My Final SQL Server Presentations (until further Notice)

As my regular readers have noticed, activity on my blog has slowed down lately. My new job at Livedrive is keeping me very busy and excited. It’s the opportunity I have been looking for: right in the middle of the Open Source vs. Microsoft cloud battle (and in a hectic development environment). I am greatly enjoying myself in this space.

However, I have precious little time to blog about SQL Server. And quite frankly, by now I feel there isn’t much more left for me to say on this subject. The time has come for me to move on to other subject areas and master new skills.

How will this affect my public speaking appearances?

Sharing Slides on SlideShare.net

Hey everyone. Just a short post to let you know I am now sharing some of my slide decks from conferences at SlideShare. Here is the URL:

• http://www.slideshare.net/tkejser1

Some things I put there so far:

• The Fusion Fireside talk I did at SQL Bits (which shows SQL based message queues in action)
• My Big Data vs. DW deck (as seen at SQL PASS 2012 and other conferences)
• A deck I created to introduce storage people to databases

Feel free to use the material, I only ask that you let people know where you got it from.

My old slide decks belongs to MS as their IP, so I can’t share those slides with you. However, you will often find some of that material is available for download at the conference site where I presented it. For example, you can find a lot of my presentations on the SQL Bits website here:

• http://www.sqlbits.com/Speakers/Thomas_Kejser

Next week, I will be presenting at IP Expo about the Fusion-io SDK initiative. Exciting times.

Joining FusionIo

I am very happy to announce that I have signed a contract with FusionIo and will be joining them as CTO of EMEA from 1st September 2012.

As many of you know, I have worked together with FusionIo on many occasions  and really enjoyed the collaboration. I believe that their products hold the keys to a new era of computing and it is an honour to join their ranks. I will be looking forward to doing a lot of exciting research and customer implementations for them.

This brings me to the work I have been doing since I left Microsoft. Here is how it will transfer:

Consulting Contracts

I have contracts with some customers open. These are all due to terminate before 1st September and I will of course honour my agreements here. Unfortunately, my new job will not allow me to continue the collaboration with these customers on a consulting basis after this. The good news is that my courses will still be available and I will be able to share my knowledge through this channel.

Courses and Conferences

Contributing information to the community is one of my great passions in life. FusionIo has allowed me to continue to pursue this interest. My courses will still be available, although only for a very limited amount of days every month as the course time will be coming out of my vacation days (hint on how to get a discount). I expect demand to be high. There are already  three tuning courses set up across Europe which will be held as planned and a lot of people have made it clear they want more. I will be announcing the exact dates for courses planned on this blog soon and let you know how to join the courses that are open to the public. The material is looking amazing and is using the new format that has evolved at SQL BITS and driven the top scores there. I expect this will be my best presentations yet. I am also happy to announce that my data modelling course is well underway and will be available soon.

I will continue to submit abstracts for conferences and stay in close touch with the community, just like I have always done. And  this brings me to:

Grade of the Steel

I am very excited that FusionIo has an interest in expanding the testing I have done with my Grade of the Steel Project. I will continue to run benchmarks on the latest and greatest storage and provide non volatile memory specific configuration and tuning guidance. Exactly which format the publications will take is too early to say, I will keep you posted on this blog.

Speaking in Dublin on Thursday 5th July

I am visiting a customer in Ireland and the good people in Prodata took the chance to set up a SQL User Group meeting while I am there. I look forward to meeting both old friend and making new ones there.

The subject I will speak about is my “Grade of the Steel” tuning. There will be a Q&A session.

Here is the Official announcement: Thomas Kejser’s Grade of Steel coming to Dublin.

Moving on from Microsoft

Not too long ago, I handed in my notice to Microsoft, terminating my employment mid-June 2012. I suspect this is slowly leaking out on the Twitter and Facebook these hours – as is tradition in the connected world.

Improving Slide Layouts– A Case Study

Very soon, it is conference time again, at SQLBits. As our team is preparing for this big event, I took a hard look at the slides we are using and the design we apply. While you may argue that spending time on slide design is a waste. I beg to differ. Using slides that are easily readable, beautiful and speak with clarity is important: No matter how great your content is, my experience shows that the audience will also judge you on the quality of the slide material you use. I will also assert that that most people are visual learners, so you owe it to your audience to use well designed slides. But even if you still disagree and if you don’t believe good slides help visual learners, consider this simple observation: if your slides look sloppy, it reflects on your character.

Making the Best Use of PowerPoint Slides

This week, I presented at the InsightOut conference in Tokyo, Japan. The experience has been amazing. I met a lot of interesting people from different database platforms. I would like to share some lessons I learned from presenting to an audience that does not speak my language.

My Speaking Schedule the rest of 2011

For those of you who would like to hear me throw my usual tantrums at conferences about data modeling, high scale tuning and optimal use of hardware. Here is my speaking schedule for the rest of 2011.