Today Yesterday I was distinguished by Microsoft, as I received an mail in which they awarded me with a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) award. It was one of those moments that’ll stick with you for a lifetime. I am truly honored and very, very excited about the days to come in this new role. As far as community goes, nothing has changed. But with the award comes a great deal of responsibility towards the products, the product teams and Microsoft as a whole. I am really looking forward to embark that ship.
In short, my excitement for today is best characterized as (this is supposed to be a gif – but using Word as publishing tool doesn’t seem to do the trick):
It’s been a joyful ride that began back in 2013 where I gave my first public talk. Since then I have been fortunate enough to be selected to speak at a number of events such as SQLSaturday, MSBIP, Microsoft Campus Days and not least the great PASS Summit. On that note, I’d like to particularly thank Mark Broadbent (b|l|t) who twice has given me the opportunity to be part of his phenomenal SqlSat Cambridge events. Mark was also forthcoming about nominating me for this award, and for that I am very grateful. Also, a huge thank you goes out to Regis Baccaro (b|l|t) who on numerous occasions has given me the opportunity to both speak and be part of the team organizing the SqlSat Denmark events for the last four (4) years. There are a lot of people whom I am thinking of right now, writing this piece. People from all over the world, some of whom I’ve never even met – but still, they are part of what made this journey so wonderful and interesting. So, a great thank you goes out to the #sqlfamily out there, wherever you may be. I will be looking forward to reconnecting with old acquaintances as well as new ones in the time to come. I am always open for a chat, even about the Microsoft Data Platform
PacktPub is having a eBook Bonanza, as they call it themselves.
For under $5 you can get a lot of very interesting eBooks. But be quick about it, offer expires on January 6th 2015.
Categories are:
Web Development eBooks
Big Data & Business Intelligence eBooks
Application Development eBooks
Virtualization & Cloud eBooks
Game Development eBooks
Networking & Servers eBooks
Hardware & Creative eBooks
Video
Packt Publishing releases the 2000th title. During this offer Packt is giving its readers a chance to dive into their comprehensive catalog and Buy One, Get One Free across their entire range of eBooks until 26th-Mar-2014.
This past weekend, was one of the most exciting weekends so far this year. In case my wife is reading, this is of course in a different league, and nothing like when you gave birth to our third child just four months ago 🙂
In the summer of 2013, it was annouced that The Minnesota Vikings would host The Pittsburgh Steelers at Wembley Stadium, London UK. I was really exited about the opportunity, to actually see the team I root for live, would be within reach, them playing a venue this close. I quickly realised, that there was to be held a SQL Saturday in Cambridge, just the day before. As I described in my post here on getting the mail from Mark Broadbent (b|t), it would require all of my chaneled into a single burst, to be able to attend both events.
But here I am, having just had an amazing weekend in both Cambridge and London. Flew from Malmö in Sweden to Stansted, took the train from there, arriving just in time for the speaker dinner. The venue was amazing and I think everyone was a bit humbled by the surroundings in the great dining hall. That feeling faded, as more wine was served and the chatter started getting louder 🙂
Got up first thing Saturday morning, to get ready for the first session on InMemory OLTP Introduction by Anthony Saxby (t). I didn’t get up as early as some of the other attendants, Rob Sewell (b|t) reporting he got up at 04:00, but it still felt early. After the first session, I just wanted to run through my session, which wasn’t until the afternoon. But better safe than sorry. So when I tried to plug my laptop into the adapter I brought, I found out it didn’t fit. Since I bought the adapter, I’ve gotten a new laptop, with a new plug, that didn’t match. “Ok, you’ve got time” i thought, and went through my bags to find some kind of pliers, to make room for the new plug. Of course I didn’t bring any pliers! I am flying Ryanair, where you are only allowed to carry 10Kg of hand luggage. After thinking it through, I went to the reception at the Queens College, and asked for any Tool that would make adapter and plug fit. The guy behind the counter brought the full toolkit, so I finally got it fixed and went back to my room to prepare. I had enough time to get one test-run done.
My presentation went really well, at least I myself think so 🙂 Except for the guy snoring in the front row, people seemed to listen to what I was trying to bring forward. Front-row guy was excused, as this was the second to last session of the day. And after the session a couple of attendees approached with some questions and shared their own experience with AMO. Always nice to chat on a subject, where you get the distinct feeling, that the other party has put heart and soul into it.
Around 17:00 all the attendees, speakers and volunteers gathered in the big auditorium for some prizes 🙂
There were actually some really great prizes among the lot. A Nokia Lumia 1020, All PASS Summit 2012 sessions on disc, great books and other really cool stuff. last but not least, I should mention Buck Woody, who did a fantastic job on bringing a game show atmosphere into the room. Apparently the trip was worth it for Rob, since he left with one of the prizes!
