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Red Gate is running a competition to find exceptional SQL Server DBAs. Enter and you could win a ticket to SQL Pass in Seattle later on this year, plus accommodation, money towards travel expenses, free software and a lot of kudos.
As Claire says, "... DBAs are unsung heroes within the IT community and their companies. This award will shine a spotlight on the achievements of SQL Server DBAs."
Find out more at www.exceptionaldba.com
If you want to come to Business of Software 2008 and get the special early bird price of only $1,395 then you need to book before June 7th.
Joel Spolsky, Seth Godin, Jason Fried and Eric Sink are all speaking, plus some other excellent speakers. You can find out more, and book at the conference web site.
Last year, 94% of attendees gave it four or five stars. Joel Spolsky called it "the best conference I went to last year". In fact, he liked it so much he's put his name on this year's: Business of Software 2008 is a Joel on Software Conference.
Here are some quotes from last year's attendees:
Amazing conference. It will be tough to beat. Chris Kemp, I Love Rewards Inc.
Excellent content! Good food for thought! Matt Ruma, President, Creative Logic
Great variety of topics. There were many moments where I felt validated or was shown our company's flaws. I'm not a developer but it was the right level of 'technical'! Anon
Day one alone was worth the price of admission - great work on getting great speakers. Austin Salonen, Lead Developer, SGS Mid-West Seed Services
Very diverse, great speakers. Great variety, great logistics. Thanks! Felix Trepanier , Technical Lead, OZ Communications
Excellent speakers. It's what I came for and it's what I got. Anon
Excellent overall. Great speakers, great content. Ton of opportunities to network. Scott Lawrence, Software Development Manager, APS Healthcare Inc
The combination of small, intimate size and a diverse list of speakers made this the most valuable and provoking conference I've been to in a long time. It's a significant achievement that from every speaker I've come away with either something quite profound to consider or something concrete to do. Rob Muir, Development Manager,FINCAD
I'm glad this type of conference is finally taking place. Thanks for your efforts. Jennifer Desha, Project Manager, Numira Biosciences
Best conference! Mark Belliveau, VP Marketing, Normsoft Inc
Some really excellent speakers. Liked the mix. Anon
Thanks! Great conference Joe Crevino, Development Supervisor, LAN International
I feel like I'm a lot more prepared to do my job after being here and will be more successful in the future as well. Thanks a lot! Anon
Great job on the conference! The site and accommodation were excellent. An amazing experience! Bryan Dykstra, Director of Business Development, Creative Logic
If you're coming to BoS 2008 in Boston this fall, or are generally interested in the Business of Software, then I've set up a Facebook group and a LinkedIn group.
This 15 second clip is from CSI NY. Laila sent me the link from John Papa's blog:
Lorenzo Bolognini has just released a bug tracker with a twist. You use it to raise and track bugs in your country. For now, you can only track bugs in Italy. Let's hope he's load tested the system. According to Lorenzo, here are the top 5 bugs in Italy:
5. Scientific research in Italy - Italian researchers go abroad. In Italy the system of scientific corporations, the difficulties in getting finance, the miserable salaries of researchers, push many people abroad.
4. The rubbish collection in Naples - Naples is covered with garbage. Solutions are dimly perceptible, but late in arriving. The problem began in June 2006, almost 2 years ago.
3. Temporary work contracts - the temporary nature of work, for young people and others, is in front of everybody's eyes. And, despite the seriousness of the problem, nobody seems to grasp it (at least not in election time).
2. There is no web site dedicates to promoting tourism - Italy, after the closure of the costly Italia.it, doesn't have a web site to promote tourism at the level of other European countries.
1. We have built Italy, now we must build the Italian people. Everybody knows this phrase by Massimo D'Azeglio at the birth of Italy. The question remains open, but my personal judgement ...
Read more at the buggato web site.
What would your country's top 5 bugs be? Post here ...
A couple of weeks ago I kicked off a Seth Godin photo competition. There were a lot of excellent entries. Forced to choose a winner, I'm going with s3a's entry of I said bring me a Sith, with an I!
Here it is (click on the image to enlarge it):
The other entries were awesome too. Weird, too. If you want see Seth being chased by a tiger (Run, Seth, Run!), dancing with Albert Einstein, posing as Lenin or being beaten up by a teddy bear then go to the original blog post.
I was going to award a single prize, but to say thank you for all the entries I'm going to send everybody who entered a Seth Godin book of their choice. Just e-mail me your postal address and which book you'd like and I'll send it out to you. I'll think of a special prize for s3a too.
If you want to come to Business of Software 2008 (and hear Seth Godin, Joel Spolsky, Eric Sink and many others) then you can now pay by American Express as well as Mastercard, Visa, etc.
You can book at the conference web site.
Book before June 7th and get the special price of $1,395 (you save $400).
A few months ago we bit the bullet and decided to re-write ANTS Profiler, Red Gate's .net code profiling application. ANTS Profiler 3 was good, but AP4 is going to be remarkable. It's faster (between 5 and 30 times, depending on what you're doing); easier to use (we interviewed and videoed tens of users, and gathered data from hundreds, if not thousands, while designing AP4); and has a great timeline feature (you can highlight areas of high cpu and just see the code that was executed in those time slots).
We've now got a public build available. It's still a very early version but there's enough there for it to be useful. We're going to be releasing weekly builds from now on, so keep an eye out.
If you're writing .net code and want to find bottlenecks in your application, then either read Bart's post for some more information, or go straight to the messageboards to download the early build of ANTS Profiler 4.
Last week I kicked off a Seth Godin action figure photo competition. I'll keep it open for a few more days and announce the winner early next week. It's not too late to enter.
The entries are so good I think I may well have to hand out several prizes. The weirdest photo category will be particularly hard fought.
So far Jim Kring, Tom Randle, Mr Flibble, embe and s3a have all submitted photos.
If you want to see Seth being attacked by a teddy bear, upside down in a glass of cider, posing as Lenin, reading his little book of marketing secrets or tied up as Darth Vader's prisoner then check out the photos on the original competion post.
I heard this interview with Michael Moritz, the Sequoia Capital venture capitalist, on Radio 4 the other day. It's well worth 30 minutes of your time. Moritz talks about his journey from childhood in Wales, history degree at Oxford, journalist for Time magazine and on to Sequoia where he has invested in, among other companies, Google, Apple, Yahoo!, PayPal and Cisco.
Here's an excerpt (apologies for the ropey and inaccurate transcript):
Peter Day: Many investors throw their money at lots of investment targets, hope that two or three will be survivors and that one will be a superstar success.
Michael Moritz: That isn't how things are done at Sequoia. It's not the way you think of it. Every single time you write a cheque you expect, or pray, depending on your inclination, for that investment to succeed.
You can hear the interview as .ram streaming audio, or a downloadable mp3 (note the interview doesn't start until about a minute in). The Radio 4 web page is here.
Joint CEO of Red Gate Software and organiser of the Business of Software conference. Read More.
Boston
October 4th-6th
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