Budgets are ending, time to use up the last of it

Posted on December 7, 2011 by mrdenny

With the year 2011 coming to a close it is time to take a last look at those budgets and see what’s left.  The thing with budgets is that the money there can’t be rolled over to next year.  If you don’t spend it this year, it’s gone.  So why not look into that budget and see if you’ve got a few hundred dollars left and find some training to hit.  SQL Excursions makes a great training opportunity at just $799.  So why not check that budget, see if you’ve got room in it for a couple of great days of training with a couple of Microsoft MVPs one of which is also a Microsoft Certified Master, then get signed up.

Denny

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Training is the best way to improve your career

Posted on November 7, 2011 by mrdenny

In today’s tough economy training is key to improving your career potential.  As a working IT professional you need to continue to grow and learn as a professional so that you can keep up with the technology so that you don’t fall behind.  As a working IT professional you need a way to keep up with the latest technology in your field so that you can see changes in the technology and how these technologies can be used to improve your companies technology systems and processes.

If you are an out of work IT professional the need to keep up with technology is even more important.  You need to be able to show your potential employers that you are up on the current technology and that you bring something to the table that the other candidates don’t bring to the table.  As an out of work IT professional classes or professional conferences are your best bet for staying up to speed with the latest technology that you need have knowledge of in order to get back into the working world.

In either case going to classes which are basic or intro level classes isn’t always the best use of money or time.  The basics for a lot of technology can be read easily enough on blogs and on vendor web pages.  When you get to the more advanced levels of learning that is when it makes sense to pay for classes or conference fees.  The more advanced concepts are harder to learn about from web pages, as the best way to learn is, in my opinion, the questions that people ask during these live sessions and the answers that the speaker gives.  These questions can then lead to more questions that can teach even more about the technology in question.

You simply can’t get this from a simple book or webpage.  Now many sites have forums or comment sections but most people don’t like posting on forums because they don’t want their questions to be out there in the public of the Internet for all to see.  Which is OK, posting stuff online for people to see can be scarey.  Asking questions in person is much easier, you can see the people there and get an answer right there at the same time.

I encourage everyone to look into the various training options in your area.  Some may be good some not.  Also look into the training that isn’t near you as that can be some fantastic training as well.  One of these great options is of course SQL Excursions which is going to give you two days of amazing training at a great price, in a great location.  During our trip to Napa we will be talking about a wide variety of SQL Server topics including storage, virtualization, performance tuning, as well as several topics which are specific to SQL Server 2012 (formerly known as SQL Server “Denali”).

We hope to see you in Napa.

Denny

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Congrats to the SQL In The City:LA winner of a SQL Excursions ticket

Posted on October 30, 2011 by mrdenny

If you were one of those people lucky enough to attend SQL In The City:LA last week, hopefully you submitted your session eval form.  At the end of the event the winner was drawn and I’ll be contacting them shortly to get them registered for SQL Excursions.

Kris, Tom and I are really excited to be a part of the SQL In The City event and look forward to seeing the lucky winner join us in Napa this May.

Denny

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Date Change Announcement for Napa SQL Excursion

Posted on July 13, 2011 by mrdenny

Because of a number of cancellations, and people telling us that Spring would be a better time for them to attend SQL Excursions we have decided to make the decision to move the dates for the Napa SQL Excursion.

Our Napa SQL Excursion will now be held May 17-19, 2012 with the sessions on May 17th and May 18th, and the all day wine tour on May 19th.  There has been a small change to the hotel registration code.  When booking online use group code SQE. If you call 1-800-EMBASSY, either use the group code or give them the group name “SQL Excursions”.

We hope to see you in Napa this coming May,
Denny, Kris and Tom

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Last chance to get $100 off registration for SQL Excursions

Posted on June 30, 2011 by mrdenny

Don’t forget that this weekend is your last chance to get $100 off of the registration price of $799 for SQL Excursions in Napa, CA this coming September 22-24th.  The sessions that will be presented at SQL Excursions in Napa have never before been presented together before, and may very well never be presented together again, so this is truly a once in a lifetime opportunity! Reserve seats to these great sessions by top notch speakers Denny Cherry (blog | @mrdenny) and Tom LaRock (blog | @sqlrockstar) by registering now, before the discount expires.

“But I don’t have the cash on hand at the moment.” – That’s no problem, we don’t take payments when you sign up like the larger conferences do.  We’ll send you an invoice and give you plenty of time before it’s due.   So now that you are all out of excuses, lets get you signed up and ready to attend.

If you still need a little more convincing, don’t forget to take a look at the session list as well as the blog posts that Denny and Tom have been publishing about the sessions which they will each be presenting (you can safely assume that the final two links will be posted tomorrow).

As Tom has been posting on his blog, “It’s like going to camp. We’ll even tell scary stories around a campfire at night.” We hope to see you there so we can hear your scary database stories. 

If you want to look at where we will be during the week be sure to check out the photo album that was posted up on Facebook (no account is required) and be sure to check out (and “Like”) our Facebook page and don’t forget to sign up for the news letter (look to the right in the menu).

