Then one day I received an email explaining that I had been mentioned by SQL_Joker on Twitter and could I make some time for a phone conversation to talk about a potential business opportunity? Well, that email got my curiosity piqued about this Twitter business, so I set up an account so that I could see for myself what the fuss was all about, and the rest – as they say – is history!

1. Get help with a problem. Whether you’re independent like me, working in a small shop, or out of resources in a big organization, there are people out there who might be able to help. Sometimes weird things happen and you need a fresh perspective for troubleshooting. Or you’ve been asked to start working with a different aspect of SQL Server and need a nudge in the right direction. With SQL Server professionals around the globe, someone out there is probably able to help. Don’t worry if no one knows who you are and isn’t following you – that will come with time. All you need to do is compose a tweet and add a hashtag at the end of your request – like #sqlhelp, #ssashelp, #ssishelp, or #ssrshelp. If you need more that 140 characters, then break your tweet into 2 parts and add 1/2 and 2/2 to each part. Before you tweet, you can use the search feature in Twitter to see tweets using these hashtags and learn what kinds of questions get answered. Obviously, it’s not the best way to get help for complex problems.
2. Learn new things. Technology keeps changing and it can be challenging to stay current. As you learn who’s who in the SQL Server community, you can follow them to get breaking news, or thoughts about trends, or resources of interest. Don’t know who to follow? Start by watching who answers questions for the #sqlhelp and other hashtags, click the name, and click the Follow button. If you like what they tweet, do nothing but continue to watch the tweets. If you don’t like what they tweet, you can always Unfollow later. If you explore Twitter more deeply, you can also see who a person follows and who follows them. You might see some names you recognize as conference speakers, bloggers, and authors of magazine articles and books. Cast a wide net.
3. Develop friendships with people who share common interests. Those of us in the SQL Server community have SQL Server in common. Often, the way we met one another was at conferences and that’s the only time we interacted from year to year. But with Twitter, we can continue the conversation. And with more conversation, the more we get to know one another and the friendships develop. And for those who can’t get to a conference, they can participate vicariously as many of us tweet interesting things that we hear and see. I’ve had Twitter exchanges with many people long before I met them, and some whom I’ve never met. So don’t feel like you have to know someone personally before you engage. Just be polite and friendly. Ask questions or offer up something you’ve learned. Before long, if you play nicely, you’ll be amazed at how you’ve been assimilated into the family.
4. Have a laugh. We work hard and take our jobs seriously. Well, most of us do! But, seriously, we need a break from time to time, even if just for a few minutes. Every now and then, someone will come up with a topic and people begin to riff on that. You’ll see things like movies or books with names adapted to something meaningful and humorous only to those in the SQL Server community. You’ll just have to keep your eyes peeled to see what I mean.
5. Work the network. As you get to know people on Twitter, you’ll find that you can get help in other ways besides the technical stuff. Maybe you need to find a job, or maybe you know of a job opening at your company. Twitter is a great way to share the need and someone might be able to help. I’ve heard lots of great stories of people getting connected in this way. Of course, having relationships built first is important. But this network of ours is not just about jobs. If you’re traveling some place new, or thinking about buying some new gadget, or need inspiration for a new way to fix something for dinner, someone in the community has an opinion that you might find useful.

Compounding the delay is the fact that I’m currently in my remote Alaskan home and the Internet situation is still getting ironed out. It has taken me over 20 minutes just to get this simple little explanation post put out there for you. (It’s PAINfully slow, but at least I have a beautiful view while I wait!) Besides, you should be doing something else as the year winds down! I promise there will be more to come. Either as soon as my Internet speeds up or when I get back to the mainland – whichever comes first!

Wishing you a very Happy New Year!

SQLRally 2011

SqlRally 2011 was the event that kicked off my flurry of activity. At least it’s the demarcation line in my mind for the sequence of events leading to now. It’s a mini-summit. More intimate than PASS Summit. Familiar faces. New faces. SQL karaoke. Need I say more? Follow this link to see yours truly captured by Tim Mitchell (blog|twitter) as Brian Moran (twitter) and I enjoyed a SQL karaoke performer. You can see more of Tim’s photos from  SQLRally 2011 here.

