To gear up for the PASS Business Analytics Conference, the newly launched PASS Business Analytics Virtual Chapter asked me to do a presentation last week, “A Big Data Primer”. Many of us in the SQL Server community have been hearing the use of this term increase, and Microsoft has released HDInsight, both as an Azure [...]

I wasn’t going to do it. The whole recap of the year just retired. The goal-setting of the year just arrived. But I did find myself having to plan a few things-plan for customer visits and activities, plan travel for upcoming events, plan time to prepare content for those events, and so on. And as [...]

It’s already half a week after PASS Summit 2011 and my head is still reeling! Just when I think PASS Summit can’t possibly get any better, it does. When Erika and I arrived at the Washington State Convention Center on Sunday afternoon to register, I felt like I had just been there for Summit 2010. [...]

This morning’s keynote was opened with a SQL-themed song (written by Rob Farley) performed by the dynamic duo, Rob Farley and Buck Woody. Here are links to videos: Keynote Intro with the performance (excluding lyrics) Keynote Intro with ”I Should Have Looked the Other Way” Lyrics Thanks go also to Wayne Snyder (@SQLWayne) who, as immediate past [...]

I will confess that of all the summits I’ve attended in previous years, I rarely attended keynotes and certainly did not attend two keynotes in a row. Yet here I am! It’s a privilege to join the fine cast of characters from the SQL Server community at the blogger’s table at the back of the [...]