Professional-Development

I received a sobering reminder this week of a lesson we all have learned or should have learned long ago. Something I said online came back around months later in a completely unexpected way.

That lesson? No matter how careful you think you are online, no matter how private you think an online place is, someone is watching.

A few weeks ago, I received an unsolicited email at work selling a software product. It was a pretty vague message, saying “hey, you should try our product to solve this problem.” Thought nothing of it, I get that sort of thing at work on occasion. I marked the email as spam and figured that was the end of it. A few hours later the same message arrived via LinkedIn from the same person. They really want to make a sale, I guess.

T-SQL Tuesday is a monthly blog party hosted by a different community member each month. This month, Deborah Melkin (blog) asks us to talk about our relationship with mentoring and sponsorship.

This can include:

• What does mentoring and sponsorship mean to you? What value do you see in mentoring and sponsoring?
• How have you benefited from mentorship and sponsors?
• What has worked for you in making these relationships successful?
• On the flip side, what obstacles have you had to work through?
• What do you do to sponsor others in the community?
• As March is Women’s Month, I’d also like to add: How are you mentoring and sponsoring women and other underrepresented groups in our community?

Read the rest of the invitation, where Deborah expands upon the question.

So Many Meetings

I’ve said it. We’ve all said it.

I can’t get any work done today, I’ve got so many meetings.

I need to be reminded on occasion that for most of us, the meetings are work too. They are part of the job and we need to think of them as such.

But I get it. I’m a technical professional. If you’re reading this blog, you probably are too. We feel “productive” when we’re actually putting fingers to keyboard, marker to whiteboard, “making stuff.” Being in meetings doesn’t feel like we’re doing anything to move things forward.

T-SQL Tuesday is a monthly blog party hosted by a different community member each month, and this month Kenneth Fisher (blog | twitter) asks us to talk about our first technical job.

Yeah, so…that was a hell of a year, wasn’t it?

Short-Form Reviews of Year 2020

Reviewer #1: 👎

Reviewer #2: ★✩✩✩✩, would not recommend

Best Laid Plans…

The year started out really well. I was getting into a good groove at the new job, I spoke at SQL Saturday Cleveland and SQL Saturday Rochester ran smoothly. My session for SQL Saturday Raleigh was accepted too, I submitted a session for SQL Saturday Albany, and I was invited to present remotely for SQL Professionals of Chattanooga. I was visiting and hanging out with #SQLFamily on a somewhat regular basis and it was awesome!

Kicking off T-SQL Tuesday for 2020, Jon Shaulis (blog | twitter) challenges us to talk about imposter syndrome:

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I want to read your stories about when you’ve experienced, seen, or overcome imposter syndrome! Was there a job that you felt you were ill-prepared for? Did you make a mistake or did someone say something that made you question if you were a true data professional? Maybe there was a particular task you ran into that made you question your experience? Did you resolve your tasks and succeed in your job? How did you overcome that feeling of being an imposter and solve your challenges? Maybe you haven’t experienced it yourself but you saw someone who was feeling imposter syndrome, were you able to help them?

As we open 2020 (and the house is still quiet on this New Year’s Morning), I thought I’d take a moment to reflect on the past year.

Blogging

2019 was another good year here. I published 32 posts totaling over 21,000 words! What really amazes me is that a post from 2018 is consistently one of the most popular ones. I must have done a really good job on the SEO with that one.

This is the final installment in my series of posts which I hope will help you (and me!) prepare for the upcoming PASS Summit November 4-8, 2019 in Seattle, Washington.

Find Me!

Summit is only a week away now and I’m hoping to reconnect with friends and meet new folks. I will be all over the place all week - just look for the hat or ping me on Twitter or the SQL Community Slack at @ALevyInROC! A few things that are definitely set:

This is the third in my series of posts which I hope will help you (and me!) prepare for the upcoming PASS Summit November 4-8, 2019 in Seattle, Washington.

So Many Sessions!

Summit 2019 is offering 234 regular sessions Wednesday through Friday plus 21 pre-con sessions on Monday and TuesdayYou’ve hopefully selected these already. It’s an embarrassment of riches and you can very easily get stuck trying to figure out which sessions to attend.

This is my second post in a series which I hope will help you (and me!) prepare for the upcoming PASS Summit November 4-8, 2019 in Seattle, Washington.

Networking, Networking!

Where the Real Benefits From Summit Are Realized

One of if not the most valuable parts of PASS Summit is the networking opportunities. People keep talk about it everywhere. Network, network, network. Usually it’s in the context of finding jobs but this is an important skill to have even if you’re not going anywhere!