Unfortunately, I ran out of time in my session. I assumed beforehand that people would be more familiar by now with certain data visualization features new to SQL  Server 2008 R2 Reporting Services, and obliged the questions from the audience. That was good for people who wanted to learn more about those features, and not so good for the people who wanted to learn more about dealing with the good, the bad, and the ugly in data visualization. I promised a follow-up blog post which I have not had time to tackle until recently. Stay tuned!

Classes

Classroom training is the best environment for learning new stuff, I think, but sometimes people can’t schedule time out of the office, so online is the next best thing for online events. In addition to the private classroom training that I provide for various clients throughout the year, I’ve begun teaching a variety of online classes.

For example, I teach an advanced SSRS class to complement Bill Vaughn’s (blog|twitter) Reporting Services series. I taught a class in May (just one of the things keeping me busy since SQLRally) and another class coming in the fall, which I’ll announce on the Upcoming Events page when it’s officially on the schedule.

Another online training venue for me is Pragmatic Works. There I have been teaching SSAS since April and really enjoying it. I’m getting ready next week for the debut of my online MDX class. The first class is already sold out, so I expect a lively interchange with students! (Interested? You can find an overview and links on the…yes, yes… Upcoming Events page.)

Reunion  Summer

As much online training as I’ve been doing, I managed to squeeze in some classroom time in June. I went to Redmond to co-teach the SSAS maestro course with Adam Jorgensen (blog|twitter). This was just one of many reunions for me this summer.

Adam Jorgensen and I kept crossing paths at various events and finally got our opportunity to teach together this year.

Here I am with my friend Greg Low (blog|twitter), with whom I developed and taught SQL Server 2008 R2 BI training when that release was up and coming.

And here I am with my friend Paul Turley (blog|twitter). Paul and I started working together many years ago at Hitachi Consulting.

In the weeks before my trip to Redmond, I wound up in the Houston area for business and was able to drive around the neighborhood where I spent my pre-teen and teen years. Then the following week I went back for a family reunion with my dad, his wife, my brother and my sister. The only one living in Houston these days is my brother. And then I capped off the week with a high school reunion.

When I went to school here, it was one of the top high schools in the country, although that fact wasn’t plastered on the front of the school as it is now. This is the high school closest to NASA, and accordingly most of the kids that attended then (and now) had parents that worked in the space industry. I went to school with astronaut’s kids, engineer’s kids, and programmer’s kids. My dad, for example, was one of the programmers who developed the launch programs for the space shuttle – then only a dream, and now at the end of its era. Anyway, there were an amazingly high percentage of smart kids at that school and it was interesting to learn what became of the people I grew up with. Many of them have stayed in the area and work themselves in the space industry. At least they do now…things could be changing for many of them soon.

Alaska

But the best reunion of all was the reunion I had with my husband who’s been away for a couple of months handling Phase I of our move to Southeast Alaska. It’s been logistically challenging as you just can’t get there by car, but have to move big items by barge. Not just one, but two. So he’s gone on ahead of me to prepare the way and get a basic infrastructure in place for the new Data Inspirations headquarters. Phase II of the move is scheduled for 2012.

It’s a very remote location, but not so remote that there is no Internet access. Otherwise, I probably wouldn’t be quite as enthusiastic about the relocation. Internet arrives at the island by way of microwave, and then is broadcast wirelessly to residents. It was a bit slower in speed than I would like, but I’m told that over the coming months, additional bandwidth options will be forthcoming.

I took Yoyo, one of our “puppies,” to go live with my husband (leaving two with me in Las Vegas). Yoyo is a special needs Yorkshire terrier, having contracted Granulomatus meningoencephalitis (GME),which attacked his nervous system and caused him to go blind about a year and a half ago. He’s only 4, and is not expected to live long, so every day we have with  him is a special blessing. He’s a great little guy and has such a great attitude, running along to keep up no matter where we go.

