Highlighting Women in the SQL Community - July 2017

Find a mentor.  Be a mentor.

Build a strong network of women.

Make friendships with other women working in your field.

As most of you know, I think it's my calling to highlight & support women in technology, specifically speakers and leaders in the SQL Community.  Each month, our Virtual Group presents a technical session by a female speaker or a session specific to a female gender related topic, presented by a man or woman.  Part of these sessions involves a list of what women are doing.  That's what this blog psot does.  A highlight of what women in the SQL Community are doing in just the second half of July 2017

Event	Location	Date	Session Title	Presenter
SQL Sat #653	Columbus	7/22/2017	Health: The Most Important Tech Tool	Cassandra Faris
SQL Sat #653	Columbus	7/22/2017	Collecting Baseline Metrics	Tracy Boggiano
SQL Sat #653	Columbus	7/22/2017	Why NULL is not a value (and other SQL gotchas)	Wendy Pastrick
SQL Sat #653	Columbus	7/22/2017	I’m It – Survival Techniques for the Lone DBA	Monica Rathbun
SQL Sat #653	Columbus	7/22/2017	Are You There, DBA? It’s Me, The App Developer	Jacquelyn Keeper
SQL Sat #653	Columbus	7/22/2017	Answering the question, "What happened?" with Query Store	Erin Stellato
SQL Sat #653	Columbus	7/22/2017	Making Your List and Checking It Twice: Introduction to unit testing with tSQLt	Elizabeth Noble
SQL Sat #653	Columbus	7/22/2017	Where Does R Fit Into Your SQL Server Stack?	Stacia Varga
SQL Sat#653	Columbus	7/22/2017	Reduce your DBA (& DEV) task list by using Microsoft BI tools	Tamera Clark
SQL Sat #654	Omaha	7/22/2017	Transitioning from Integration Services to Azure Data Factory	Meagan Longoria
SQL Sat #654	Omaha	7/22/2017	Things I Learned the Hard Way About Azure Data Platform Services So That You Don't Have To	Meagan Longoria
SQL Sat #628	Baton Rouge	7/29/2017	Introduction to SharePoint Patterns and Practices	Theresa Eller
SQL Sat #628	Baton Rouge	7/29/2017	Deadlock, Block & Two Smoking Barrels: Breaking Down Blocking and Deadlocks	Amy Herold
SQL Sat #628	Baton Rouge	7/29/2017	SQL Server Statistics – What Are The Chances?	Lori Edwards
SQL Sat #628	Baton Rouge	7/29/2017	How to Build Your Disaster Recovery Plan	Rie Irish
SQL Sat #628	Baton Rouge	7/29/2017	Beginning Automation with Powershell	Amy Herold
SQL Sat #628	Baton Rouge	7/29/2017	Troubleshooting SQL Server Performance	Stacy Gray
SQL Sat #628	Baton Rouge	7/29/2017	Mastering your Resume & Interview: Tips to Get Hired	Christine Assaf
SQL Sat #628	Baton Rouge	7/29/2017	Let Her Finish: Supporting Women's Voices from meetings to the board room	Rie Irsih
SQL Sat #628	Baton Rouge	7/29/2017	Taking Time for You	Kathryn LeBlanc
SQL Sat #628	Baton Rouge	7/29/2017	Giving Feedback: How to Effectively Communicate to your Employees	Christine Assaf
SQL Sat #628	Baton Rouge	7/29/2017	Women in Technology: Identifying and Understanding Gender Bias & Inequality	Rie Irish
SQL Sat #628	Baton Rouge	7/29/2017	T-SQL's Hidden Support Feature	Jennifer McCown
SQL Sat #622	Albany	7/29/2017	Network your Way to Success!	Lisa Margerum
SQL Sat #622	Albany	7/29/2017	Back to the Basics: T-SQL 101	Deborah Melkin
SQL Sat #622	Albany	7/29/2017	Top 10 Features of a Great Business Intelligence Solution	Rachel Blum
SQL Sat #622	Albany	7/29/2017	Master Your Data using DQS and MDS	Beth Wolfset

24 Hours of PASS

Why Did My Clever Index Change Backfire?

Kendra Little

19 Jul 2017 16:00 GMT

SQL Server is full of advanced techniques to build powerful indexes: indexed views, filtered...

Writing User Stories and Slicing Epics for DW/BI Teams

Lynn Winterboer

 19 Jul 2017 14:00 GMT

Agile is all the rage in software development, and many data warehousing and business intelligence...

DevOps and the Agile DBA

Kellyn Pot'Vin-Gorman

19 Jul 2017 17:00 GMT

DevOps came out of the Agile movement and the idea that operations needed to be part of the...

