The 2019 Year in Review

It’s that time of year where everyone is doing a “Year in Review” post and why not?

It’s good to gain perspective, plan for 2020 and celebrate all that was wonderful about 2019, (outside of politics, that was an utter failure on all fronts, pretty much most countries… :))

The DBAKevlar blog:

• 46 published posts for 2019
• Over 800 posts on the site
• Over 600K in visitors for 2019
• Daily views have increased steadily, with over 2500 visitors yesterday.
• Somehow, still awarded top 60 blog sites for Oracle database blogs with all that Microsoft content…:)

Microsoft Employment for 2019:

• My mobile office worked in 25 states, not even going to count how many locations.
• Traveled to 37 customer locations
• Working regularly with over 70 higherEd institutions and a number of K-12 customers on analytics and AI
• Presented at 3 EdTech conferences
• Contributed 4 blogs posts to the Microsoft SQL Server/Azure blog
•  2 role redesigns to make the Oracle work I was doing “official”, (you rock, Denny Ramsey- Thank you for being an awesome boss!)
• Over 70 projects either migrating Oracle from on-prem to Azure IaaS or part of the Oracle Cloud/Azure partnership.
• Accepted a new engineering role in Customer Success starting on January 1st, 2020.

Webinars:

• Leadership session for ODTUG
• Two webinars for Redgate
• PASS Marathon
• 24HOP
• WIT webinar with Delphix

Conferences:

• 19 SQL Saturdays
• ODTUG KSCOPE
• RMOUG Training Days
• PASS Summit 2019

I love me a great SQL Saturday and this year I presented at 19 of them!  Its a few down from 2018, when I was an evangelist, but the number is still considerable.  I love getting to present to different audiences, hang out with my #SQLFamily and the opportunity to learn new things.  One of my goals for 2019 at Microsoft was to see if there was interest from the Oracle community in Power BI, so I presented at two Oracle events, RMOUG and KSCOPE to gauge response.  I really enjoyed these sessions, as I got to do something very knew with the technology and also had the opportunity to visit with my Oracle peeps.

I also presented at three sessions at PASS Summit this year.  I love this conference and really appreciate that they’ve let me continue to be an official blogger.  I gave up this year on keeping up with the social events-  there’s just too many and no one has that amount of energy at my age.  I did what I could, seriously.

Publications:

• “Crushing the IT Gender Bias” book was published
• Four part series on Linux for the Microsoft DBA on Simple Talk
• Introducing SQL Server 2019 ebook for Packt/Microsoft

I started my WIT book, “Crushing the IT Gender Bias” in June, 2018.  I had just started at Microsoft, so it was an awesome time to start a book, too, (not.)  As much as I put in it, of course I can now think of so much more that should have been added.  I was really surprised the difference in audience and how often I see it in book stores and libraries.  It’s just very different from my technical books in where it will end up, which results in you feeling proud and vulnerable all at the same time.

I still owe Simple Talk a few more submissions to finish up the Linux series.  The book for Packt came in and stole much of my writing time and at some point, I’ll need to get my content finishes, but luckily, each of the series is stand alone, so everything I add is just gravy to the mashed potatoes posted. 🙂

Women in Technology

I’m really proud of the women I’m currently mentoring/sponsoring, but even more proud to call them friends.  I don’t talk about it too loudly, as I remember how often people would credit my achievements to my own mentors/sponsors, but I want to at least recognize how much these women have achieved with VERY little from me.  All my job entails is pointing out things or sponsoring introductions.  They do ALL the work and have done awesome.  Some I’m more involved with, some it was a one-time thing, but they are awesome and I wanted to say publicly that I’m proud of them and all they do!

• Angela Tidwell
• Tracy Boggiano
• Elizabeth Noble
• Leslie Andrews
• Lisa Griffin Bohm
• Noelle Stimely

If you’re wondering, it’s not just women I mentor-  I mentor everyone, but due to my writing on the topic of WIT, I just end up with more women seeking my sponsorship out.  I’m also working from time to time with Carlos Robles, Matt Cushing and Josh Smith, but that’s one of the things I love so much about the community around Microsoft- we all reach out and help each other.  I have greatly appreciated how often people have reached out and helped me, too!

I have also been made an official Women in Technology Mentor at Tulane University.  As my mentee is a student, her name shall not be listed, but I’m so impressed how she’s been able to take our conversations and build action from them to improve her success at school.

Community:

• Stepped down as president for the Denver SQL Server User Group at the end of the year-  seriously, I haven’t lived in Denver in 1 1/2 years…it was time and they deserve so much more than I could offer long distance! 🙂
• Helped organize the Denver SQL Saturday 2019 in September.  Nothing will remind you how old you’re getting until you start organizing a user group conference…and happy you aren’t the main organizer.  Hat off to Marc Beacom!
• Became a Friend of Redgate
• Idera ACE Alumni when I became a Microsoft employee.  Thank you to Idera for their continued support in the community!

So what’s up for 2020?

A refocus on Oracle Technology and building up of Powershell-  well doesn’t that sound wrong? 🙂

When I started my initiatives to build out Oracle environments in Azure, it was simply to help customers be more successful.  I didn’t realize that so many would want successful architeture solutions or that it would grow so successfully outside my group.  We first thought it would be easy enough to supplement what I was doing in other teams by having another team of engineers take it on, including hiring my husband in that team, then it became more obvious that my customer demands were outside of my team and I needed to make a decision.  I love all technology and did come to Microsoft to learn new technology, but I can do this while building out solutions for Oracle with it all.  Its a labor of love and I look forward to the challenge.

Due to these demands, I’ll be speaking less, but I am signed on to do a keynote at an Oracle event and a couple SQL Saturdays.  I won’t be doing half as many events in person, but I also feel that I need to focus to get where I want to go.  I will refocus on blogging, too.  My blog has been terribly neglected this year as I wandered technically through all that I was learning.

I’ll be automating much of what I’m working on, which means SQL scripts, more BASH, but also Powershell so that I can enhance what I’m already doing on Linux for the next generation of Linux users.  I want to make sure it’s in both BASH and Powershell, as most everything is now at Microsoft.

At the end of 2020, I expect we’ll be settled into a floating home in Portland and then sell the current 5th wheel so I can purchase a 30/32ft airstream to remodel.  The plan is, if we want to leave for a month, we’ll just pack up the airstream and work remote from it.  We’ve already proven we’re quite happy where ever and Microsoft is, too!

To everyone-  Happy New Year and best wishes to you and yours!