Rob Farley : adelaide

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…

Big events every month this quarter

Rob Farley — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 02:23:47 GMT

A new Financial Year in Australia, and a bunch of technical events coming up.

Of course there’s the usual monthly user groups, but there’s more – particularly if you’re in Adelaide.

July sees CodeCampSA in Adelaide on the weekend of July 18/19. I’ve put my name into the hat for speakers, and will try to be there for a chunk of Saturday (Sundays are too busy for me). I’m sure at least one of my sons will want to come along as well, which will be fun. Big thanks to David Gardiner for putting the website together.

August sees SharePoint Saturday come to Sydney (8th) and Adelaide (15th). You may not agree with Aaron about what SharePoint is, but if you’re into SharePoint, I’m sure you’ll get a lot out of these events.

September brings Australian geeks to the Gold Coast again for the Microsoft’s annual TechEd Australia, this year with the added incentive of an HP Mini for attendees (conditions apply of course). It’s the 2140, which is a discontinued line, but that doesn’t make it any less attractive a machine. I’m sure this will help persuade people to get themselves over to Queensland.

And in case you hadn’t realised, I’ve recently discovered how easy it is to put maps into blogs using Windows Live Writer… just so that you can all see the beach, and understand how poorly attended the sessions would be if they ran TechEd Australia in the summer.

Time zone limbo

Rob Farley — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 09:00:08 GMT

Australia is currently in an interesting week for time zones.

Up until a couple of years ago, Daylight Savings finished on the last Sunday in March. That’s when the clocks got put back to Standard Time, as the Australian summer ended. Last year though, this got extended by a week, until the first Sunday in April. A similar change was made in October, changing the start of Daylight Savings from the last weekend of October to the first weekend of October. We now have six months of summer instead of five (although weather-wise, it’s a lot more…)

That’s fine – most people have patched their machines happily, and don’t have a problem. My mobile phone is an old O2 XDA, running Windows Mobile 2003 (I once upgraded to a newer device, but a washing machine had an argument with it and won). Unfortunately, i don’t think there’s a patch for WM2003, and so this week my phone (and hence, my alarms) thinks that I’m an hour out.

It’s fine when I’m in Melbourne or Sydney – I can set the time zone to be Magadan (which is in Russia), and the problem goes away. All good – I don’t really care where my phone thinks I am, just so long as the time is right.

The problem is when I’m in Adelaide… Adelaide which is normally in GMT+0930 (yes, on the half-hour), but this week is still in GMT+1030. According to my mobile device, there is nowhere in the world that is GMT+1030 this week. So instead I’ve had to change my alarms to wake me up half an hour later, whilst I pretend I’m in Siberia. I recently learned that the Russian for “Bless You” (ie, that thing you say when someone sneezes) is “Bud Zdorov” (literally "Be Healthy”, and I apologise for the spelling. ‘Bud’ rhymes with ‘Good’). I’m not sure it’s quite enough to get me through though.

One day I plan to visit Kathmandu, where the time zone is on the quarter-hour. Then I can return to the normality of Adelaide’s half-hour time zone.

I’ve written about the pain of daylight savings before, particularly around the pain of storing datetime fields in a database. Today i read a post from Bart Duncan, recommending the use of datetimeoffset. I thoroughly agree with him, although I wonder how long it will be before people make this a priority.

Presenting at ADNUG this week

Rob Farley — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 10:03:41 GMT

I haven't been to ADNUG for a while. I love that the group is there, but over the past year or more, I haven't prioritised getting to the meetings. I've been to meetings of equivalent groups in Melbourne and Sydney, but not to the Adelaide .Net Group for a while.

But this week I will! I've offered to be a stand-in presenter, and will present a few tips around T-SQL. I'm presenting a similar talk in Wagga this coming weekend, so it'll give me a chance to work out my talk in advance. I regularly present and teach T-SQL things, so I'll be picking a few of the more useful suggestions (particularly those that get a good response from the audience), and showing some of them. People who at one of my recent presentations may have heard bits before, but definitely not all of them.

SQL Code Camp concludes, plus poor Catherine Eibner

Rob Farley — Sun, 14 Oct 2007 11:42:34 GMT

The SQL Down Under Code Camp finished this afternoon after a successful couple of days, but was marred by the news that Catherine Eibner, whose company sponsored the Influencers Party at TechEd AU this year, had shattered her wrist and was in hospital having surgery.

Catherine is becoming a big supporter of the SQL Server community in Australia, and even has a couple of user-group presentations coming up. Why not pop along to her blog and wish her well - I'm sure she'd appreciate it.

User Group meeting with Christine Bishop

Rob Farley — Fri, 12 Oct 2007 02:04:01 GMT

Yesterday we had Christine Bishop come to Adelaide. She's the Product Marketing Manager for SQL Server and BI for Microsoft Australia. That makes her handy to know if you're in the SQL space, and we had a nice crowd come along to the user group to meet her.

One thing that made this meeting different to the usual is that Christine isn't overly technical. She's not bad, but compared to the people in the crowd listening to her, she would've been in the less technical half. Normally we'd have some in depth technical session, showing people how to do particular things, but this time we looked more at the business side of things.

