 Tuesday, June 14, 2005
Wow, Pakistan Rocks!
I just got home from Karachi and have discovered several warm messages in my inbox from people who went to the PDC and saw me speak. To all of you, THANK YOU for the kind words. My time in Pakistan was only 3 days, but it was very special. I have my plaque on my desk in my office.
And to all of you who left comments in my blog about Mr. Clemens, thanks, I would have paid a few hundred rupees to see the look on his face. :)
If there is another PDC next year I will be back, my experience was great.
I encourage people to visit to Pakistan, it is a wonderful country with very warm people.
Monday, June 13, 2005
PDC Day 1, First Grok Talks Published
The 3rd Annual Pakistan Developers Conference is under way here in Karachi! I had a free day in Karachi to enjoy the city and weather. Went and purchased a carpet and visited the unique Chawkandi Tombs outside of Karachi. The tombs are from the 15th to 18th century and very elaborate. The photos do not do they justice, they span for over 3 km.
The first Grok Talks are published, check them out here!
Friday, June 10, 2005
Pakistan Developers Conference 2005
I will be speaking at the 3rd Annual Pakistan developers Conference in Karachi, Pakistan next week. This is a great event with usually 5,000+ developers. I will be speaking on security, and new SQL Server 2005 features.
My friends question my sanity when I tell them that I am headed to Pakistan, a potentially dangerous place with Al-Qaeda cells running around. They say “Why bother, why not speak somewhere safe, like the USA or Europe?”
Microsoft makes a statement by holding a conference in a developing country, a country that many westerns are willing to write it off. I am making the same statement; I believe the only way for Pakistan to beat back Al-Qaeda and make peace with India is to get on board with globalization and to create economic opportunity for its citizens. The way to do this is with jobs. The road to jobs starts with training and conferences. Give someone a chance to get a job, give them hope. If India can be an outsourcing center for the West, why can’t Pakistan? I am traveling to Pakistan to help them get there. Al-Qaeda can’t recruit an employed .NET developer
Peace through .NET. Go figure.
Thursday, June 09, 2005
Tuesday, June 07, 2005
Monday, June 06, 2005
Grok Talk Tuesday
Tuesday 11:25 AM: Using Ranking and Windowing Functions in SQL Server 2005
SQL Server 2005 adds the functionality of a Ranking expression that can be added to your resultset that is based on a ranking algorithm being applied to a column that you specify. This will come in handy in .NET applications for paging and sorting in a grid as well as many other scenarios. We will explore the ROW_NUMBER() function which assigns a running count to each row and compare it to RANK() and DENSE_RANK(). Use these functions to solve complex SQL Problems. Then we will look at custom percentile ranking using NTILE() and look at business and adacemic applications of NTILE. Lastly we will apply windowing functions to all of the 4 ranking functions with PARTITION BY to perform hard code aggregate functions
Go Bid!
If you come to 1 session this year at Tech*Ed...
Come to mine today:
DBA304 Advanced Querying Techniques, Tips & Tricks Using Transact-SQL
Speaker(s): Richard Campbell, Stephen Forte
Session Type(s): Breakout
Track(s): Database Administration
Day/Time: Monday, June 6 3:15 PM - 4:30 PM Room: S 310 A
Take your querying to the next level! This session gets away from the fundamentals of SQL queries and into the hard stuff. See two experts in SQL Server compare and contrast querying techniques between SQL Server 2000 and SQL Server 2005. This session has a series of real world examples to show how creative SQL queries can generate solutions in record time. Some techniques you'll learn include how to do crosstab queries that take seconds to execute instead of hours, exploiting sub-queries and taking advantage of self-joining. Along the way, get some insight into how SQL servers work, as well as how SQL Server 2005 is going to make advanced querying even easier.
Saturday, June 04, 2005
Friday, June 03, 2005
The Tech*Ed .NET Celebrity Charity Auction
With an auction starting on Monday, 22 of the top Tech*Ed speakers, including Microsoft employees (don’t worry we cleared it with Legal <g>), will together to help raise money for an organization that is doing amazing and heroic disaster relief and recovery in Aceh Province, Sumatra, the hardest hit area of the Dec 26th Tsunamis. Just like last time we will auction the time off on eBay, the link will be here in about 24 hours.
Although news of the tsunami has largely disappeared from the international press, five months later, the situation on the ground in Aceh remains acute. Many isolated communities have not yet been helped. Aceh Recovery at IDEP (www.acehaid.org) is continuing their efforts to get assistance to the people that are most in need through a dynamic network of local NGOs and partners on the ground in Aceh.
Here is the current list of speakers donating their time:
Don Box
Jesper Johansson
Richard Campbell
Scott Hanselman
Kimberly Tripp
Michele Leroux Bustamante
Kate Gregory
Juval Lowy
Stephen Forte
Clemens Vasters
Andrew Brust
Carl Franklin
Ingo Rammer
Christian Weyer
Joel Semeniuk
Rockford Lhotka
Patrick Hynds
Tim Landgrave
Tim Huckaby
Jackie Goldstein
John Goodyear
Richard Hundhausen
WHAT IS IDEP?
IDEP is a small, Indonesian NGO, based in Ubud, Bali. Completed projects over the years have included community based development, sustainable living initiatives, permaculture training, waste management, organic gardens, recycling, etc. The focus is on helping people to help themselves. IDEP's founding director, Petra Schneider is a US-born, Indonesian citizen. The demonstrated and reproducible success of IDEP's small projects in local communities has earned the team an excellent reputation.
IDEP AND DISASTER RESPONSE/RELIEF/RECOVERY
At the time of the Bali bomb, about two years ago, IDEP was an important element of the network of local NGOs and other supporters that quickly responded to the tragedy, in various ways, not only immediately after the bomb, but during the recovery process for the various communities involved. Following shortly thereafter, IDEP received funding from USAid to create a comprehensive set of disaster management materials for Indonesian communities, aimed at children, families, and local leaders (official and unofficial). The materials are in the Indonesian language and suitable for use in rural and urban settings. These materials, including a booklet for children about Tsunami preparedness, were finished just weeks ago, but had not yet been disseminated to communities. Then the tsunami struck.
WHAT IS ACEH RECOVERY AT IDEP
Only hours after the news of the tsunami reached Bali, the same network of NGOs and individuals in Bali who had been involved in the relief efforts for the Bali bomb, reanimated and went into action. We started something called the "Aceh Aid Bucket Brigade" (see website), creating and deploying one-family-one-bucket multi-material aid packages from the hands of donors in Bali to the field in Sumatra. We began sending highly skilled volunteers, well-matched to the task within two days of the tsunami (Sam Schultz, Lee Downey, Oded Carmi and others). Our relief, and later, recovery programs in response to the Tsunami are now focused on two fronts. One is direct aid from Medan by road to areas around Banda Aceh. The other is this remarkable joint effort (nothing short of heroic), to the islands off the west coast of Sumatra, which as of yet, have not been receiving aid from any other channels that we know of. Read more at www.acehaid.org.
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