Tony Rogerson's ramblings on SQL Server

Already into February and after a nice long break we are ramping up the user group meetings again - physical and offline. There is a lot coming up in 2010 including the R2 release in May which should be good; lots of new tools on the market especially in the BI and HA space. Do you want to get involved? We are always looking for venues, speakers and organisers to help keep the show on the road - if you are interested in getting involved just email.

Anyway, I've listed out some of the stuff coming up in the next few weeks. The user group team have been busy talking about new ideas and how we can all engage and push our skill set forward and help us do our day jobs better - more in the coming weeks.

Cardiff - Feb, 25th: 18:45 to 21:00

BI Fundementals: Building an Enterprise ETL Framework in SSIS - Adam Morton

SQL Server Upgrade: notes from the field and best practices - Satya Shyam K Jayanty

Registration and more info


Edinburgh - Feb, 25th: 18:00 to 21:00

End to End SQL Server Performance Troubleshooting - Iain Kick

Second session to be confirmed soon.

Registration and more info


London - March, 17th: 18:00 to 21:00

We are sorting the sessions out this week - it will be a Business Intelligence focused event.

Registration and more info


Reading - April, 21st: 17:30 to 21:00

We are sorting the sessions out this week - it will be a Developer, High Availability / DBA focused event.

Registration and more info


Manchester - April/May: 17:30 to 21:00

Just finalising a venue and sessions, if you are interested do let us know suggested dates and topics - what night suits best?

Registration and more info


Live Meetings (Weekly Online Events starting March)

We are starting the weekly online short meetings again; we'll be starting with some introductary sessions aimed at novice feature users.

If you have specific topics then reply to this email with ideas.

I'm planning one on Referential Integrity.

Social Events

I'm a good few weeks into my MSc in BI now and loving it - 17 of us on the course, Mike Whitehorn is a great tutor and doing it remotely is working which I was worried about. Lots of work - an assignment per week, its eating up around 10 hours per week of my time but I love it.

Anyway, why mention this? Well, about 10 of us based around London have started meeting up and talking geek - its great meeting up with folks that you can literally just talk technical with - the amount of stuff we talk about - and have a laugh too you'd be amazed.

Ok, the MSc meetings are special so I'm not opening those up, but the concept works - so I'm going to start planning some pub based gatherings - "SELECT * INTO #pub WHERE love_databases in ( 'yes', 'sort of', 'well - I like beer' )" - if you want to do one in your area just send me an email and I'll help get you sorted.

Many thanks,
Tony Rogerson, SQL Server MVP
http://sqlserverfaq.com
http://sqlblogcasts.com/blogs/tonyrogerson
http://twitter.com/tonyrogerson