Here is Yoyo waiting at the gate for our flight from Las Vegas to Seattle. We had quite an adventure getting all the way to our ultimate destination. I had never flown with an animal before and wasn’t quite sure how it worked. Going through security, I had to take him out of his carrier and take him with me through the metal detector. I’m not sure how it would have worked if we had to go through a body scanner. In Seattle, we found the Pet Relief Station at the Sea-Tac Airport, which was – well – a relief, functional but not well-maintained. Fortunately, I came prepared with pads for Yoyo. Then we flew to Ketchikan where we spent the night. I’m sure Yoyo was wondering what was going on, but he didn’t have much to say. I could tell he was not particularly happy with the float plane that took us to Kosciusko Island, our new home, until he discovered his “papa” there. It was a very joyous reunion for everyone!

Yorkies don’t have fur like other dogs. Even in July, we had many days that were a lot cooler than the temperatures we get in Vegas. Fortunately, we had some sweaters for him, so he could enjoy walks with us. Here we’re exploring the beach just a short walk from our home.

Yoyo is adapting well to his new environment. He always did like flowers for some reason (which in an odd sort of way reminds me of Ferdinand the Bull), and here he stops to smell some flowers as we were exploring an area full of waterfalls. This day was absolutely beautiful. (Most of the time it drizzled. It’s a rainforest, so I guess that sort of thing is required.)

And here is one of the waterfalls Yoyo and I encountered on our hike. It’s  one of the reasons why I’m ready to go live in Alaska. I think I’ll find it…inspirational.

Claire pointed out several proposed explanations that others have come up with to explain why there are fewer women entering the field and cited statistics to show they’re not staying in the field.  The quandry that I have is where the line is to push kids into a direction they don’t want to go versus to encourage them to explore technology/science careers. Either way, I think this applies to any kids- not just mine – and not just girls!

As for the discouragement factor that she brings up, I think it’s a plausible, and insidious, explanation for the problem. Having “techie” parents and growing up in the heart of the space industry, I never experienced any discouragement as a young girl or teenager. But Claire’s article reminded me when I was going back to school when I was 28 and attempting to take an advanced math class, I really had to battle with the counselor to get her to sign off on the course. I was the recipient of a Pell grant at the time, and couldn’t just take it without authorization. I was told that I had been out of school too long to be successful. Furthermore, I wanted to take the self-paced class rather than the lecture class and was told that no one ever succeeds with that route. Well, I pushed back, explaining that I was in the software industry and could hold my own quite nicely in math. (I got an A. Can you imagine how badly I wanted to wave that in the face of that mis-guidance counselor!) How many other young women are getting told not to bother trying and believe it?

Fortunately for me, that’s the only real discouragement I really encountered that I actively had to battle. I discuss a few others in my previous post, Maybe It’s Just Me…A Perspective from One Woman in IT. And in that post, I also described my daughter’s perspective as a representative of the incoming generation of women in technology.

Although providing the girls in our sphere of influence exposure to the field of technology is a good step, we also need to be cognizant of other voices that they hear (friends, teachers, guidance counselors) that might be counteracting our best efforts. Helping them develop confidence in themselves and to believe that they can be whatever they want to be is also vitally important. Again, I feel this way about all kids, so I struggle a lot with singling out girls in particular. But if girls are especially vulnerable to the discouragement factor, then we need to be aware of that and take every opportunity to help them resist that discouragement, whether it’s your daughter, niece, friend’s daughter, or neighbor. We CAN make a difference one girl at a time! Along with Claire, I’d really like to see the obsolescence of WIT as well.

As an author, I pay particular attention to the demand for books, and for now I see no reason to stop authoring books. I assure you that I don’t get rich from the effort, and fortunately that is not my motivation. As someone who likes to refer to books frequently, I am still a big believer in books and have evidence from book sales that there are others like me. If I can do my part to help others learn about the technologies I work with, I will continue to produce content in a variety of formats, including books. (You can view a list of all of my books on the Publications page of my site and my online training videos at Pluralsight.)

As a consumer of technical information, I prefer books because a book typically can get into a topic much more deeply than a blog post, and can provide more context than vendor documentation. It comes with a table of contents and a (hopefully accurate) index that helps me zero in on a topic of interest, and of course I can use the Search feature in digital form. Some people suggest that technology books are outdated as soon as they get published. I guess it depends on where you are with technology. Not everyone is able to upgrade to the latest and greatest version at release. I do assume, however, that the SQL Server 7.0 titles in my library have little value for me now, but I’m certain that the minute I discard the book, I’m going to want it for some reason! Meanwhile, as electronic books overtake physical books in sales, my husband is grateful that I can continue to build my collection digitally rather than physically as the books have a way of taking over significant square footage in our house!

