Speaking At IT/Dev Connections

I am going to be speaking at IT/Dev Connections this year.  IT/Dev Connections will be in San Francisco, CA from October 23rd through the 26th.

I will have two sessions.  First off, on Wednesday, October 25th, I’m going to give my talk entitled R For The SQL Developer, where I go over some of what the R language can do.

Then, on Thursday, October 26th, you can check out my talk entitled Data Cleansing with SQL And R.  In addition to being high-brow (we’re “cleansing,” not just “cleaning” the data!), we will pick up some techniques on fixing messy data using T-SQL and R.

Tickets are currently available for IT/Dev Connections, though the prices will go up after June 16th, so hurry in.

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Speaking At NDC Sydney

I will be speaking at NDC Sydney, which runs from August 14th through the 18th in Sydney, Australia.

I will have two talks at the event, both on Wednesday, August 16th.  First up, I am giving a talk entitled Data Cleansing with SQL and R, where I use a combination of T-SQL and R to build tidy data sets.

Then, right after that, I will give a talk entitled Peanut Butter and Chocolate:  Integrating Hadoop with SQL Server.  This talk is all about ways of tying together SQL Server and Hadoop.

Unfortunately, the Early Bird Price has expired, so tickets are at their regular price.  But tickets are still available, so if you want to see a bunch of top-notch speakers and get your passport stamped, check it out.

Kafka For The Big Data VC

I am going to speak about Apache Kafka for the PASS Big Data Virtual Chapter on Tuesday, May 16th—tomorrow!—at 2 PM Eastern.

This is in webinar form and registration is free.

I’m going to cover what Apache Kafka is, give you an idea of how it works, and show how we can write .NET code to make use of this powerful message broker technology.

Abstract

Remember that first time you saw Service Broker and thought of all the great things you could do with it? Remember when you actually tried Service Broker and found all the limitations and pain points? Enter Apache Kafka. Apache Kafka is a distributed publish-subscribe messaging system which can scale out to handle millions of messages per second and support a distributed, microservices-oriented architecture. In this talk, we will cover the basics of this powerful system, including general architectural and design principles. We will also build a .NET project which uses Kafka to produce and consume messages quickly and efficiently.

Companero Conference

I am extremely pleased to have the opportunity to speak at Compañero Conference. Compañero Conference (or CompaCon, as I can’t pronounce “Compañero” because I can’t roll that n) is a paid conference in Norfolk, Virginia, starting the evening of October 3rd and going on through the 5th.

The purpose of Compañero Conference is to give lone DBAs, accidental DBAs, and new DBAs a place to meet compatriots and learn some useful skills.  Carlos and Steve have a pattern in mind for an intimate affair:  a single track of sessions, social events to give people a chance to get to know someone in a similar situation, and unfettered access to great speakers (and me).

I’m going to do two sessions at CompaCon:  one on database security, as well as a gentle introduction to the Hadoop ecosystem.  Because it’s a small group, you’ll have plenty of chances to get one-on-one discussion time with any of the speakers, so if you need help convincing your boss to attend, there’s a built-in benefit:  you have some really sharp people (and me—oh, wait, I did that one already) trapped in a room and you’ll get to pick our brains about work topics.  And unlike a SQL Saturday, you’ll still get the whole weekend to yourself.

Tickets are currently available at a discounted price of $400, but that’s only for a limited time.

Speaking At 24 HOP

I have the opportunity to speak at 24 Hours of PASS:  Data Security and Data Quality on Wednesday, May 3rd.  My topic is entitled Outlier Detection with SQL and R.  My session begins at 12 PM Eastern (4 PM UTC), nestled between a couple of great speakers in Bob Pusateri and Robert Davis.

Here’s my abstract:

Forensic accountants and fraud examiners use a range of techniques to uncover fraudulent journal entries and illegal activities.  As data professionals, most of us will never unravel a Bernie Madoff scheme, but we can apply these same techniques in our own environments to uncover dirty data.  This session will use a combination of SQL Server and R to apply these fraud detection techniques, which include Benford’s Law, outlier analysis, time series analysis, and cohort analysis.

Webinar registration is free and easy, so sign up today.

Upcoming Events

Busy Season is officially underway.  Here’s where you can find me over the next several weeks.

1. Tonight (2017-03-23), I am giving a webinar for the Southern New England UseR Group.  My topic is data cleansing with R.
2. This Saturday (2017-03-25), I will be in Phoenix, Arizona for SQL Saturday Phoenix.  I will give two presentations there, one on the APPLY operator and one on using Kafka in .NET shops.
3. On Saturday, April 1st, I will be in Orange County, California for SQL Saturday OC.  I will give two presentations there, one on the APPLY operator and one on using Kafka in .NET shops.
4. On Tuesday, April 4th, I will be in Charlotte, North Carolina for the Charlotte BI Group meeting.  My topic there is using Kafka for real-time data ingestion.
5. On Saturday, April 8th, I will be in Madison, Wisconsin for SQL Saturday Madison.  My topic there is R for SQL Server developers.
6. On Saturday, April 22nd, I will be in Raleigh, North Carolina for Global Azure Bootcamp.  My topic will be Azure SQL Data Warehouse.
7. On Saturday, April 29th, I will be in Rochester, New York for SQL Saturday Rochester.  I will give two presentations there, including one on the wide world of the data platform and one on R for SQL Server developers.  As a special bonus, if you’re there, check out Chris Hyde’s talk on SQL Server R Services, which will be right after mine.  We did this pair of talks back to back at another event and they fit together quite well.
8. On Thursday, May 4th, I will be in Roanoke, Virginia for the Roanoke Valley .NET User Group monthly meeting.  My topic there is using Kafka for real-time data ingestion.
9. On Saturday, May 6th, I will be in Baltimore, Maryland for SQL Saturday Baltimore.  My topic there is using the APPLY operator.
10. On Saturday, May 20th, I will be in New York, New York for SQL Saturday New York City.  I’m not sure yet what my topic will be.

That’s my speaking agenda for the next couple of months.  A couple more events might pop up in there, but I’ll call that officially busy.  If you’re able to make it out to any of these events, I hope to see you there.

Game blogging update and Baseball HOFs

I’m going to move future game blogging to my Patreon page. I will occasionally make comments about non-gaming (i.e. sports stuff) here, but the gaming stuff fits more over there. I’ll be starting my YouTube channel soon, so keep an eye out for that!

As far as the Hall of Fame voting, in all honesty, there weren’t that many surprises, unless you count Pudge sailing in despite the controversies of his career. I was pleasantly surprised to see Manny surpass 25% and Bonds and Clemens to break 50%, which means good things for their candidacies. Vladimir Guerrero and Trevor Hoffman now look like locks, although the 2018 class has some strong first time candidates (Chipper Jones and Jim Thome strike me as definite first ballot guys, and I expect Scott Rolen will get in eventually). My favorite case for next year is Jamie Moyer; he won 260+ games, so we’ll have to see what kind of voting he gets. Vizquel will get traction, but probably not make it the first time.

Jorge Posada did better than I expected, getting almost enough to stay on the ballot, but I’m surprised Drew or Orlando Cabrera didn’t get a vote. The Boston thing must not be as strong as I thought.