Learn Like Your Life Depends On It Pat Phelan & Peter Shore SQL Saturday Indianapolis

About Peter Database Administrator Intentionally Accidental DBA Over 25 years IT experience Server Engineer Desktop Engineer Network Infrastructure Desk side support President CBusPASS Co-Organizer SQL Saturday Columbus How to find me Twitter: @pshore73 E-mail: pshore73@outlook.com

About Pat Database Administrator Data Geek Started in the 1970s Sales Application Programming Databases Team Manager PASS Local Group Leader I-380PASS QCPASS Co-Organizer SQL Saturday Iowa How to find me Twitter: @YetAnotherSQL E-mail: Pat@YetAnotherSQL.com

Continuous Learning “As IT professionals, our second most critical skill is our ability to learn. (The first is our ability to communicate effectively.)” – David Maxwell “If you do not like to learn new things, IT might not be right career for you.” – Peter Shore

Continuous Learning We learn each day Often learn without realizing it Most learning is not formalized Formalized learning is any learning that follows a plan Research for a project Web based course Certification training Scholarly classes (aka you are in school) Self designed

Continuous Learning What should I be learning? How do I know what to learn? How do I balance learning for my job vs. the job I want?

Goals “Goals convert vision into ENERGY.” – Dave Ramsey “Goals are visions and dreams with work clothes on.” – Dave Ramsey "It's a dream until you write it down, and then it’s a goal." – Anonymous Goal Guidance Involve significant other Give yourself enough time to achieve (1/3/5 year*) Goals can change

Goal Sample 1 Year 3 Year 5 Year Personal Paraprofessional lose 50 lbs deliver more than 1 pre-con MCSA Cert 24 blog posts per year MCSE Cert maintian weight loss speak internationally   Read 2 new to me books 1 blog post per month Start MPP Program Read 4 new to me books Speak 2 different non-PASS events Finish at least 1 MPP program MVP Award 24+ blog posts

What’s the Plan? Plan Formal Semi-formal Throw it to the wind Specific concepts Specific targets within those concepts Timeline or order Semi-formal Concepts you want to learn General targets Minimal timelines Throw it to the wind

Everyone learns differently, find yours! Reading BOL (Microsoft Books Online) Manning Publications O’Reily Media Watching Pluralsight Online / CBT LinkedIn Learning Formerly Lynda Now owned by Microsoft PASS Guided Learning Mix of free and purchased Microsoft Learn Interactive PASS Groups (local and online) SQL Saturdays

Things to get you more time to learn PowerShell DBA Tools Pester ImportExcel Git / Github Source code control Helps manage your scripts/code Helps manage what you do Helps manage what your team does Greatly simplifies managing your manager’s requests about your code!

Where to learn? Environment Local hardware Acquire from Cloud Desktop, Laptop, Server Physical, Virtual, or Container Specs do not need to be like prod Acquire from Craigslist eBay Auctions Cloud IaaS PaaS

Where to learn? Software BE MINDFULL OF LEGAL LICENSING OS SQL Server Linux is free Windows 10 Pro/Enterprise, reasonable chance you have this Windows Server 180 Day Trail MSDN SQL Server PowerBI BE MINDFULL OF LEGAL LICENSING

What to learn with? Data Find a dataset that meets your needs and interests https://www.data.gov/ CDC Census https://registry.opendata.aws/ https://www.kaggle.com/ Various APIs Stock data Sports Data

Executing The Plan Learning Resources Blogs Vendor documentation Twitter #SQLHelp Hashtag #SQLFamily Hashtag Microsoft Learn https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/learn/ Books Pluralsight https://www.pluralsight.com/

Executing The Plan Other Resources User Groups Virtual User Groups SQL Saturday Conferences PASS Summit Dev Intersection/SQL Intersection DogFood Con Azure DataFest Enterprise Data World CodeMash

Management of your learning and your career is up to YOU! Questions?

How to find us Peter Shore (the smart one) Pat Phelan (the olde one) Twitter: @pshore73 E-mail: pshore73@outlook.com Pat Phelan (the olde one) Twitter: @YetAnotherSQL E-mail: Pat@YetAnotherSQL.com