Blog posts, on the other hand, are useful for describing the scenarios that come up in real-life implementations that wouldn’t fit neatly into a book. As many years that I have working with the Microsoft BI stack, I still run into new problems that require creative thinking. Likewise, people who work with BI and other technologies that I use share what they learn through their blogs. Internet search engines help us find information in blogs that simply isn’t available anywhere else. Another great thing about blogs, also, is the connection to community and the dialog that can ensue between people with common interests.

With the trend towards electronic formats for books, I imagine that we’ll see books continue to adapt to incorporate different forms of media and better ways to keep the information current. At the moment, I wish I had a better way to help readers with my last two Reporting Services books. In the case of the Microsoft® SQL Server™ 2005 Reporting Services Step by Step book, I have heard many cases of readers having problems with the sample database that shipped on CD – either the database was missing or it was corrupt. So I’ve provided a copy of the database on my site for download from http://datainspirations.com/uploads/rs2005sbsDW.zip.

Then for the Microsoft® SQL Server™ 2008 Reporting Services Step by Step book, we decided to avoid the database problem by using the AdventureWorks2008 samples that Microsoft published on Codeplex (although code samples are still available on CD). We had this silly idea that the URL for the download would remain constant, but it seems that expectation was ill-founded. Currently, the sample database is found at http://msftdbprodsamples.codeplex.com/releases/view/37109 but I have no idea how long that will remain valid.

My latest books (#9 and #10 which are milestones I never anticipated), Building Integrated Business Intelligence Solutions with SQL Server 2008 R2 and Office 2010 (McGraw Hill, 2011) and Business Intelligence in Microsoft SharePoint 2010 (Microsoft Press, 2011), will not ship with a CD, but will provide all code samples for download at a site maintained by the respective publishers. I expect that the URLs for the downloads for the book will remain valid, but there are lots of references to other sites that can change or disappear over time. Does that mean authors shouldn’t make reference to such sites? Personally, I think the benefits to be gained from including links are greater than the risks of the links becoming invalid at some point.

Do you think the time for technology books has come to an end? Is the delivery of books in electronic format enough to keep them alive? If technological barriers were no object, what would make a book more valuable to you than other formats through which you can obtain information?

For me, having resolve to do something means that I wouldn’t be doing that something as part of my ordinary routine. It takes extra effort to make time for it. It’s not something that I do once and check off a list, but something that I need to commit to over a period of time. So with that in mind, I hereby resolve…

To Learn Something New…

One of the things I love about my job is that I get to do a lot of things outside of my ordinary routine. It’s a veritable smorgasbord of opportunity! So what more could I possibly add to that list of things to do? Well, the more I learn, the more I realize I have so much more to learn. It would be much easier to remain in ignorant bliss, but I was born to learn. Constantly. (And apparently to teach, too– my father will tell you that as a small child, I had the neighborhood kids gathered together to play school – in the summer. I’m sure they loved that – but they did it!) These are some of things that I want to dedicate some time to learning this year:

• Spatial data. I have a good understanding of how maps in Reporting Services works, and I can cobble together a simple T-SQL spatial query, but I know I’m only scratching the surface here. Rob Farley (blog|twitter) posted interesting examples of combining maps and PivotViewer, and I think there’s so many more creative possibilities. I’ve always felt that pictures (including charts and maps) really help people get their minds wrapped around data better, and because a lot of data has a geographic aspect to it, I believe developing some expertise here will be beneficial to my work.
• PivotViewer. Not only is PivotViewer combined with maps a useful way to visualize data, but it’s an interesting way to work with data. If you haven’t seen it yet, check out this interactive demonstration using Netflx OData feed. According to Rob Farley, learning how to work with PivotViewer isn’t trivial. Just the type of challenge I like!
• Security. You’ve heard of the accidental DBA? Well, I am the accidental security person – is there a word for that role? My eyes used to glaze over when having to study about security, or  when reading anything about it. Then I had a problem long ago that no one could figure out – not even the vendor’s tech support – until I rolled up my sleeves and painstakingly worked through the myriad of potential problems to resolve a very thorny security issue. I learned a lot in the process, and have been able to share what I’ve learned with a lot of people. But I’m not convinced their eyes weren’t glazing over, too. I don’t take it personally – it’s just a very dry topic! So in addition to deepening my understanding about security, I want to find a way to make the subject as it relates to SQL Server and business intelligence more accessible and less boring.

