLRally this year I hope… Read more

A few weeks ago I was running errands on a Saturday, with an almost final stop at Home Depot to pick up some stuff for the garden. I had my daughters with me and they were ready for a break so  we stopped at McDonalds for the dollar sundae for… Read more