My next guest is a person I have known for years, and have worked with on several occasions, Jason Strate (@stratesql). Jason is a very active writer and speaker (at my first SQL Saturday event, he spoke four times!), and always seems very busy. His blog (jasonstrate.com) had 23 posts just last month, and his twitter account is always active with ...

My next guest is Doug Lane, who has been blogging for the past few years on his website: http://www.douglane.net/. Doug is also a speaker who has spoken at SQL Saturdays as well as the SQL PASS Summit, and as I write these interview questions was on his way to speak at the SQL PASS Business Analytics conference in 2013. I also liked quite a few of ...

In the third entry in this series, we take a turn south, not in quality, but in the geography of our next entrant. Rather our interview target is Rob Farley, who is from (well lives in) Australia.  Rob Farley is a SQL Server MVP, and is quite a busy fellow. He is the owner of a consulting company named LobsterPot Solutions, located in ...

My second guest is Mark Vaillancourt (whose last name makes me very happy for the copy and paste feature), who is an Information Management consultant working for Digineer, and is a Regional Mentor for PASS in Canada. Mark is also a speaker at SQL Saturday events, as well as the SQL PASS Business Analytics conference in 2013. Mark has been ...

I 've been a writer of trade level technical materials for over 13 years now, writing books, articles, blogs, and even tweets for a variety of outlets, almost exclusively about Microsoft SQL Server. While I won't claim to be the best writer in the world, I feel like I have the process of writing down fairly well, yet, for the life of me, there is ...

Those of you who know me well know that I am usually a stickler for spelling, grammar and proper word usage. I may have even lost a few friends because of what some people see as obsession. I am not infallible, and I do make typos, but I like to try to correct them if possible as soon as I discover them (or as soon as they are brought to my ...

One of the best ways we can differentiate ourselves and further our careers is to get out of the office… and onto a stage. Presenting can give you name recognition; open doors to new opportunities; help you gain a deeper understanding of technology (teaching a topic often forces you to learn it at a much deeper level); and for many people it's ...

This past year, I contributed a chapter to an anthology book of best practices for working with SQL Server 2012 entitled Pro SQL Server 2012 Practices (http://www.apress.com/9781430247708). As authors, for publicity we decided to do summary reviews one another's chapters. There are lots of great technical sounding chapters, but when I picked, I ...

2012 was, simply stated, a year that kicked my butt.  When I wasn't struggling professionally, I was struggling personally.  Health issues, culminating in a diagnosis of Type II diabetes, and the passing of my father soon after Thanksgiving marked my biggest struggles.  I apologize to those of you who are normally on my Christmas ...

I admit it. I am tired and I have not blogged nearly enough. This has been a crazy year, with the book I finished writing, the pre-cons I have done (teaching is NOT my primary profession so I do a lot more prep than some others probably do), lots of training on Data Warehousing topics (from Ralph Kimball, Bob Becker, and Stacia Misner, to name ...