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.

Conference Updates

A few weeks ago, I presented at SQL Bits X. The slides from my co-presentation with Conor are available here:

• Conor vs. SQL

Last week, I spoke at Microsoft Open World 2012 doing quite a lot of presentations. I have created a new and extended “Grade of the Steel” deck that I hope to blog more about my findings (these things tend to start as PowerPoint slides and evolve into blog entries).

If you want a copy of any of my presentations, please just mail me. Speaking of presentations, I have found this really cool tool that will compress slides: NXPowerLite. This neat tool has taken off around 60-80% of my slide sizes.

Lately, I have been practicing zen style presentations: max four sentences on each slide and heavy use of visualisations instead. I highly recommend putting yourself under such constraints. After I removed the text from my slides I feel much better improvising on stage.

Maestro web page online

The SSAS Maestro training now has a home at the Microsoft domain. You can find it here: http://www.microsoft.com/learning/en/us/certification/ssas-maestros.aspx

SQLBits and Phones

My presentation from SQLBits: “Finding the Limits: The Grade of The Steel” should be online soon. There is a lot of stuff to blog about and so little time to do it. It was some fun days of tuning as the picture shows.

I am curious to hear comments on my session. Was it useful? What other tests would you like to see? Do you prefer this presentation style over other styles (no, I won’t do demos!).

Special thanks to the good people over at Fusion-io for letting me use their kit to run tests. You guys rock!

In other news: I finally found a phone that is just a phone. It is called the Nokia X2, I had it for only a few days and I am already liking it a lot. So far, it has survived on only one charge.

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.

Speaking at Italian SQL Server Conference

I will be speaking at the Italian SQL Server conference in Milan tomorrow (2011-04-20). During the keynote I will talk about the SQL Server roadmap.

For those of you interested in data modeling, I will also host a 75 minute presentation, talking about many of the subjects that will be discussed in this blog.

Hope to see you there and have a good cup of Italian coffee with you.

Location: London, UK