Well, there’s actually a lot more that I could put on this list, and a lot more things I have plans to do this coming year, but I run the risk of overcommitting myself. And then I wouldn’t have time…

To Have Fun!

My name is Stacia and I’m a workaholic. When I love what I do, it’s difficult to separate out the work time from the fun time. But there are some things that I’ve been meaning to do that aren’t related to business intelligence for which I really need to develop some resolve. And they are techie resolutions, too, in a roundabout sort of way!

• Photography. When my husband and I went on an extended camping trip in 2009 to Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons, I had a nice little digital camera that took decent pictures. But then I saw the gorgeous cameras that other tourists were toting around and decided I needed one too. So I bought a Nikon D90 and have started to learn to use it, but I’m definitely still in the beginning stages. I traveled so much in 2010 and worked on two book projects that I didn’t have a lot of free time to devote to it. I was very inspired by Kimberly Tripp’s (blog|twitter) and Paul Randal’s (blog|twitter) photo-adventure in Alaska, though, and plan to spend some dedicated time with my camera this year. (And hopefully before I move to Alaska – nothing set in stone yet, but we hope to move to a remote location – with Internet access – later this year!)
• Astronomy. I have this cool telescope, but it suffers the same fate as my camera. I have been gone too much and busy with other things that I haven’t had time to work with it. I’ll figure out how it works, and then so much time passes by that I forget how to use it. I have this crazy idea that I can actually put the camera and the telescope together for astrophotography, but I think I need to start simple by learning how to use each component individually. As long as I’m living in Las Vegas, I know I’ll have clear skies for nighttime viewing, but when we move to Alaska, we’ll be living in a rain forest. I have no idea what my opportunities will be like there – except I know that when the sky is clear, it will be far more amazing than anything I can see in Vegas – even out in the desert – because I’ll be so far away from city light pollution.

I’ve been contemplating putting together a blog on these topics as I learn. As many of my fellow bloggers in the SQL Server community know, sometimes the best way to learn something is to sit down and write about it. I’m just stumped by coming up with a clever name for the new blog, which I was thinking about inaugurating with my move to Alaska. Except that I don’t know when that will be exactly, so we’ll just have to wait and see which comes first!

No, the statement that caught my attention first was “…when I approach male attendees, they seem a bit shocked that I am talking technology with them.” And I thought, really? In this day and age? I mean, it’s 2010, right? If I am reading this post correctly, this quote comes from something that Denise Dubie of NetworkWorld wrote, but I couldn’t locate the article online and the blog post didn’t provide a link.

Conceding that I read the post in a hurry yesterday, I decided that perhaps I’d been too hasty and read something out of context. So I went back and re-read the post again today. The author, Lori MacVittie, appears to be quite a prolific blogger at DevCentral. I don’t know anything about her, but her blog archives are impressive. Clearly, she’s a woman with several years of experience, not someone who just stepped out of college and entered the work world. I’d expect that across those years, she’d have a variety of experiences with all types of men – some who were favorably disposed towards working with women, and some who weren’t, but her post implies a preponderance of those who weren’t. She doesn’t really provide any evidence, anecdotal or otherwise, but makes the following observations:

• Offering an explanation for the failure of women to enter science, technology, engineering or math (STEM), “Young women, according to research [which she fails to cite], aren’t thinking about the difficulties that exist in a traditionally male-dominated field…[it has] everything to do with men and attitudes.”
• Why do these men have these attitudes? She explains that IT is still young compared to other STEM, it’s dominated by men, and women in general haven’t been out in the work force all that long (less than 40 years,she says). “It’s no surprise that men in general, then, haven’t had a whole lot of time yet to adjust.”
• “It would likely be difficult to find a woman in technology that hasn’t had this same experience. The shock, the surprise, the change in tone and demeanor that comes from male counterparts upon realizing that the woman they’re talking to knows what she’s talking about.”
• “The debate over ‘booth babes’ isn’t really about booth babes… It’s about the reaction of men to a technically competent woman, no matter what she’s wearing…It’s about the assumption that no woman is technically competent — at a trade show or on a conference call.”

