I'm Speaking At PASS Data Community Summit!

A few years ago, I had the privilege of speaking virtually at PASS Summit. I have had the great fortune to be select to be an in-person speaker this year. I'll be presenting my I'm Just Here For The T-Shirt talk about Impostor Syndrome. 

I love this topic. It has most definitely had a major impact on pretty much my entire career as a tech person. I say that I'm professionally trained to be an airline pilot, and that was the direction I originally thought I was going in. But at this point, I've spent SIGNIFICANTLY more geek time than I did pilot time. You'd think I'd feel a bit better about myself. 

But, alas....

My Impostor Syndrome talk has always been one that has garnered some attention. I'm guessing it'll be the same at PASS. It'll just be a much bigger audience this time. 

Goody.

But if you're in the Seattle area in the middle of November, come on out.  https://passdatacommunitysummit.com

Summit Schedule

LinkedIn Intro Post

I'm Speaking At Scenic City Summit!

I'll be speaking Friday, June 20, 2025 at Scenic City Summit in Chattanooga, TN. I'll be repeating my I'm Just Here For The T-Shirt presentation about Impostor Syndrome. 

If you're in the area, come on out. 

My Presentation At ColdFusion Summit 2024

I recently completed my presentation on Impostor Syndrome, I'm Just Here For The T-Shirt, at Adobe ColdFusion Summit 2024. Several people asked me for the link, so here it is: https://slides.com/codefumonkey/hfts-cfs24

I had a great turnout and received some very good questions and complements after my session. I gave away a copy of Valerie Young's book, but I apologize, because I forgot to write down the recipient's name, so please shoot me an email if you see this. 

I'll also do my best to post my write-up of the conference after I get home. 

 Thank you to Adobe for hosting a great conference. 

 And a Great Big Thank You to those of you who came out to my session!

I'm Speaking At Into The Box Again!

 Last year was my first opportunity to speak at a conference: Ortus Solutions' Into The Box 2020. I was selected to talk about SQL stuff, but, unfortunately, COVID intervened, and the conference was changed to a virtual platform. I still got to speak though, and it was a blast!

I've been fortunate to be accepted again to speak at Into The Box 2021, (September 23 & 24 in Houston, TX), and this time I'll be there in person! Don't Go Breakin' My Heart is a talk about Insider Threat Awareness. 

COVID is unfortunately still a thing this year, and Ortus has decided to make the conference a hybrid of in-person and virtual. You can get tickets to either be there in person or watch it from home.

I'm looking forward to seeing some of these people again, and since this is going to be my first time speaking live in front of more than a handful of people, it should be fun. Or terrifying. Or something.

Go grab your tickets!

I'll Be Presenting at Into The Box 2021!

 Once again, I've been selected to present at Ortus Solutions' Into The Box on September 23 & 24, 2021. I'll be presenting "Don't Go Breakin' My Heart", a talk about Insider Threat Awareness. 

Last year, I got to speak for the first time at Into The Box 2020. That was supposed to be a live conference, but a little thing called COVID kinda took us all for a loop. Thankfully, Ortus hung in there and put together a pretty awesome virtual conference, and I still got to speak. 

They've been kind enough to pick me again this year. 

COVID still isn't quite done with us yet, but hopefully it will leave us alone enough to do this one live. 

I hope to see you down in the Houston area in September. 🤞

Presentation Time - The Golden Hammer @ The Online ColdFusion Meetup

On Thursday, February 25, 2021 at 11a-12p CST, come check out my presentation, "The Golden Hammer: Confessions of a Recovering Database Abuser" with Charlie Arehart and  The Online ColdFusion Meetup.

I've given this talk once before, about 200 years ago, during the early days of COVID, way back in May 2020, at the Into The Box online conference. That was the first time I spoke, and this will be the second. Hopefully I'll be able to teach you something while also being at least a little entertaining. 

I'll be talking about some of the database mistakes I made when I was a budding developer. I've learned quite a bit about databases since the early 2000s, and as my SQL knowledge expanded I began to realize that I had developed some bad habits and some of my biggest problems were self-inflicted. Today, databases have grown much larger, but they've also become significantly smarter. In a smaller system, many problems are covered up. In a database with only a few thousand records, you won't notice the difference between a query that takes 2 ms to run vs one that takes 200ms. But when the database has millions of records, that same query may take 20 seconds. That's can become extremely troublesome, and it's not really something a user has the patience for. 

I used to blame a lot on the server hardware, or insufficient memory, or the slow network or whatever else wasn't my query code. Until I had a DBA show me that a report that took several hours to complete could run in a few minutes, with nothing more than changes to the database and queries.

Hopefully some of the things I go over will help some of you write better SQL that will make your applications fly. 

Join the Meetup here. 

And here's the link to the video stream. Or at least the link to what will become the video stream after my presentation's over.

Also, don't forget to sign up for The Online ColdFusion Meetup Group. Charlie has been putting these together for quite some time, and it's always been a fantastic place to find information.

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WRAP UP (FEB 25, 2021):

Thank you to all who attended. If there were any questions I didn't answer, please feel free to reach out to me, and I'll do my best to address them. 

YouTube Recording: LINK (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tq2t6ulM4hY&list=PLG2EHzEbhy0-QirMKgSxhjkUyTSSTvHjL)
Presentation Slides: LINK (https://www.dropbox.com/s/50bvj39fgs6q1e8/preso_ShawnOden_GoldenHammer_OCFMG20210225.pdf?dl=0)