I’m preparing a post with my response to the Sheryl Sandburg’s new book Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead. But, I just remembered that I already started this conversation last year on SkillCrush.com.
http://skillcrush.com/2012/07/10/can-women-in-tech-have-it-all/
When I was growing up in the ‘70s, I desperately wanted my own rotary-style desk phone (preferably in pink) so I could call my best friend next door. Money was tight, and I was too lazy to walk over every time I wanted to chat. So I decided to raid my father’s workshop and make a pulley system out of wood and twine between our bedroom windows to pass notes attached to clothes pins. Obviously, this solution didn’t scale!
Fast forward to today, and the variety of technologies used to harness data – and the sheer volume of data – has exploded. Just a few years back, there was minimal demand for advanced business analytics to derive more business value from data, but with current trends, such analytics are imperative.
So as a data professional, what are you doing to adapt to the fast-changing world of data, which shows no sign of slowing down? As part of my career plan, I will be attending the PASS Business Analytics Conference in Chicago next week. Here are my top 10 reasons why.
SQLDiva’s Top 10 Reasons for Attending the PASS BA Conference
9/28: RedGate SQL in the City
10/23-10/25: http://strataconf.com/stratany2012?intcmp=il-strata-stny12-st12sc-widget
10/22-10/25: TDWI New York Seminar
BIG Data / Business Intelligence
MS Business Intelligence UG of NYC New Jersey Hadoop Meetup New Jersey Teradata User Group New York Business Intelligence Meetup NYC Cassandra User Group NYC Data Business Meetup NYC Hadoop Meetup NYC HBase Meetup NYC MongoDB Meetup NYC MySQL Meetup NYC Predictive Analytics MeetupCloud
NJ Windows Azure User Group NYC Windows Azure User Group New York Cloud 2.0 MeetupData Management/MetaData
NYC DAMA NYC TDWIMS SQL Server
Central NJ SQL Server User Group Fairfield/Westchester SQL Server Group Jersey Shore SQL Meetup New London, CT SQL User Group NJ SQL Server Users Group NY SQL Server User Group Philly SQL Server User GroupSharePoint
Central NJ SharePoint User Group NJ SPUDD Meetup (SharePoint Users, Designers & Developers) Princeton Area SharePoint User Group NYC SharePoint User GroupHave you ever gotten really good at something and grazed at the mountain top? While it’s OK to recognize your own accomplishments, it’s not good to linger too long at the top of one particular mountain. Some of the reasons why people graze (sounds gentler than become complacent) are related to work-family balance, medical issues, general stress or perhaps it just feels right at the time.
As a young working mother, my personal focus was on providing for my family financially, developing a career and raising our daughters so that they would be prepared for the world. Once the first two were satisfied and remained in a state of maintenance, I was freed up to assure my daughters were well supported in their teen years. At that time, I also got involved in technical communities at a local and nationally while developing organizational and leadership skills. So, while I was moving forward professionally I was doing so cautiously with the emergency brake on.
I tried numerous tactics to lift the emergency brake which includes several areas of self-study to propel myself career wise. But, it seems that even my best plans were foiled by self-sabotage and my great ability to lean towards other distractions (life happens). I took lots of time and thought deeply about my passions and the parts of my job that I enjoy. It all came down to this: I LOVE Data, Connecting Data and business’ and connecting People via Technical Communities.
I was excited that I had come to the conclusion of some plausible career paths. But, It appeared that my established strategies of writing goals, envisioning, attacking them with brute force and/or tying them to other people or commitments no longer worked. I obviously needed a new set of tools to reach my full potential. I reached out to friends and mentors for feedback and later decided that I needed a dynamic coach.
In my journey of finding a new set of tools to remove the brakes from my “OK Plateau”, I came across the following articles/videos/quotes that resonated with me. I’m sharing these resources in the hopes that I help someone else or I receive some feedback that will propel me.