Wow. Those are some heavy-duty attitudes she’s talking about. And it’s quite possible those are attitudes that she has to contend with. I just haven’t seen anything like it in my career, at least not for a very long time. And even when I did, I would consider the experience an outlier. No, actually – the time I’m thinking about had nothing to do with the man in question going into shock upon learning that I knew what I was talking about. In my situation, he was blatantly discriminating by holding me back from a job he knew I could do in favor of a man and kindly asked me do the work required of that position until he did find a man. In retrospect, it really did work out for the best. I was the one in shock that I actually heard him say – to my face – that he wanted to put a man in that position. But I digress…

I started my IT career in 1984, installing computer systems for tractor dealerships and training the personnel how to do everything with that new computer — running the parts department, managing the service department, selling farm equipment, doing payroll, and keeping the books. As a very young woman in a very male-dominated industry – agriculture – it was quite an experience. I had one good ol’ boy in Kansas refuse to hand over the $250,000 check for his newly installed system because he didn’t think it was right that my company send someone that was still wet behind the years (and female, although he didn’t say it out loud). I just smiled and reminded him that he had a working system and trained personnel, so I thought he got exactly what he paid for. He smiled back and handed me the check.

Other than dealing with the very male client base, I didn’t realize at the time what a novel position I was in from a sociohistoric point of view. The software company that employed me had a lot of women. More than 50% women as I recall. The men there didn’t have an attitude that I recollect. But maybe it’s just me…and a bad memory. Anyway, it just seemed normal to have women in the workplace. It wasn’t until years later when I took a women’s history course that I realized that 1984 was the year that women entered the workplace en masse, in professions other than teachers and nurses and secretaries. I was so busy being in the middle of it that I didn’t notice. And had nothing to compare it to.

If I had no reason to appreciate the novelty of what I was doing in 1984, because I had nothing to compare with the experience, why should men who are younger than me require a period to adjust? That’s the implication in the “Booth Babes” post. We simply need to give men more time. And let me do that math – 2010 – 1984 = 26 years. If any man my age or older can’t adjust in 26 years, well, I’m sorry. I think he’s got other issues, since the world is moving much faster and requiring many more adjustments than having women around. Maybe it’s just me…I might need to develop a more sympathetic outlook towards men who are having such trouble coping with technologically-savvy women. If I can find one.

I guess I’m luckier than women like Lori and Denise who are encountering men with bad attitudes. I am surrounded by a community that is admittedly male-dominated. I no longer work for that software company surrounded by women, and as I get older, I notice there are fewer and fewer women in IT. The facts bear this out if one considers just computer science degrees – only 18% were earned by women in 2008 as compared to 37% in 1985 (National Center for Women & Information Technology).

My daughter graduated from MIT in 2008. Not with a computer science degree, but one in theoretical math. I thought young women weren’t supposed to do that sort of thing? Maybe it’s just me…and my genes. She decided that the proper thing to do with a theoretical math degree would be to continue on to grad school, but ultimately decided against that and became a business intelligence consultant like me. (See, I’m doing my part for WIT!)

I asked for her perspective on this notion that men have negative attitudes about women in IT or STEM for that matter. She said that in school she had heard that women in math could have problems with old professors, but she never personally encountered it and never felt disadvantaged, although being female clearly put her in the minority. No, the bigger problem was with other male students, but she chalked that up to their introverted natures. Hmm, could it be the shock and awe that Lori and Denise described was not a negative attitude, but rather the social awkwardness that sometimes characterizes guys who work in IT? Just a thought…

As for her experiences in the work world, my daughter says her biggest obstacle to acceptance has not been gender, but age. She’s still young and has to prove herself. And that’s to be expected.

