I’m recovering after a very successful RMOUG Training Days 2018 and now looking towards the next year.  The board elections come up in two months and I’m happy to say, that the goals that I hoped to achieve in my year as president, the board was able to achieve even as I worked on the conference and started as the president for the SQL Server User Group here in Denver, all in parallel.

So I survived the first day of RMOUG Training Day’s workshops, sessions and the VIP Reception ran a little later last night than we originally planned.  I had to present in the first session of the day at 8:30am, so I was a little worse for wear when I checked into my room for DevOps for the DBA.

I really appreciate all the attendees that came to the session, the great questions and feedback I received.  Its not easy to pay attention to a speaker that early in the morning!

So its the first day of RMOUG Training Days 2018 in Westminster, CO, (just NW of Denver, between Denver and Boulder) and we’re enjoying the winter weather after spring temperatures on Sunday, which dropped almost 50F degrees in a single day.  The change in temperatures was accompanied by about 8 inches of snow for Denver and most of those in summer gear were faced with only one choice….

Actually they were left with two-  They *could* go for a swim in the snow or they could register for the workshops at RMOUG Training Days, braving the roads, (which due to our lacking humidity weren’t as bad as they could be…)

So I went on a business trip to visit my company headquarters this last week and I took my dog with me.  Yes, you heard that right, my dog.

Just over a year ago, an alarm of emails, posts and projects arose in Europe surrounding the General Data Protection Regulation, also known with the acronym, GDPR.  It was as if someone had poked the sleeping bear of IT and woke it and boy, was it grumpy.

My brain has a tendency to wake up way before everything else in the house, so I try to keep it occupied best I’m able without disturbing anyone.  This may explain why so many if my plans are well flushed out, as I have a tendency to hash them out in the early morning hours as a way of letting the rest of the household sleep.  This morning, on the eve of Christmas, I may have let my brain offer a Database Administrator twist to an old Christmas favorite…

So where did 2017 go?!?!?  I really, really would like to know…  Needless to say, it’s time to do a year in review already and I actually have time to do it this year!

DBAKevlar Blog

I wrote over 100 blog posts this year between DBAKevlar, Delphix and partner sites, but I’ve enjoyed sharing with the different communities.  There’s significant changes going on in the IT world regarding the future of the Database Administrator.

Its been a couple years since I presented at UKOUG.  After taking last year off to prioritize some projects with Delphix, I’m back to speaking and the event committee was gracious enough to offer a goth girl a couple spots on the schedule this year.

The event is in Birmingham, and although I’ve never been there, I’m told by reports, it’s rather rainy and cold this time of year, so I better prepare, (nothing like people selling you on a location…:))

I have two sessions this year, the first one is on Super Sunday:

So this week I’m back on the other coast, Raleigh, NC at ECO17 after last week in Seattle. I’ve switched from SQL Server to Oracle and we won’t discuss how many times I had to correct myself as I said, “transaction log” instead of “archive log” and pointed west instead of east for the ocean…My expression at times was similar to Obi Wan’s-

For the next month, I’ll be sticking to the Oracle side, as this is going to be a crazy month for travel.  My two sessions at ECO this week were well attended and I really enjoyed talking to folks and learning some new schtuff.

This week I had the opportunity to present at Microsoft’s Pass Summit, which was one of two events I had on my list for this year, (the other was Oracle Open World.) Although I’m still learning about all the events on the Microsoft side, unlike Oracle, where there’s one, massive event in San Francisco each fall, Microsoft has split their annual events into three to focus on each audience. In less than two months, there was MS Ignite in Florida, focused on tomorrow’s technology, IT Dev Connections, geared towards development and then this week, Pass Summit, for the Data Platform expert, (DBA and Data Scientist…)  I’m unsure of what events are going to have to leave my list I currently attend to fit these ones in, but somethings going to have to give.