[Off topic/Personal] 2018 and 2019 goals

Hi. Thanks for reading my blog! Seriously, I appreciate every single visit. This post is about my personal experiences this year and next year, for technical content please feel free to skip this post.

Thoughts on 2018

It seems like this year has been extra long. That’s not a bad thing, I enjoyed this year.

At the start of the year, I spoke at SQL Saturday #698, Nashville. This was a great experience, Tammy and Kerry and the rest of the Nashville team run a great event. During this event, it snowed in Nashville which is such a weird experience! But the show still went on, and I met a ton of people.

I continued the year with a ton of speaking. I spoke at SQL Saturday Cleveland, SQL Sat Madison, SQL Sat Chicago, SQL Sat Iowa City, and SQL Sat Minnesota.

I also spoke at the suburban and city user groups in Chicago.

Remote presentations in 2018

I did my first remote presentation for EDMPass, with help from Chris Woods. Then I got a chance to speak at GroupBy.org. Wow. That was the hardest event of all, since I knew it would be immortalized on YouTube for eternity. If you’d like to hear more about the GroupBy conference, please check out my post on the experience.

In summary, 2018 was a great year for speaking. I had a great time and met so many amazing people. Thank you for everyone who have been so welcoming to me.

Speaking in 2019

2019 is going to be a different year. I’ve started to spend more time blogging and I enjoy it a lot!

I’m planning to continue speaking. More to come on this, I plan to put out a offer to speak for groups that need a presenter, and I’ve submitted for SQL Sat Chicago.

If you know you need a presenter in 2019, please reach out on twitter through DMs.

What do I want in 2019

I have three main goals in 2019.

First, I want the senior DBA title. I know it’s just a title, but it means a lot to me. When I met my first mentor, that was his title. In a way, it’s my way of saying I want to reach the level of my old mentor.

Second and third goals will have to be redacted since this blog is public. I want to achieve a monetary goal, and I have a personal goal for life progress. I admire the way that Brent Ozar is open about his goals on ozar.me, so I promise once I’ve achieved those second and third goals that I will blog about them.