Maybe it’s just me… Perhaps my worldview of the attitudes towards women in IT is too narrowly focused. Over a 26 year career, I’ve worked in a lot of industries with a lot of different technologies, but I certainly have no idea what’s going on in the IT world at large. My focus has been limited to the Microsoft SQL Server community for the past 10 years. From the way Lori and Denise make it sound out there, I’m rather glad I’m having such a sheltered experience. The SQL Server community has been quite welcoming to women for as long as I’ve been a member. In fact, there is an active effort to get more women involved through a Women in Technology (WIT) special interest group. At every conference I attend, there is always some event devoted to WIT and this year I’ve been invited to participate in the panel discussion at PASS Summit 2010.

Maybe it’s just me… but I think the guys in the SQL Server community are awesome and certainly don’t deserve to be lumped into the same group with others who might have a problem with women in IT. Looking forward to seeing all of you in Seattle in November!

After the conference season last November, I was looking forward to a nice quiet holiday season, but instead took on a book project. Subject: SQL Server 2005 Express Edition. More details forthcoming soon as it’s due to be released in a couple more weeks. It’s a beginner’s book, so no one I know in the industry ought to be reading it. However, my daughter became a convert to database technology seemingly overnight after taking great pains to know as little as possible about computers as she could, so at least one reader has benefited from the effort! 

As for conferences this year, I’ll be in Orlando next week for SQL Server Magazine Connections presenting the following topics:

SBI305: Creating Reports with Reporting Services 2005 and Analysis Services 2005

With the introduction of Reporting Services 2005, you now have a Query Designer to generate the MDX required to retrieve data from a cube as a great first step, but you can extend this query to satisfy more complex reporting requirements. In this session, you’ll learn several tips and tricks about working with Analysis Services 2005 as a source for your reports, including how to customize an MDX query, how to handle aggregate values, and how to implement cascading parameterized MDX queries.

SBI306: Integrating SQL Server 2005 Business Intelligence with Office SharePoint 2007
Office SharePoint Server 2007 enables consolidation of your business intelligence applications for easy access, analysis, and collaboration across the organization. Come to this session to learn how you can use Office SharePoint Server as a central location for administrators to organize and manage information assets and for information workers to locate, analyze, and personalize information available from Analysis Services, Reporting Services, and other sources.

SBI304: Putting Some Actions into Your Cube
Is your Analysis Services 2005 cube the last stop for users in their quest for information? It doesn’t have to be. In this session, you’ll learn how to add actions that take a cube beyond the basics by displaying transactional details with drillthrough and by linking to internal reports, applications, or external Web sites.

If you can’t make it to Connections, I’ll also be in Orlando again in June for Tech-Ed 2007 with a reprisal of BI integration in Office SharePoint 2007. I hope to see some familiar faces at either of these events.

I’ve been teaching several BI Voyage classes, which was mentioned in my last post at which time we were conducting the beta delivery. It has turned out to be quite a popular class with many rave reviews. I’m pleased to have shared that experience with my friend Peter Myers who has finally allowed himself to take a well-deserved break as he performed the bulk of the deliveries around the globe. I primarily landed in Redmond to deliver the classes, which doesn’t have quite the same ring as, say Paris, or Milan, or Seoul – destinations on Peter’s itinerary. But the students in each of my classes are all amazing people that I’m glad I had the opportunity to meet and hope to cross paths with again someday. My international travel took me to Warsaw, Poland where I had the extra special treat of having a home-cooked Polish meal prepared for me while sharing great conversation with a group of students during what felt like the Great Hurricane of ’07 that swept through Europe in mid-January. Of course, it wasn’t really a hurricane, but it was quite the storm.

A by-product of teaching the BI Voyage classes is the accumulation of a variety of future blog topics which I will start posting after I get back from Orlando next week. I’ve also been spending a lot of time working with SharePoint Server 2007 and PerformancePoint Server 2007 so will have some thoughts about these technologies to share. So with the first quarter of 2007 nearly over, thanks to that silly time warp, I have finally accumulated a variety of topics I feel are worthy enough to share and will get the blogs rolling soon. Stay tuned!