I'm looking forward to having the opportunity to work in the Community Zone at the #FabConEurope in Barcelona, Spain in just a few days. I'll be presenting on "Moving the Boulder - how to get momentum going for your community group" on Tuesday at 1430 HRS CEST in the Community Theater along with being on post in some of the booths/stations in the Community Zone.

It took a minute as my Southern friends like to say, but both the main and precon schedules have been finalized for the PNW Day of Data 2026. I'm excited to advertise that we have three precons for our event on Nov 6th (Friday) at the same location, our friends at WSUV (Washington State University - Vancouver). From Jerry Nixon…

Whether we call it the SQL Family or the Data Family, I can't think of a better group of people. I have been having fun working with the Day of Data Utah folks and they were kind enough to ask me my opinion. First of all, I'm happy to help, Second of all, it's exciting to see groups being created, and Third of all, it's good for the community.

I'm looking forward to visiting SLC in September, both to help out at the Day of Data, but also to speak on my "Pets versus Cows" topic. It's been very educational for me to work with a top notch automation engineer and learn a lot of things in Terraform and general dev ops that I was missing. I'm not a Terraform person, but at least I'm Terraform-friendly.

*speaker photo from SQL Saturday 2025* The indefatigable Steve Jones made a decision to go from the SQL Saturday brand to Day of Data. You may think it was presumptive for the Oregon group that all lives in Vancouver to claim the name for themselves, but there was a method to my madness. As we increase interest for Day of Datas in our region, the name is setup for a dash....

When I was fortunate enough to be chosen to speak at #DayofDataBR, and I saw that tickets to New Orleans were quite a bit cheaper, I took the opportunity to fly there first. Louis Armstrong has always been an idol of mine, as I was growing up as a wannabe jazz piano player. I would listen to him along with some of the other influences from that era to understand the style.

YouTube video by Finding (Data) Friends