I haven't been to ADNUG for a while. I love that the group is there, but over the past year or more, I haven't prioritised getting to the meetings. I've been to meetings of equivalent groups in Melbourne and Sydney, but not to the Adelaide .Net Group for a while. But this week I will! I've offered to be a stand-in presenter, and ...

A good friend of mine from Perth got awarded MVP status this past week. Mitch Wheat runs the .Net User Group over there, and does a terrific job. He does a lot for the community, and is incredibly smart. I'm really pleased for him. PS: There are a bunch of other new MVPs this October as well (plus I got rewarded) - I'm just mentioning ...

I've given this presentation a couple of times at user-groups now - last week in Adelaide, and this week in Melbourne. I posted the scripts to my blog recently, making them available to people who heard this talk at TechEd Australia at the start of the month, so now I've got around to uploading the slide deck as well. I actually plan to ...

It was unfortunate news when I heard that the UNICEF Australia site was hacked a little while ago. An old colleague of mine called me to let me know, and to ask if I knew anyone who could help them out. I used to work at a hosting company with this guy, and had seen quite a few websites get hacked one way or another (the typical methods being SQL ...

So I'm at the Heroes launch in Melbourne today. I'm going to hang out at the Experts booth, so if you're here and have a question about SQL Server 2008, why not come over?

I was in Perth last week, teaching a private course. The course went well, but best of all, I got to meet a good Perth-based friend of mine for the first time. I've known Mitch Wheat for ages online, but he's always just been on the other end of the wire. Now I know what he looks like! It was great getting to see Perth. The students I had ...

A while back I was talking to Bronwen Zande, of Brisbane-based SoulSolutions and GeekGirlBlogs. Anyway, she and her partner John are big fans of Virtual Earth. As it's well publicised that SQL Server 2008 will have new spatial types, including fancy ways of integrating with Virtual Earth, I asked her if they were planning a tour of the ...

This weekend is getting better and better. With England winning in both the football and the rugby, my mood is pretty good anyway - despite having to give the first presentation of Sunday morning at the SQL Down Under Code Camp. The local TV channel sent cameras just after I finished, so I think I managed to avoid having my presentation on the ...

Two days of intensive SQL Server training, thanks to experts from around Australia and Kevin Kline from the US. All the Australian SQL Server MVPs are coming (five here so far, two more coming soon). The coffee is great (thanks Peter), the company is great, and there are so many more people here (than last year) because there is also a Security ...

...and I'm not even referring to the User Groups which run regularly. The ones I'm referring to are SQLBits and the SQL Down Under Code Camp. SQLBits was in the UK last weekend, and was a massive success. I would've loved to have been able to attend, but it's a bit far to travel (I guess about 12000 miles). They had over three ...