Manda QoP

Should be good tonight, we have 35 confirmed attendees and 5 speakers all doing lightning talks on various subjects. :) Bruce - The merge statement Kent - UDFs Bernard - Spatial Dave - SSMS Amanda - start discusson on Cursors (maybe... if time allows today to get some slides up together... gosh work is insane...) Hope to see you there. www.aucklandsql.com for more information...

I'm at the SQL PASS conference in Wellington this weekend and so far it's been very interesting. The Key Note talk was definitely different with an Iron DBA competition - o for awesome - yeah, I know... guess you have to be here for that one to make any sense. Have just watched a very useful DMV talk by Dr Greg Low, has made me think of a t-shirt slogan, sp_who is toast! Too geeky? Maybe I'll just stick with something slightly less geeky, current fave t-shirt slogan is "Come to the dark side, we have cookies." This afternoon I'm presenting on coding standards, the slides are minimal but they're attached on the right. I've also put together a word document of coding standards for T-SQL, these aren't 2008-i-fied yet but I'm working on that. Should still be useful though.

A few people have asked for them, so as requested I've set up some links to download/view my presentations - they're just over there and down a bit on the right hand side of the blog. I'll add some of my whitepapers as well in due course.

Call for Industry Mentors for Imagine Cup 2009 The Imagine Cup 2009 NZ competition is calling for industry mentors to participate. They need industry mentors from the IT community in all major NZ centres to help guide student teams in the software design competition. If your team suceeds and wins the NZ regional finals, you will accompany them to the World Wide Finals in Cairo, Egypt in July 2009. To register your interest to participate, and for more information, please email icnz@microsoft.com . Or you can check out the official website - http://www.imaginecup.co.nz/ - for more information on the role of an industry mentor.

Last night was the first Auckland SQL User Group and it went really well. We've had lots of really useful feedback and I for one am looking forward to the next meeting, hopefully everyone else is as well. One thing that came out of the meeting is making presentations available. I've got a few presentations and white papers that I can upload and I'll sort this out later tonight, starting with the presentation about MS SQL Server 2008 certifications. Last night's presentation will also be available on the www.aucklandsql.com site. We're thinking that January will be a good idea for the next meeting and we're looking for a group of presenters to pick their favourite datatype and drill down into it for 10-15 mins. For example, 15 minutes of "everything you ever wanted to know about datetime2 but were too afraid to ask..." If you're keen to take part in this group presentation, please get in touch - amanda@aucklandsql.com The links I provided last

Do you know any geeks in Auckland who you can email to get some viral marketing going? I'd love for this last Auckland Girl Geek Dinner event of the year to be a really good one, so the more people we get at the event the better. Also, if you or anyone you know has a prize or some sponsorship money you can spare for this event, please get in touch with me. :-) Girl Geek Dinners present: "The Right Tool For The Job" and "How To Infuriate Architects And Please Project Sponsors" When: Thursday 27th November @ 6pm Where: The Drake Hotel, Victoria Park, Auckland Cost: $30 - includes dinner and drinks and great company Tickets: Buy online at www.girlgeekdinners.co.nz Thea Myers of Optimal Usability presents The Right Tool For The Job. Building usability into every project, whether you have a huge budget and all the time in the World, or a few days and a shoestring. This talk will include some good advice, practical tools, and links to more informat

If you have an interest in SQL then get yourself along to Wellington on the 6/7th December. G'wan, you know you wanna! http://www.dot.net.nz/Default.aspx?tabid=120