As I recently already wrote, I consider my leukemia diary closed now. And since today is exactly one year after my stem cell donation, I now officially have no restrictions on travel anymore. So let’s celebrate that by attending lots of in person events in the near future!
SQLSaturday Austin
My first trip is in two weeks, when I speak at SQL Saturday Austin, in Texas. On Friday March 8, I present a pre-con: Execution Plans in Depth. For the low price of just $125, you will receive a full day of expert teaching on execution plans, so that you, too, can become a true performance tuning wizard. And to top it off, I’ll send attendees home with a code that they can use for a 20% discount on all SQLServerFast Execution Plan Video Training videos!
On Saturday March 9, I’ll start the day with a level 500 session: Five stages of grief – internals of a hash spill. You will learn exactly what happens when this operator reports one of those pesky spills, including both documented and undocumented information. Better make sure to bring coffee!
MVP Summit
After saying my goodbyes in Austin, I will travel on to Redmond, WA. I will not be presenting there, but attending the MVP Summit. Everything I am going to do there is covered by NDA, so I cannot tell you anything about it. Yet. But who knows what new ideas for future sessions will come to me during that week!
And on a more personal note, there is a very long list of friends that I have not been able to hug for a way too long time, and many of them will be there. So that alone will already make the trip great for me!
SQLBits
After just a few days back home to try to readjust to the time zone of normal people (just kidding!), I’ll once more board a plane. This time to Farnborough, in England, where I will attend SQLBits.
On Wednesday March 20, I will present an extra long (100-minute) session, Now where did THAT estimate come from?, on the magic of the cardinality estimator, a critical component of the SQL Server optimizer. We’ll start with the basics, but then move into more advanced territory, such as how the cardinality of a join is estimated. Not all of this is documented, but that is not enough reason to keep me from explaining how it works!
After that, on Thursday March 21, I’ll have a shorter (50 minutes) talk, Here’s the execution plan … now what?. In this session, I will try to bridge the gap between the clean and simple example execution plans usually used in execution plan training versus the messy and complex execution plans of real production code, by running through up to) three sample scenarios of how to approach a realistic problem.
Techorama BE
I’m gonna use April to recover from all the travel in March. But in May, I will be back on the scene. My first stop that month will be in Antwerp, Belgium, for Techorama. On Wednesday May 8, I’ll talk about Normalization beyond Third Normal Form, a fast-paced session where I talk about all the Normal Forms that everybody always seems to consider irrelevant (spoiler: most of them are not!). In just one hour, I’ll give a fast paced overview of Boyce Codd Normal Form, Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Normal Form, Optimal Normal Form, and a few more!
DataGrillen
A year is not complete without attending everyone’s favorite data, bratwurst und beer conference: DataGrillen, in Lingen, Germany. Proving that great minds think alike, they, too, have selected Normalization beyond Third Normal Form as my session to present. So if you are unable to catch me in Belgium, you’ll have a second chance in Germany, on Friday May 17.
Arnhem
A lot closer to home, and not related to data at all. But also something I look forward to. During the last weekend of May, the amateur musical company I am part of, Jabber, will play our shows in a theater in Arnhem, the Netherlands. Three shows total, on Friday evening May 24, Saturday evening May 25, and Sunday afternoon May 26. After that I will probably crash and sleep for two days straight!
And more?
And that is not even all. I have submitted to many more conferences, virtual and in person. Some of them still have their call for speakers open. Some are working on their session selection right now. And some already made their selection, but have not announced their choices yet … so of course I cannot tell you yet whether I am included or not for those events.
So do keep an eye on my list of upcoming speaking events, which I try to update at least monthly, sometimes even more often. That way, you will always know where to go if you want to meet me … or what events to steer clear of if you rather avoid seeing me!
