For those who were in my session on SSIS Scripting at SQL Saturday Tampa last weekend, I have posted the examples and slide deck on my website.  Feel free to contact me if you have any questions.

I’m sitting in the Tampa airport waiting for a flight back home from SQL Saturday 10 in Tampa.  There was a good turnout at the event; the last news I heard was that over 300 had registered initially, and that there were close to 200 that actually showed up.  I got to visit again with several people I worked with at the last SQL Saturday event, and met several people (Devin Knight and Jonathan Kehayias among them) who I “knew” from Twitter and blogs but hadn’t actually met before.  I had the opportunity to hang out with Andy Warren and Chris Rock again, and had drinks with Rodney Landrum, Karla Remail and others at the after party.  For this event I presented a session on using the SSIS script component to read and write unconventional data files.  I was pleasantly surprised with the turnout; I had the first timeslot of the day, and Brian Knight was presenting at the same time, so I expected at best a moderately sized audience.  As it turns out, by the end of the presentation there were people standing in the aisle, and there were lots of great questions and some good discussion at the end.

I spent most of the rest of the day dropping in on various sessions and taking pictures of presenters and attendees.  Since SQL Saturday didn’t yet have a presence on Facebook, I created a new group and posted pictures of the event and after party; you can find the pictures posted here, and if you have any pics to add (of this event or any previous SQL Saturday), please add yourself to the group and feel free to add your images.

There were a couple of minor logistical issues at the beginning, but everything worked out well and we ended up with a successful event.  The sessions I was able to listen in on were well done, and it appeared that most of the attendees stayed for the entire day.  All told, another successful SQL Saturday event.  I’m now even more excited about the possibility of bringing this to the Dallas area.

I got the opportunity to participate in the We Are Microsoft Charity Challenge (under the umbrella of GiveCamp) in Dallas this past weekend.  As I wrote in a previous post, this event matches charities in need of technical assistance with coders and other tech geeks willing to give up a weekend to help out a good cause.  Most of the needs were web related, and ranged in scope from adding functionality to an existing Internet or intranet site to completely building a new web presence for the organization.

I was part of the team working with PaxUnited to create a new, more interactive website.  These folks specialize in conflict resolution and mediation services and training for students, educators, and the public at large.  Their old site was completely static and, without the in-house expertise to maintain it, it was quite stale.  Our team, consisting of Todd Stone, Andrew Dalgleish, Jay Smith, and Nathan Woodward (sorry Nathan, I don’t have a link for you… send me one and I’ll add it) built a new site for them.  Thanks also to Andrew’s wife, Jenny Leder, who wasn’t technically on the team but nonetheless rescued us from graphic design hell.

Our choice of CMS for this project was the mojoPortal framework.  We had the option of using SiteFinity or Graffiti, but opted to go with a smaller, more extensible product to allow for easier custom development.  All said, I really enjoyed this product – it’s open source and, with the exception of the dozens of stylesheets, was fairly easy to modify.  I was only slightly disappointed that I didn’t get to use my strongest skillset, specifically database development, on this project, but it was fun to break out of the usual routine and do something different.

Sadly, we didn’t win any awards, but I believe we made a difference in the charity to which we were assigned.  Our contacts there were gracious and appreciative, and I expect that they will get a lot of mileage out of the new site.  We’re still working with their web host to get them set up on a Windows hosting plan, but for now the new site resides here.

It was a very rewarding but also a very tiring weekend; I’m still about 10 hours behind on sleep.  No rest for the weary, however; I’ve got two major projects to complete before Friday, and then I leave to speak at SQL Saturday – Tampa on Saturday.  If you’re in the area, stop by and drop in on my session about scripting SSIS.

I don’t do resolutions - they’re cliché, overdone, and rarely stick.  However, I’m a believer in setting goals and periodic progress points, and making goals public is proven to increase the chance of success.  I blogged a couple of months back that I was committed to sharpen my skills and increase my participation in the SQL Server community, and so far I’m doing fairly well at sticking with it.

There were a couple of items I didn’t address in my previous set of goals, so here goes:

-- Average twenty forum posts each week.  I’ve skimped on forum participation recently and need to get back in the groove here.
-- Have lunch or drinks with 12 new people.  By “new people”, I mean folks that I have either met this year, or people who I was already acquainted with but had not yet dined with.
-- Earn the MCITP certification in SQL Server Business Intelligence.

As an update, I’ve already booked one of the three speaking engagements on my November list – I’ll be presenting at SQL Saturday in Tampa in a couple of weeks.  I’m a little late on my article for SQL Server Central, but I’m ahead of schedule for my JumpstartTV videos – I’ve already submitted four of them.  I’ll continue to present progress updates.

I received word earlier today that I’ll be presenting at the upcoming SQL Saturday event in Tampa, Florida on January 24.  I got to present at one of the first SQL Saturday events last year in Jacksonville and it was quite a well run event.  A good lineup of content along with a significant attendee turnout made for a highly successful event, and I hope the Tampa event will match the success of the previous experience.

As an aside, I’m hoping to use what I learn attending and presenting these two conferences to put together a similar event.  I’ve had some talks with Andy Warren, one of the founders of SQL Saturday, and he’s very excited about the growth of this community event.  I pinged my local SQL Server gang (North Texas SQL Server User Group) about the possibility of bringing SQL Saturday to Dallas, and I got a lot of positive responses.  So if you’re in the Dallas area and would like to be a part of an upcoming SQL Saturday event, please let me know.

I received notification a few days ago that I was selected again to participate in the We Are Microsoft charity event in Dallas.  For those not familiar, this event is intended to seek out and assist qualified charities whose technology needs exceed their budget for same.  Developers, DBAs, and designers come in from as far away as Arkansas to spend the weekend designing, coding, and consuming large amounts of caffeine and sugar.

I haven’t found out who my teammates are or which charity we will be representing, but I’m looking forward to jumping into this again.  There may still be spots available for volunteers - if you’re in Dallas the weekend of January 16th, you should come by.  If you’re attending, please give me a shout.