Help me, Query Store. You're My Only Hope

Erin Stellato

19 Jul 2017 19:00 GMT

The Query Store feature in SQL Server is marketed as a flight recorder for your database. 

PowerShell ❤️ SQL Server: Modern Database Administration

Chrissy LeMaire

19 Jul 2017 21:00 GMT

Join dbatools teammates Chrissy LeMaire and Constantine Kokkinos for a fun, fast-paced session that...

Implementing Advanced Analytics with SQL Server 2017 and Python

Ginger Grant

20 Jul 2017 00:00 GMT

Looking to find out what is coming next with SQL Server? Thinking about learning a new analytical...

Tools and Tips: From Accidental to Efficient Data Warehouse Developer

Cathrine Wilhelmsen

20 Jul 2017 06:00 GMT

You have probably heard about the Accidental DBA, but what about the Accidental Data Warehouse...

SQL Server Data Compression

Kathi Kellenberger

20 Jul 2017 08:00 GMT

When I first heard about data compression back when it was introduced with SQL Server 2008

On Transactions and Atomic Operations

Gail Shaw

20 Jul 2017 11:00 GMT

"If there’s one thing that we, as SQL developers don’t do, it’s use transactions as often as we...

Women in Technology
Upcoming Webinars

uHe’s Assertive. She’s Aggressive (Unconscious Bias in the Workplace)

uAndrea Mascher

uSept 21, 2017

u

uCreating and Maintaining Successful Open Source Projects

uChrissy LeMaire

uOct 4, 2017

Women in Technology 

Today’s Session

uMelissa Coates

uTales from Building a SQL Server Data Warehouse in Azure

uIn this session, we share our experiences and lessons learned from a recent migration to Azure for a SQL Server data warehousing environment. We begin with sharing our reasoning for IaaS vs. PaaS, our carefully-selected naming conventions, and how we structured development, test, and production within subscriptions and resource groups. We cover the what, why, and how for decisions around storage, encryption, and backups. Finally, the session wraps up with a brief discussion of the use of Azure Resource Manager (ARM) templates and PowerShell, as well as techniques for monitoring the environment in Azure.

uMelissa Coates is a Business Intelligence Architect with SentryOne. Based in Charlotte, North Carolina, she specializes in delivering Analytics, Data Warehousing, and Business Intelligence solutions using on-premises, cloud, and hybrid technologies. Formerly a CPA, Melissa is ridiculously proud to be an IT geek and downright giddy to be a Microsoft Data Platform MVP. When Melissa steps away from the keyboard, you can probably find her hanging out with her border collie, paddle boarding, or playing in the garden.  Melissa blogs at sqlchick.com.

SQL Saturday Atlanta is almost here

     Well, it's that time of year again.  No, not summer time, where people take vacations with their family, spend lazy Saturdays at the lake or sitting on their patio with a beer.  It's that time of year when the idea of free time goes out the window. We've been hard at work planning SQL Saturday Atlanta.  We've moved to a new month (July instead of May) and a new venue (Lawrenceville instead of Alpharetta).  These changes have meant almost everything else changes too:  hotel, pre con dinner locations, speaker party location, after party location, struggling with room layout, where to put the sponsors, etc.

The search for a new venue was a treacherous one. We looked everywhere.

     The new venue is lovely, spacious & filled with light in the common areas.  Gwinnett Technical College has been a joy to work with.  Luckily, we've been able to get almost everything on the first floor.  We have multiple rooms that seat 90 people and most seat 50+.  We're going to need it too.  As of today, we have 709 attendees registered.  But as expected there are some last minute details to work out.  Things like having a custodian on staff so we don't run out of toilet paper in the men's room. Making sure we have a tech support person there to show us how this crazy AV equipment works.  Do we have WiFi for everyone? Can the ready room be locked overnight or do I have to move all our things to a different place & bring it back bright & early on Saturday?

     And let's not forget budgeting.  The new place is expensive.  I know a lot of SQL Saturdays get venues for little to nothing.  That isn't how it works here in Atlanta.  Not for 500+ people.  So we do this delicate balancing act of paying over $8,000 for a building that will hold us all, feed 500+ people a decent lunch in a very short window of time, host a speaker dinner & an after party all while making sure sponsors get their monies worth.

I find it helps to know your limitations.

     The best part is my team.  SQL Saturday Atlanta has done it again.  They've surpassed my expectations when it came to presenting ideas and executing on it.  They're pictured here, hard at work.

Our attitude for this upcoming quest?  Keep calm.