Feedback was good, and for those people looking for something a little more technical I demonstrated a quick point about SSIS and one about the use of row_number() to make sure that only the three most recent records for each category were stored in a table. I might post about these more another time.

My favourite thing about SQL Server 2008

Rob Farley — Mon, 20 Aug 2007 05:35:48 GMT

A few people have asked me what my favourite thing is in SQL Server 2008 ("Katmai"). But my favourite thing isn't actually a feature at all, it's a mindset that Microsoft are taking with it.

This mindset is "We will only put features into the CTPs once they are basically complete - including the documentation." And this makes me say "Wow!".

One of the problems with all beta software is the stuff that's in there that just isn't finished yet. You try to use some feature, and it doesn't work. Or worse, something dies because you tried it. It's these scenarios that stop people trying out betas, and seeing people using the previous version still nearly two years after release (It's now over 21 months since SQL 2005 was released).

Not the case with SQL Server 2008 though. Functionality may be limited, but hopefully new features should be both stable and documented when they appear. So now because this is the case, people should be able to port their systems over before release, confident that features won't be changing significantly between that time and RTM.

This week at my user-group I'm giving a talk on MERGE & TVPs. Two essentially different topics, but ones that compliment each other nicely. I think people will be leaving this meeting picturing places in their code where they want to refactor it to take advantage of these new features.

Darren Gosbell in Adelaide on July 12th

Rob Farley — Tue, 03 Jul 2007 08:03:02 GMT

What a great week for Adelaide having Australian SQL MVPs presenting! Code Camp SA on the weekend of July 7th and 8th features the Gregs (Linwood and Low), and BI expert Darren Gosbell will be coming to speak to the Adelaide SQL Server User Group the following Thursday. He'll be presenting about MDX, which is a topic that a few people have asked about in recent months. It should be great, and I only wish I could be there myself. I will put the event on the website just as soon as I have an abstract from him. Many thanks to his employer, James and Monroe, for sending him across for this.

If you're reading this and wondering how to find out more, go to the sqlserver.org.au site, register, and say you're from Adelaide. Then you'll be on my mailing list and will find out all about our upcoming events. Our meetings are on the second Thursday of the month (although in August we'll pick a different day, that doesn't clash with TechEd), in the building that used to be called the Santos Building.

An Adelaide icon waves goodbye

Rob Farley — Tue, 03 Jul 2007 07:28:31 GMT

The State Bank building was built in Adelaide in 1988, and remains the tallest building in Adelaide. When the bank (not the building) collapsed in the early 90s, it became Santos House, and got branded with the Santos logo. It was like this when I first got introduced to Adelaide in 1994. It's the building where Microsoft have their Adelaide office, and Level 2 hosts the user-group meetings that I run. At Christmas there are green lights in the shape of a tree, and it displays a cross at Easter time.

In the last few weeks, the word Santos has disappeared. It now shows the red W of Westpac. I suppose it makes little difference to most things. I'm happy enough to refer to it as Westpac House, or whatever its new name is supposed to be. But I'm saddened. Santos is a South Australian brand. The 'Sa' at the start of the word is "South Australia" (and interestingly, the NT is Northern Territory, like the NT in Qantas). It's very disappointing that the branding associated with this important Adelaide building no longer reflects Adelaide. Something's been lost.

I have similar emotions about the branding of the Arsenal stadium at Ashburton Grove. I appreciate that Emirates Airline have paid a fortune for the naming brand. But it's a shame that this fantastic stadium, the third largest stadium in London (after Wembley and Twickenham) should have its branding rights sold, but to a company who doesn't reflect London at all. At least Wigan Athletic's JJB Stadium is named for a shop owned by the chairman of the club, a company which is based in Wigan.

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.

Corrupt Paul Randal in Adelaide

Rob Farley — Mon, 28 May 2007 10:03:00 GMT

Ok, not so much _in_ Adelaide as, umm... well... Ok, he's going to be presenting a session remotely, about corruption in Microsoft. Or at least, the way that Microsoft handles corruption in SQL Server.

Paul Randal must be corrupt himself, because he's Kimberly Tripp's other half. So if you're going to be in Adelaide on Jun 14th, come along and listen to him talk. Register at: http://www.sqlserver.org.au/Events/RegisterMeeting.aspx?EventId=257

Some new CodeCamp MVPs

Rob Farley — Mon, 02 Apr 2007 10:01:00 GMT

It's great when a new quarter starts, because we get to find out who the new MVPs are.

This time, my good friend Peter Ward has received the gong in the SQL world, and in the Dev world, friends Grant Holliday and Paul Stovell (both from Readify) have been honoured. Great news guys - thoroughly deserved. They all found out on their way back from CodeCampOz. I didn't go this time, because I had been away in Melbourne the week before. But now there's talk of having a similar event in SA - probably somewhere just outside Adelaide - so watch this space for more news on that!

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?