The evening offered a really late night snack at Zizzi (French people giggle every time they go by) in the company of several of the volunteers, speakers and attendees. Here’s a shot from the end of the table.
And by that final note, a great event ended. A shet load of work invested by Mark and the rest of the team. Cudos on a job well done!
NFL
Next morning, it was off to London, to get ready for the game at Wembley. Great game, not the result I’d hoped for and an appalling display of fan-care by the players. I went straight to the hotel, then off to Wembley Stadium. I had bought a ticket on eBay, and was kinda nervous that it could turn out to be fake. It wasn’t 😀
Since Minnesota Viking got the better of the Steelers, and you could imagine some sort of disappointment would show of off the players. But the way both Big Ben, Coach Tomlin and Brett Keisel went right past all the fans, without even looking in their direction was way below the professional level I would have expected. Troy Polamalu was the only player I saw, who actually engaged with the fans. Big thumps up for that 🙂
So, all in all the Sunday ended well. I got to see some of the top players of the league and last but not least, a great statdium
It seems to be the season, where a lot of people switches jobs. At least in my social network LinkedIn states that 14 people have a new position, just this past month. Of course there are always those who head in a new direction every 24 months. And I’ve never really understood how they manage to establish themselves so quickly, but I seem to have a need to settle more in, when I finally decide on something. I held my previous position for 4 yrs, and my current position I have held for about 5½ yrs, until now.
Looking back, over my shoulder
During my years in Rehfeld, I have been engaged in several roles. I started out as a Business Intelligence developer doing custom dashboards for our clients. The customization was almost epic in proportion, in a way where the consultant in the end was no longer needed. Everything could be controlled from the data imported into the database (there were several databases, but only one (1) containing meta data) No, not that kind of meta data! But boy did I get smarter as I got along…
The bold directors then made an organizational change, in where I was to team up with a database developer and a .Net developer. The three of us were to distill the lessons learned in the organization during the last many years and make it into a product: Effektor. We wanted to build a toolbox, to enable the consultant to have the tedious parts of developing a DWH done by a click of a button, and at the same time with a very high level of quality. This across all major projects, so now every consultant would be able babysit others work, without the need of having to read up on how this dude implemented the T2 on that column, and why on Earth that implementation wasn’t the same as on these other two columns…
The consultant was the first job function the product should support. As of the latest version, we now support operations for security administrators, data stewards, data managers, super users and of course regular users.
Can’t Explain
In the last year+, I have been back into the field, as a Business Intelligence consultant, helping several clients on projects involving Data Mining, ETL, Server Upg., Custom Applications. I have been fortunate enough to have Effektor create much of the plumbing on several projects, and it really has made the development process a whole lot faster. As long as the business requirements are not too quirky or far out, the tool actually does most by meta data definition only. Thumbs up to Thomas Meltofte Eriksen (LinkedIn) and Mikael Nygaard (LinkedIn|Twitter) for doing such a smashing job on the tool. I really enjoyed our time on the PRO team.
As I left PRO, I joined Team SPOK (abb. for Stat, Privat og Kommune ~ Government, Private and Municipal). The team focused on clients in those sectors. There are a lot of team members that really do a great job everyday, are open-minded, happy and always willing to help and make everybody become a better developer. Some stand out, as I have worked with them on several assignments or do community work with them. Rasmus Reinholdt Nielsen (LinkedIn|Twitter),) whom I will be presenting at Campus Days with is a great co-worker/team lead whose wisdom and humor I am really going to miss. Luckily we get to meet, hopefully often, in the community. Rolf Veinø Sørensen (LinkedIn) who always has the demo of the newest stuff already done, sometimes even before the news hit your inbox. Finally Brian Bønk Rueløkke (blog|twitter) who would be a fantastic resource on any team. This guy really knows his stuff!
Hopefully I will be able to work with you guys in the future, sometime again. There’s just this something I need to do first…
Babe, I’m Gonna Leave You
As some of you may have guessed from the subtitle, and the post i general, I have decided to give it a GO in another company. I have come to an agreement with Mærsk Line IT, to start as a Senior Business Intelligence Developer in August. My primary focus areas will be training and guiding new Business Intelligence developers on the SQL Stack, delivering proof of concepts, establishing a baseline of best practices for Business Intelligence development. Besides that, I will engage in the ongoing projects as a developer and try to maintain or up my engagement in the SQL Server Community.
This position also requires some traveling, since some of the projects are done by a Business Partner in India. Traveling, as a part of a job, is new to me, but I’m very excited to go explore the possibilities that lies within.
I am really looking forward starting in the new position. But first – three (3) weeks of vacation 🙂