We look forward to seeing you and your guests at SQL Excursion.

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Bringing back the discounted price of $699 for this weekend only

Posted on June 28, 2011 by mrdenny

In honor of the long July 4th weekend approaching, we are again offering the discounted price for all who sign up between June 28th and July 5th.  This reduces the price for our September 22nd-24th SQL Excursion to Napa, CA from $799 to $699.

We hope that you’ll take advantage of this savings when you sign up for SQL Excursions.

To see more about the sessions that will be presented at our Napa SQL Excursion look at the various posts Tom and I have on our blogs over this week where we have both talked about all the various sessions we will be presenting.

If you haven’t signed up yet, now is an excellent time to do so as this training will be an amazing amount of training at an excellent price.

Denny

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Should I be attending SQL Excursions or SQL PASS?

Posted on June 16, 2011 by mrdenny

While both events are only about a month apart, the easy answer is “Both”. Both SQL Excursions and PASS Summit are going to provide you with an amazing experience that are totally different from each other. The SQL PASS Summit is a large conference with several thousand attendees so there’s a lot of people, and finding the people that you want to talk to can be difficult at times. SQL Excursions will be an event which is much smaller is size, so getting some one-on-one time with the speakers will be much easier.

While some of the session topics are the same between SQL Excursions and SQL PASS, the content will be different. There is some content which works better in front of a larger audience and some which works better in front of a smaller audience. The sessions that Tom and I will be presenting at SQL Excursions will be geared specifically towards the smaller audience.

Both the PASS Summit and SQL Excursions have the location going for them. Seattle is great and all, but we’ve been there time and time again, and we’ll be there again next year. SQL Excursions is in Napa which is a unique place all its own. There’s really no place like Napa anywhere else in the US.

At the PASS Summit, the rooms are huge, and only so many questions are going to get answered during the session as the session times are very structured and rigid. While at SQL Excursions the schedule is very flexible, if there are a lot of questions on a topic we can dive into that topic more deeply and address more of your specific problems rather than talking in generics. At SQL Excursions the session lengths aren’t set in stone so if we want a presentation to run over, it’ll run over, no big deal. We have the room for all of the two days.

Access to speakers is always something people want more of at the larger conferences. Some speakers have to run off and go and work at their company booth, others have to run off to their next session, while others run off to go attend a sessions that they want to see. At SQL Excursions that won’t be the case. Tom and I will be there, ready to be abused answer questions for the entire weekend.  Have questions about a topic which we aren’t covering? Pull us aside during a break or lunch and chat.  Neither of us have any other duties other than working with you to help you solve your SQL Server problems during the week.

I hope you take this opportunity to sign up for our Napa SQL Excursion, happening September 22nd-24th, as we can’t have a successful event without you!

Denny

P.S. Don’t forget, while this is a fun trip to Napa with your other half it is also a tax deduction as a business expense.

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SQLskills has signed up as our next amazing sponsor

Posted on May 29, 2011 by mrdenny

I am so happy to be able to announce that SQLskills has signed up to be a sponsor for our Napa SQL Excursion.  SQLskills is the premier SQL Server consulting company, powered by Paul Randal (blog | twitter) and Kimberly Tripp (blog | twitter) and their newest addition to their team, Jonathan Kehayias (blog | twitter).  I can’t think of any SQL Server problem that the amazing team at SQLskills can’t handle given the amazing amount of insight into the product that Paul and Kimberly have as they used to work for Microsoft on the team that wrote SQL Server.

We are so thrilled that SQLskills has decided to make our Napa SQL Excursion one of the events they will sponsor for this year.  We’ll have all sorts of SQLskills goodies that we will be giving to our attendees.

We look forward to seeing you in Napa,

Denny

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Red Gate has signed on as a sponsor for our Napa SQL Excursion. #redgate

Posted on May 18, 2011 by mrdenny

I am thrilled to announce that Red Gate Software, makers of the inRed Gate Logocredible awesome SQL Toolbelt (as well as lots of other great software), have signed on as a sponsor for our Friday night dinner for our Napa SQL Excursion.  This dinner will be held at an amazing little restaurant and brewery called Downtown Joe’s located right in the middle of downtown Napa.  Dinner will be a fixed menu, and a beer tasting of Downtown Joe’s excellent in house beers.

If you haven’t heard of Red Gate software before, they make a suite of great software products which are designed to make the life of the database developer and database administrator much, much easier.  If you haven’t checked out Red Gates suite of products I highly recommend that you do.

Denny

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What topics would you like covered at our first excursion?

Posted on May 16, 2011 by mrdenny

As we want to make sure that our attendees get the most possible out of the classroom part of our excursions, we want to collect feedback from the community as to what would be the most useful topics to cover.  Below we’ve posted a survey on some topics that we think would be great topics to cover.  Rate the topics below from 1 (no thanks) to 10 (hell yes) on which topics you would want to see in Napa.

If there’s a topic that you would like to see, that you don’t see on this list, please submit a comment below with your suggestion.

The survey has closed.

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