Break Through Your “OK Plateau” By Studying Yourself Failing ~ Joshua Foer
How to Re-Program Your Subconscious Mind to Get What You Want ~ Marie Forleo
Sheryl Sandberg: Why we have too few women leaders (TedWomen Dec 2010)
To Succeed, Forget Self-Esteem
#IgniteNYC: When Failing Is Cool http://nyconvergence.com/2012/09/ignitenyc-when-failing-is-cool-ignitenyc.html#prclt-R2ymbxU4
When you become brave enough to be silent, the answers you seek will finally reveal themselves ~cherylrichardson.com
If you have this gut sucking gurgling urge to do something new that will shake your professional world at its core, you better be prepared. Building a business, kicking off an entrepreneurial venture and changing career directions is not for the faint of heart!
Yes, of course there are some that appear to have some revolutionary idea and just appear to ‘rock it’ with minimal effort.
But, if you speak with these people and pull back the virtual ‘Wizard of Oz’ curtain, you’ll find that they are just like you, only they have employed a few more basic tools.
One of the things that people often omit from their bag of tools is a carefully selected personal board of directors (PBOD). A board of directors is simply a diverse group of individuals that can be called upon to support your emotional and business needs. Have you ever had a great product idea, started to act on it, got months into it and found yourself stressed and doubting your initial vision? Well, this most likely isn’t a moment to pick up the phone and call your mother!!
I recently approached one of my exercise instructors that I have known for years. She had recently announced she was leaving her current job at a local exercise franchise to start her own local franchise. I congratulated her and told her how proud and excited I was of her for having the passion and confidence to start a business of her own. I then asked her if she had familiarized herself with the local women owned business associations to get support. She hadn’t and the conversation that followed wasn’t uplifting. What was evident was that she had a deep passion and commitment level for the franchise that she had already invested 5+ years into. What she wasn’t prepared for was the hostile response to this proposal at her current job and from owners of franchises in the surrounding areas. She hadn’t defined a strong personal board of directors and as a result she felt alone, abandoned and even had thoughts of leaving the field all together.
I’m sure we all can relate to this situation and see it as pattern that may have happened in our own lives. In an effort to create my own personal board of directors (in case I decide to do something really BIG), here’s my attempt at defining the cast of characters that will be at my table.
Personal Board of Directors Cast of Characters:
The World Traveler – She’s seen it all and her tolerance for stress in much higher than yours.
The Sage – The women that has known you from the beginning of time and knows when you are in a funk. She knows when you aren’t following your heart.
“Cocktails” – She’s the one who will open her home to you at a moment’s notice, explains the ‘maid’ hasn’t come this week, you don’t care and within minutes your babbling over a cocktail and the world is balanced again!
Energizer (think Bunny) – Have you ever met someone that instantly changes the energy level in the room and suddenly you feel energized? You may want this person for your mentor.
The Headliner – She’s done it all in her field and ‘appears’ to be the most polished person in the room. But, when you get to know her you uncover that she’s worked as hard as you have to.
Snarky (not Snooky) – She doesn’t hold ANYTHING back and is a HUGE walking OPINION on a stick. Carefully plan time with this person and make sure to meet up with “Cocktails” or Energizer soon after.
Note: The cast has not been listed in any particular order. I also have no plans of having them all sit with me at a table. This would be disastrous and the table might implode!!
Note: Reposted from http://wp.me/p1TQAS-k on 6/28/12.
Some noted Temporal Data Resources:
http://www.simple-talk.com/sql/t-sql-programming/contiguous-time-periods/
http://www.teradata.com/assets/0/206/276/fcd28860-4fad-40ba-ba1e-393669b7d51b.pdf
http://www.timeconsult.com/TemporalData/TemporalDB.html
http://wwwcsif.cs.ucdavis.edu/~alonsoom/time.html
http://alastaira.wordpress.com/author/alastaira/
| Temporal Information explained by (Mateo) |  |
This month, AWC-NNJ invites you to spend “An Evening with Elaine Weyuker, PhD.”
Award winner Software Engineer Elaine Weyuker will be joining us for dinner and discussion on her career in IT. Elaine is a Technology Leader at AT&T Labs, Florham Park, NJ since 1996, an AT&T research fellow with expertise in software engineering and testing, and a True champion of Women in Technology.
