Wow. You never thought to see those two words together, eh? SQL and Cruise. Well, times changes and who said technical training need to be in a boring place. I just registered myself to attend
SQL Cruise!
That’s right. 4-days Western Caribbean Cruise on board Carnival Imagination vessel and have in-depth training within the small group from the awesome SQL guru like Brent Ozar and Tim Ford. Whoever think of the idea is pretty genius. Come on. Boat drink? Small group of SQL Enthusiast? Warm weather and beachy sand? Yes I know. I sound a way too nerdy, but I’m not the only one think it’s awesome. I think a bunch of us DBA think it’s awesome and wish they can be partake on this event and for those who thinks that your work won’t buy in to this, my advise – ASK away. You never know. I know I did and even though I can’t expense the cruise (yes – I tried), I got away with no PTO during this event and registration fee.
So what is it that I’m hoping to gain from this event, you might ask…
Well, other than the obvious – which is more ammo to do my job as a DBA at this very cool food recipe site company, I want to build a networking. I have my own circle of my fellow-dba that I bounce idea back and forth but I want to expand it. There are a bunch of briliants mind out there and they all extend their hand to help out pion like me. Being on the event like this, as well as the previous event that I attended and my incoming event on Fall allow me to enrich my knowledge as well as get to know this awesome SQL guru and meet them in person.
Yes, I know not every company generous enough like mine and allow us the workers to attend cool conferences with paid expenses, but there’s other avenues to be involved in the community. SQLSaturday event for example. 24 Hours PASS and I know company like Quest did a lot of free webcast so there’s absolutely NO reason for anybody not to have the opportunity.
Also – never shy to ask. You never know. If you have a problem on crafting an email on how to convince your manager and the benefit to attend certain event, always ask question around. Tweet your question to #sqlhelp. Go to Brent’s blog and dig out some post about that (I know he have it somewhere there) and I know most event have the section of ‘How to justify the ROI’ for the prospective attendee to use. In one short line – be proactive. Dont’ just sit and wait to be offered to go to a cool conferences and event. Go after them
