Monday, June 30, 2008
Thursday, June 26, 2008
Preparing for PodCamp Ohio with the Jeff Pulver Method
I was reminded by Chris Penn of Jeff Pulver's method for preparing for an upcoming conference.
JOIN the Community. I've been involved in promoting the event and am speaking in one of the sessions. I'll be there representing New Media Cincinnati, of course.
Set your GOALS. I am looking to connect with other bloggers, podcasters, and folks in social media and re-connect with folks in Cincinnati. I am especially looking to connect with people who have been successful in merging programming skils and new media technologies in their jobs, since that is where I'm heading.
Say HELLO. Hi there. There are several ways you can get in touch with me. Here are a few:
CHANGE your eMail Habits. I definitely won't be checking email much - if at all - during the event, but I'll try to stay in touch where I can. The best way to track me down is via telephone or a direct msg on Twitter. Call me. I'll catch up with emails when I get back home.
STUDY the Map of the conference. Google Maps says it will take us about 2 hours to get to PodCamp Ohio from our home. We'll probably allow 2.5. Gonna print out what I can to take with us.
Be AWARE of the Event Schedule. Be in CONTROL of your Schedule. ALLOW for serendipity. The session I'll be conducting is in the first time slot. Aside from that, I like that the event is occurring in one spot, which means that it will be easy to move around from session to session if I want. It also means that there will be opportunities for serendipity to happen.
Don't be SHY. Contrary to what I might convey online, in a crowd of people it still can be easy for me to be shy. I'll make an effort to meet and talk with as many folks as I can, understanding that a single conversation will still make a difference. I'm not going to be one of those guys who constantly scans the crowd for the next person to talk to.
BRING Business Cards. Taken care of. If you want a business card, come and meet me.
Understand some meetings will not HAPPEN. This is something I've sometimes struggled with whenever I attend meetings like this. I've sometimes hesitated even reaching out to others because there is so little time. Nevertheless, I hope to keep realistic expectations.
ENJOY yourself. Okay then. Our family is considering this a mini-vacation. Sort of.
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Check out my other blogs:
Daniel Johnson, Jr.
Get That Job!
Journey Inside My Mind Blog
Journey Inside My Mind Podcast
QuotesBlog
Twitter.com/danieljohnsonjr
Connect on LinkedIn
Interesting Things I've Read
Related tags: daniel+johnson+jr podcampohio podcamp+ohio conference unconference
Thursday, June 19, 2008
Is social networking bringing us closer together?
Jacob posted a great question on LinkedIn:
Social Networks, Bringing Us Together or Keeping Us Apart?Here's what I offered:
Good question, Jacob!What do you think? Are social networking tools bringing us together or keeping us apart?
I still believe that the telephone is one of the best social networking tools around, and, at least for me, there is a point when you want to take your online connections into the real world. Last year, I began creating opportunities to network away from the computer.
During the week, I meet with folks I've met through social media periodically for lunch. Last October I founded New Media Cincinnati, a meetup group for folks interested and passionate about new and social media to get together. We hold conversations in real life and online.
Social networks are the people; not the tools themselves. The tools exist just to facilitate the real-life connections.
[IMG] New Media Cincinnati - April Meetup by danieljohnsonjr.
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Check out my other blogs:
Daniel Johnson, Jr.
Get That Job!
Journey Inside My Mind Blog
Journey Inside My Mind Podcast
QuotesBlog
Twitter.com/danieljohnsonjr
Connect on LinkedIn
Interesting Things I've Read
Related tags: daniel+johnson+jr jacob+morgan social+networking linkedin
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
Troubleshooting with SQL Profiler
One of the Payroll Specialists called us today, wondering if her session in Darwin was hung up and needed to be killed. Darwin, as I may have mentioned before, is a Microsoft Great Plains Dynamics product customized for the Professional Employer Organization (PEO) industry. We have SQL Server as the back-end.
The IT Manager asked me to put a trace on her session in SQL Profiler so that we could ascertain whether her session was indeed hung or not. As I saw the actions scrolling on the screen, I called the Payroll Specialist and told her whatever she was doing was still processing.
I began examining the items in the trace to see what was going on. For those that are unfamiliar, GP Dynamics hasn't named their tables, views, and stored procedures in a very intuitive way. Nevertheless, I have been able to deduce from their stored procedure naming convention the base tables involved.
In addition, this exercise has helped me learn and understand SQL programming better. I usually open the procedure as a script in a Create New SQL window. Inside these procedures that were being executed in the trace, I saw nothing more than a serious of SELECT statements. It looks as though Darwin (or really the code behind it) is getting information from the table in groups of 25 at a time.
This particular recordset has close to 5000 rows. Getting 25 rows at a time means that it will execute this stored procedure 200 times. If the program takes 5 seconds to execute each batch, then it will take about 17 minutes to go through the entire recordset. I guess it's no wonder that the process seems hung to the user.
I'm guessing that something is going on behind the scenes as Darwin is preparing and and posting a payroll. Unfortunately, I don't have access to the code behind it. This may be something we'll want to bring up with Thinkware, the vendor who provides this software to us.
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Check out my other blogs:
Daniel Johnson, Jr.
Get That Job!
Journey Inside My Mind Blog
Journey Inside My Mind Podcast
QuotesBlog
Twitter.com/danieljohnsonjr
Connect on LinkedIn
Interesting Things I've Read
Related tags: daniel+johnson+jr microsoft+great+plains sql+server sql+profiler peo