A former Professor of Computer Science at NYU and a Chair of Association of Computing Machinery’s Committee on Women in Computing (ACM-W), Elaine is the author of over 130 papers in journals and refereed conference proceedings. She is a Member of the Rutgers University Graduate School Advisory Board, the Executive Board of the Coalition to Diversify Computing, the Editorial Board, Journal of Empirical Software Engineering,Advisory Editorial Board at Journal of Software and Systems, and the Technical Advisory Board of Cigital, Inc. Elaine was recently awarded the ACM 2010 Presidential Award and the Anita Borg Institute, Technical Leadership Award in 2008.
Join us as we learn from Elaine how she achieved her successes and works through challenges as an IT professional.
We hope to see you for this exciting event!
When: Tuesday, November 15, 2011
6:00pm – 6:30pm Networking
6:30pm – 7:30pm Dinner
7:30pm – 9:00pm Program
Where: The Blackthorn Restaurant & Irish Pub
1735 Rt. 46 East
Parsippany, NJ 07054
(973) 334-4900
http://www.blackthornonline.com/parsippany/
RSVP: By November 14 via e-mail to: bamaher@verizon.net (Beth Maher).
Cost: . The fee for the Dinner and Program is $20 for AWC-NNJ members and $25 for non-members. Checks should be made out to “AWC-NNJ”.
| The women’s new shoes…
My grandmother lived in the small hamlet of Shinglehouse, PA for 50+ years until her death last year. Shinglehouse is a very small community of 1200 people, 3 churches, a grocery store, a drug store and a gas station that doubles as an eatery. So, a few years back when she learned that Dollar General was building a new store in her, she became excited and began to count down the days until the store opened. This meant that she would have access to many items that she could only get by paying a premium at the town grocery or by driving 20 miles. Upon my grandmother’s death it became apparent that she had made a large impact on the workers of the Dollar General. The workers at this store pooled together money to buy flowers for my grandmother’s wake. This was not a small gesture as I would imagine that these workers do not collect six figure salaries. It was a beautiful flower arrangement that included my grandmother’s favorite colors of aqua blue and yellow. They obviously knew my grandmother very well. Several workers attended her wake and told me a story about my grandmother that I had not heard before. This is the story. On a winter morning, my grandmother was shopping in the store and women with no shoes ran into the store. If you live in New Jersey and see someone run into a store without shoes, the normal reaction is to get as far from the person as possible. But, this wasn’t a reaction that was in my grandmother’s nature. She approached the women and learned that the women and her family had just lost everything in a fire and that the women had left her home with no shoes. So, without hesitation she handed the women money to buy new shoes. What would you do? If you died today, how would you want to be remembered? Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it! Posted Tuesday, October 20, 2009 11:19 PM by Melissa | (Comments Off) |
Born with a Silver Dollar and a Promise…
On a recent drive past a somewhat vacant NJ Strip Mall, I noticed that a new Dollar General was opening soon. So, most of you will say “So what, who cares about another dollar store”. But just the thought of having this store in my town actually provided me with intense joy as I began to reminisce about my childhood and how these types of stores have impacted me.
Some of my earliest shopping memories involved visiting my grandmother at her bank job, having lunch nearby and going to the local D&K Store (predecessor of the many dollar stores). I remember spending hours sifting through all the fun stuff in the store and choosing my selections very carefully. It was like a great treasure hunt and I always left the store elated and anxious to find a place in my bedroom for my new found items.
As a child, the thing I never realized was all this ‘stuff’ was really low grade junk. And I also didn’t realize that I was marginally poor. This is because; the words ‘poor’ were never echoed from the mouths of my mother or grandmother. They hadn’t lied to me, they simply believed that with hard work and diligence, life holds a promise of better days.
In today’s uncertain economic times, the hope of better days and the appreciation of little things are key attitudes for coping. My goal with my children is to instill attitudes and behaviors that enable they to feel joy even during the hardest times of their lives.
Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!
Posted Tuesday, October 20, 2009 11:16 PM by Melissa | (Comments Off)
