Rob Farley : acs

Four speaking engagements coming up

Rob Farley — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 10:55:20 GMT

I’m just going to list them…

This Saturday (July 18th), at Code Camp SA. I’m going to be talking about functions in SQL, particularly those that involve BEGIN and END.

At the end of the month, at the ACS Branch Conference. I’m going to be part of a panel discussing Open Source v Closed Source.

In August, I’m going to be speaking at SharePoint Saturday (Adelaide), about the integration of Reporting Services and SharePoint.

In September, I’m going to be a presenting at TechEd Australia, about SQL Azure.

Be nice if there was more of an overlap in topics…

Code Camp hits Adelaide

Rob Farley — Tue, 03 Jul 2007 07:52:55 GMT

July 7-8 is the date for Code Camp SA. If you're superstitious and seven is your lucky number, then it might be worth pointing out that the date is 7/7/7.

It's being organised by ADNUG, UniSA and the ACS, and you can find a full list of speakers here. I won't be there, but the Australian SQL Server User Group world is being well represented with David Gardiner, Greg Linwood and Greg Low presenting. It starts bright and early on the Saturday morning, and finishes in the afternoon on Sunday. It should be an excellent time for anyone who can get there.

For all the details, check out that speaker page. It includes information about the location and how to register.

Interviewed

Rob Farley — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 04:16:20 GMT

Debbie Timmins, who I met through the ACS, asked to interview me. If you're interested to know what she asked, and how I responded, then check out http://deb.foocode.net/?p=87

Deb has been involved with the Young IT side of the ACS recently, and we've had quite a few conversations about various things. It's good to have people like Debbie in Adelaide.

Paul Turner

Rob Farley — Wed, 21 Feb 2007 00:02:00 GMT

Paul Turner is an Adelaide guy I know well. He's been a trainer at Kaz for quite a while, is on the local ACS executive committee with me and has been involved in the local .Net user-group too. He's had a couple of major lifestyle changes in the last couple of weeks. Most significantly, he's become a father, but also he's become a Readifarian (and word is getting out!). All very cool, and Paul is justified in being excited. I think the two changes will work hand-in-hand very nicely, as Readify will probably have him doing a lot of his work from home.

Coffee and Community

Rob Farley — Mon, 19 Feb 2007 23:48:00 GMT

It's amazing how coffee can be conducive to community. Community is about sharing, it's about developing passion and enthusiasm, it's about friendship. And coffee is too. The age-old invite - "Let's do coffee" - is a great way to sit down with someone. It's cheaper and less formal than lunch, and it doesn't stop you driving home like beer would.

I think it's really exciting that the Perth .Net Community of Practice (mainly Nick Randolph, Alastair Waddell and Mitch Wheat) have set up a weekly cafe catch-up. More about it here.

Mauricio Freitas has often written about the group of coffee-drinkers he gathers each week in Wellington, and I know this works. The ACS in Adelaide have a regular Curry SIG. When I was at university, the Christian group I belonged to had a regular hang-out place, to the extent that you could go down there any time and find people you knew. It made the group stronger. I'm sure that if Mauricio could still get work done, he would hang out at the cafe all the time, making it a sort of office.

I sometimes wonder if a community could be built around a shared office space. Could a group of independent consultants (who would normally work from home) set up a shared office space and work from there, letting other people from within the community drop by any time for coffee, etc? Obviously there would need to be times when people would put 'Do not disturb' signs up, or disappear into offices for phone-calls to clients, but could an arrangement like this be conducive to both work and community? Could a business benefit from having a community built around it like this? Clearly there would have to be some rules, like "Don't steal each other's clients if they come by", and "Remember there are people working here too" - but could it work?

ACS BEC meeting

Rob Farley — Wed, 29 Nov 2006 23:41:00 GMT

Last night I attended my first ACS Branch Executive Committee (SA) meeting. It was certainly quite interesting. Great to meet the other people, even some of those who are stepping down from the committee now (presumably to be replaced by me!).

The new chairman, Reg Coutts seems like a very interesting guy who has great ambition for the ACS to do a better job of all kinds of things. I will enjoy talking to him throughout the year and trying to help goals be scored. The outgoing chair, Brenda Aynsley has a lot of energy, and it will be interesting to see what happens under the new leadership.

One of the things that I found was quite interesting is that the ACS doesn't seem to have much of a virtual community, and I'd like to see that change. The ACS is fairly unique in the fact that it doesn't have a commonality amongst its members in the same way that user-groups tend to. User-groups are generally focussed around particular interests, such as SQL Server or Java, or whatever. But the ACS tries to help address things that effect the industry as a whole, which obviously has many different challenges to user-groups, but I think is just as noble - if not more so.

The BEC intranet now has a Wiki (interestingly, the ACS's IT Architecture SIG has one too, at http://architects.wetpaint.com) to be able to help maintain the content that needs to be shared amongst the committee, and I'm keen to see this grow into other online collaboration tools to help the ACS be far more effective. And even being able to partner with other international equivalents. The ACS ought to be able to use online community to achieve a lot, and hopefully find ways to innovate in this area.

On learning (Calvin and Hobbes, the ACS and digital natives)

Rob Farley — Fri, 27 Oct 2006 01:52:00 GMT

Digital natives learn differently. How do we take advantage of that? The funny thing is that right away, I've written this from an external perspective, when I'm probably in a mixture of both camps. Feel free to consider me in either camp as you...(read more)

What's wrong with IT?

Rob Farley — Fri, 27 Oct 2006 00:57:00 GMT

To a large degree, it's the perception of experience. The IT industry has so many things wrong with it. It tends to be 'governed' (I don't know of a better word for what I mean there, 'run' would be wrong) by people in their 50s...(read more)

ACS SA Branch Committee member now

Rob Farley — Thu, 26 Oct 2006 05:03:00 GMT

I am now a member of the ACS Branch Executive Committee for South Australia . Hopefully I can influence things in some way, for the good of IT, the ACS and Adelaide. Of course, I have a few thoughts on what needs to be done... but I won't list them...(read more)

ACS SA Branch Committee

Rob Farley — Wed, 18 Oct 2006 06:03:00 GMT

I've been nominated for the ACS SA Branch Committee. I've been a member of the ACS for a few months now - a Senior Member even. But it hasn't really meant a lot so far. As I want to be an influencer, particularly in regards to promoting IT in Adelaide (it's where I live, and I figure that if I can help develop IT as an industry here, then that's good for both me and anyone else who lives here), I had toyed with the idea of joining the committee. Nominations close this Friday, and after checking with Roslyn about the extra night out per month (my time feels quite limited already, but I think this is worth the investment), I agreed to let myself be nominated.

It doesn't mean I'm on the committee yet though. There may be more people putting their hands up than there are spots available, in which case it will come down to a vote. I'll keep you posted.