I’m lazy and a bit selfish.

What a way to start off a post, eh!?

I was getting some content out in 2019 and 2020, as well as starting to hit a stride with presentations at SQL Saturdays. Then a new bug came and rocked everyone, COVID-19. SQL Saturdays disappeared, as well as gatherings in general, for the next 12 – 15 months. By not having that motivator of speaking to people about SQL Server and supporting technologies, my blogging has been on hiatus. When blogging on a topic, I try my best to get the details right, so I can hopefully help those who come across the post. As a result, I tend to spend 6 – 8+ hours crafting a single post (some of that may be a little anxiety and over-analyzing). If I perceive there may be a likelihood of views dropping, because I’m not introducing myself to people, my lazy side comes out very quickly and says, “Why bother? Let’s go watch some TV or take a nap.”

That doesn’t mean life has stood still, and I haven’t learned anything. Quite to opposite, in fact. I have been extremely fortunate to work for a growing company in an key industry in this country. While the pandemic did affect us, it was the catalyst to grow in new directions. This required the data team (of which I’m one of three co-leads) to develop new ways to absorb the growth in our data, not just in volume, but with the increase in the breadth of information we’re managing.

Over the next several months, I’ll be posting about these new adventures, generalizing the concepts for the larger audience. You should see quite a bit coming about PowerShell and pre-ETL processing. Sprinkled in will be posts about Azure Automation and Azure Data Factory. By the time I get posts caught up to July 2022, I’m sure I will have learned, or been introduced to, new topics to explore with future posts.

Yesterday (July 7th, 2022), the PASS Data Community Summit announced general sessions and speakers for the 2022 event. My session, “Power-up the Data Warehouse with Pre-ETL Processing,” was chosen. I am incredibly honored to have the opportunity to speak at the Summit, in person. I did speak at the 2020 PASS Virtual Summit, pre-recording the session, so this will be my 2nd appearance at the “main event”.

I’ll try to keep train longer, providing new content.

Stay tuned…