This post is the first in a new weekly series meant to give my readers some insight into my week. Many of you inquire as to what life is like in the glamorous world of Pragmatic Works and so I am out to remind you it’s very much like your job.  I have clients and so do you. I have deadlines and so do you. I typically work with a dog sleeping on my foot. Well, that one might be different. I also have one of the highest emails set from Atlanta airport ratios in the country. Something I’m not entirely proud of but I will explain more each week what that means.

I also want this to be a resource for you to see what is going on in the community not just with me. I will have sections including free training listings, upcoming in person and online community events and some of the top content that I have found on the web during that week. Many of you are also getting into the community and looking for folks to “follow” so to speak so I will include a list of active SQL Server pros and bloggers and their twitter feeds.  This is a subjective list and may not have everyone who has ever worked or published with SQL Server so please email me if you think I’m missing someone great (including yourself) and I will get them on the list. The only qualification is that the person is an active blogger and/or helps folks on twitter. I’m not trying to rate anyone here, just provide a resource at the end of my posts for folks to quickly find more like minded people to connect with.  So with that, let’s jump into this week’s post.

My Week

This was a pretty busy week. We had a HUGE turnout at SQL Saturday 40 in South Florida. Patrick Leblanc and I have  a friendly competition going that South Florida can trounce Louisiana in attendance. We came in at about 420 attending over 600 registered. It will be close. That is really exciting for the Louisiana SQL community! That started my week off and from there it has been a whirlwind. One of my senior sales folks is on vacation so I’m covering and remember you never know all the work someone does until you walk a mile in their shoes!

We have had some great conversations with Microsoft and out other partners this week and our SharePoint sessions, SQL Saturday sessions and Free training are really keeping our buzz going. Folks were coming up to me and saying things like “we asked around about who to get to help us with BI and everyone said we should talk to Pragmatic Works.”  I feel we all have a sense of pride personally for our knowledge but when the team hears that kind of feedback they know it’s a direct representation of their hard work an commitment to our customers. I remain so proud to be a part of that team.

I’m working on some new ways to to reviews and mentoring for our staff. e try to keep everything very results focused and non-bureaucratic so we are constantly tweaking and making sure we have the best system in place internally to grow the best people and attract the type of talent we are looking for.

I did a lot of travel prep and moving planning as well for my upcoming trips to Jacksonville as well as working on getting my house ready for a hopeful Q4 move to Jacksonville to work more permanently out of our office.

Pragmatic Works Happenings

We have some incredible webinars coming up this month. For those of you who live under a rock, Pragmatic Works offers free training every month in the form of live webinars. These are GREAT ways to get engaged with our techniques and the MS BI Stack while picking up some best practices along the way. This Month we have the following webinars coming:

Microsoft BI for SalesForce

Introduction to SSRS 2008

Migrating Crystal Reports to SSRS 2008

Advanced SSRS Tips and Tricks

These are being delivered by Brian Knight and some of our talented consulting and training staff including Brian Knight(Blog)|(Twitter), Mike Davis(Blog)|(Twitter), and Devin Knight (Blog)|(Twitter). You have seen these guys around at events ll over the country now we give them to you for free so come hang out with us for an hour a week!

Get Registered Here:

Free Training

There is some other great free training out there  this week.

SQLPASS is hosting events through the virtual chapters this month. Check out:

Performance Virtual Chapter: Parallelism and Performance – Are You Getting Full Return on Your CPU Investment? August 3

AppDev Virtual Chapter: Where the bl**dy h*** are you? (Spatial Data Visualisation) Aug 10

DBA Virtual Chapter: Transactional Replication Deep Dive, August 11

AppDev Virtual Chapter: Writing a Better WHERE Clause, August 24

DBA Virtual Chapter: SQL Storage for Performance: Best Practices, August 25

Upcoming Events ( SQL Saturdays, Code Camps, David Hasselhoff Fan club meetings, etc..)

PASS SQLSaturday, South Florida, July 31

PASS SQLSaturday, Baton Rouge, LA, August 14

PASS SQLSaturday, Nashville, TN, August 21

Jacksonville .NET Code Camp, Jacksonville FL August 28

PASS SQLSaturday, Raleigh, NC, September 18

PASS SQLSaturday, East Iowa, September 18

PASS 2010 Summit, Seattle WA, November 8-11

Top Content

In this section each week, I want to highlight some of the blogs or articles, whitepapers, etc that I came across the previous week that I thought were interesting or helped me solve a problem. Kind of a condensed retweet.

Windows Azure and SQL Azure special offer – Lee Everest

MS is giving away access to AZURE for a month? Count this guy in!

Loading data to SQL Azure the fast way – SQLCAT Team

Azure is taking off if we’re getting best practices from the CAT team already. Check this out!

Installing SQL Integration Services after SQL Cluster Setup has Completed – CSS Team

We get a lot of questions about how SSIS works in cluster. This is a good intro to getting it setup from the guys who know it best.

PivotViewer Extension for Reporting Services Session#1 – Cristian Petculescu

This new functionality for SSRS is super cool. Check out these video demos from Cristian!

SSAS 2008 Storage Modes – Dustin Ryan

Dustin has done a good job of giving us an overview of how SSAS Storage modes work. This is important for beginners at SSAS admin and development.

Free SQL Server DMV Starter Pack – Brad McGehee

Brad is always chock full of great resources. These DMV starter pack books are killer!

Pros and Community Cheat Sheet

I’m including this every week to help you jump right to some of the best community folks out there. Don’t forget #SQLHelp on twitter if you’re having a problem and have fun this week solving something new!