Powershell script from my SQL presentation

Rob Farley — Tue, 16 Jan 2007 21:00:00 GMT

Last week I presented at my user-group about PowerShell and why every DBA should know this. The talk went for just over an hour, and as most of the audience hadn't used PowerShell at all, I started from the top and really pushed concepts like "You pipe objects not text". The script can be downloaded from here.

So then by the time I got around to talking about the fact that you can really easily hook into ADO and SMO, I think the audience were already caught on the idea that PowerShell really is very powerful and that anything you can do with SMO can be done really easily with PowerShell too. Most DBAs write scripts that use SMO to manage their SQL boxes. In the past they've used VBScript, but I think they should use PowerShell - it's got so much more going for it, and because it can replace cmd, there's almost no reason not to use it.

The talk didn't go into all the stuff you can do with SMO - that's a different presentation. This was a way of demonstrating that you can use PowerShell for SMO, as well as everything else you might want from a sysadmin perspective.

Darren & James' podcast

Rob Farley — Wed, 27 Dec 2006 23:55:00 GMT

Adelaide's stock is increasing again. :) Darren Neimke and James Chapman-Smith have started a podcast about user-experience. The pilot can be downloaded from Darren's blog. It's really quite good too!

It goes for just 15 minutes, and I'm trying to encourage them to leave it that short. Shorter podcasts can be listened to when you don't have time for an hour-long one. They can be archived more easily. You can fit them on a device with less free space (I'm soon upgrading my 1GB SD Card to a 2GB largely because of podcasts). And you can find stuff in them more easily. Suppose I hear a 5-minute discussion about something in an hour-long podcast that I like and want to re-listen to later. I have to keep the whole thing! As well as that, I need to remember whereabouts in the podcast it was, or else listen to the whole thing again. A 15-minute one still has the same problem, but those issues become less with a smaller file.

Those people who have known me for a while might know that for over a year I had a podcast about the Arsenal football club. I just recorded it on my PDA, typically in the car on my short commute. Occasionally I would abuse the traffic, but I don't think people cared. But because my commute is quite short, it kept the podcasts short too. I never had trouble with finding content, because there were always more games to discuss, or injuries, transfer rumours, etc. Tech-podcasts can be harder that way, but I think there is always enough content out there to have a 15 minute discussion with a friend which you record and push out there.

Podcasting: It's the blog you can read while driving.

Adelaide SQL UG this week

Rob Farley — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 10:06:00 GMT

This Thursday Greg Linwood of Solid Quality Learning is coming to the Adelaide SQL Server User Group to talk present about Performance Tuning. It should be a great time. Greg does a lot for the SQL Community in Australia, and it will be really good to have him over again. If you're interested in coming, drop me a line, or check out the event page at sqlserver.org.au

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.

Evaluation forms

Rob Farley — Wed, 29 Nov 2006 22:55:00 GMT

Evaluation forms are great. There's something really nice about mulling through a pile of them after a meeting, having a look at what people wrote. It's also good to have audio-only copies of your presentations, so you can listen back to them to see where you went wrong. And you can get friends to listen back to them as well to give you feedback. (I figure that if you can't listen to the audio of a presentation and still get a lot out of it, then there are probably ways you could improve your presentation)

But Mitch Denny recently blogged about his frustration at them, and I know why too! The Ready Summit event went around Australia this month, coming to Adelaide a couple of days ago. We weren't the last venue, that was Canberra. And the way they did evaluation forms was kinda strange. Towards the end of each presentation, the presenter would say "Please fill out your evaluation forms" (which were given out to people as they arrived by conference centre staff), and then people would go around collecting them. They'd go into an envelope, and the presenter would pick one out to win a prize. Later, presumably someone goes through them all (and this is quite a lot... several sessions in the day, and a large conference-room full of people) and enters them into a database.

Wouldn't it be easier to use Dave Glover's SMS voting application? Then people could send in their eval form info in a particular format, with extra information as required. This goes into a database which replicates back to the main server... everyone wins.

Talking to Mitch on MSN Msgr, he's thinking that a thumbs up/down idea would work. People press one of two buttons on their way out, to say if it was good or bad. I think perhaps this wouldn't give enough detail, and lots of people just wouldn't bother. Giving the prize out helps with that, but if people are SMSing their votes in throughout the session, then it's very easy to have a random mobile number picked out of the database.

Actually, the key is to have something different as often as possible. That way, you catch the attendees imagination.

Office 2007 RTM today, great time for a talk about it and SQL!

Rob Farley — Mon, 06 Nov 2006 23:31:00 GMT

Office 2007 has RTM'd today, and this includes Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007.

This is great timing, with Grant Paisley coming to Adelaide to give his talk about integrating BI and MOSS. This is a great talk, and if you're going to be in Adelaide, you should be there! Go to sqlserver.org.au, and find the link. And if you can't make it in Adelaide, go to his session in Canberra instead! I heard it at the SQL Code Camp, and it's definitely worth checking out.

The great thing about Office 2007 with BI stuff is that BI is all about making the data you have more useful. And Office 2007 is so much better integrated with other systems than previous versions, so it can become a great portal to getting your information out there.