September 14, 2022 at 5:07 pm
Having been to a few conferences, and maybe one or two (!) online presentations, I tend to stay away from the talks given by employees of a vendor. There are a few exceptions, but not many.
There are presenters who appear at a ton of SQL Saturdays. I've sat through a few, and walked out of a few more. Most of the time, it was difficult to keep quiet listening to some of the drivel they were espousing.
The best advise is to be an informed consumer.
Michael L John
If you assassinate a DBA, would you pull a trigger?
To properly post on a forum:
http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/61537/
September 15, 2022 at 5:48 am
There are "mvps" and then there are MVPs. People forget that the MVP award is, just that, an award. It is NOT a certificate of knowledge, skill, or ability. It's a "service award" and many folks continue to get the award just based on the sheer number of posts they've made even if they're dead wrong in what they're writing.
Point taken Jeff. I shall be more critical of what I read online.
September 15, 2022 at 12:14 pm
I didn't realise how good SQLBits was until I was sent to a few other events. QCon is another good one but you need a decent budget to go to it.
I'm OK with a presenter not being an expert providing that they don't mis-represent themselves as an expert. Even salesy presentations are OK provided you known that is what you are going to get. It's all about reality matching expectations.
Some vendors are more honest than others and that honesty isn't related to the size of the organisation. I went to a presentation on personalisation and was told a believable story from a major vendor commissioned to produce a personalisation. They claimed to have produced a system in record time that provided incremental revenue in the £ millions. I know the real story of that personalisation story and a tight squint through rose tinted blindfold was definitely needed.
I've had vendor presentations where the technical presenter was knowledgable, honest and obviously destined for a great career. They really sold the product. The vendor presentation from the CEO snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. Unfortunately the C level have a tendency towards listening only to other C levels. The CEO set up his product for failure by setting unrealistic expectations. Nothing wrong with the product, just no way it could live up to the expectations being set.
I make a point of going to Buck Woody's talks. Always informative and entertaining. Just bear in mind that if you sit in the front row you are regarded as a righteous kill.
I feel that new blood needs encouraging and supporting if the quality of events is to be kept high. Anyone who has the guts to get up and present to a knowledgable audience needs aplauding.
September 15, 2022 at 12:35 pm
Just bear in mind that if you sit in the front row you are regarded as a righteous kill.
You can sit in the back. Won't matter. Buck will spot his prey when he's ready.
"The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood"
- Theodore Roosevelt
Author of:
SQL Server Execution Plans
SQL Server Query Performance Tuning
September 15, 2022 at 1:59 pm
I'll listen to a vendor specific tech talk, so long as it's one of their engineers or solutions architects doing the talking. It's interesting when they present a tool in the context of solving a specific technical problem like: cross platform performance monitoring, hybrid database replication or implementing a key vault for PII, because those are real world problems all enterprise IT departments are struggling with daily or will face eventually, and you really need a comprehensive vendor solution for things like that.
On the other hand, how many people here have made the mistake of downloading a "free" O’Reilly or XYZ For Dummies book from LinkedIn - and then start getting a half dozen useless calls per day on your cell phone from unrelated vendors? I have to say that ever since Microsoft bought out LinkedIn, the level of spam and click bait advertising has significantly increased.
"Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise. Instead, seek what they sought." - Matsuo Basho
September 15, 2022 at 2:00 pm
One Youtube channel is the CMU Database Group from Carnegie Mellon University. My brother went to CMU and one of his sons goes there now. Their earlier series are somewhat vendor specific/oriented. Lately tho the series have been about a wide variety of approaches. Of course colleges and universities are not immune to bias and happily receive donations from big tech 🙂
Aus dem Paradies, das Cantor uns geschaffen, soll uns niemand vertreiben können
September 15, 2022 at 2:47 pm
I'll say that I don't mind vendor talks, as long as they're presented as such. I also think lots of vendor employees have deep technical knowledge and share that without trying to sell a product.
Setting expectations and then meeting them goes a long way.
September 15, 2022 at 2:47 pm
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September 16, 2022 at 12:24 pm
One Youtube channel is the CMU Database Group from Carnegie Mellon University. My brother went to CMU and one of his sons goes there now. Their earlier series are somewhat vendor specific/oriented. Lately tho the series have been about a wide variety of approaches. Of course colleges and universities are not immune to bias and happily receive donations from big tech 🙂
Wow, there is a huge amount of content in that channel and very topical.
"Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise. Instead, seek what they sought." - Matsuo Basho
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