Second Life Presentation on Sun Solaris Campus

This virtual world presentation will be delivered at the Sun Microsystems Islands on the Solaris Campus. Up above, I'm chilling at the Solaris Campus on one of the Sun virtual islands.

Second Life Presentation on Sun Solaris Campus

The MySQL open source database continues to increase in popularity with usage estimated at 12 million database servers worldwide. This presentation will help Unix/Linux and storage management administrators understand the reasons for the growing popularity of MySQL. Topics will include:

• Positioning MySQL in the database market.
• How is MySQL different than
  
• Understanding the MySQL architecture.
• Strengths and weaknesses of MySQL.
• Key features of MySQL.
• Understanding the storage engine story in MySQL.
• MySQL strategic directions.
  

The focus of this presentation is on helping attendees understand the philosophy, features, benefits and popularity of MySQL.

Demystifying MySQL for Solaris Administrators: Sun Solaris Campus Event

Second Life Presentation on Sun Solaris Campus May 5, 2009 9:00 am PDT

This virtual world presentation will be delivered at the Sun Microsystems Islands on the Solaris Campus. Up above, I'm visiting the Solaris Certification Center.

Demystifying MySQL for Solaris Administrators

George Trujillo (Ty Valdez) and Steve Jones will be presenting a Demystifying MySQL for Solaris Administrators the week of May 4, 2009 in Second Life. This presentation is a very detailed technical presentation designed for experienced Unix/Linux administrators to understand installation, configuration and management of MySQL on Solaris platforms. MySQL best practices along with Solaris features that can leverage database management such as ZFS will be included. Topics will include:

• Strategies for laying out database servers on Solaris (Unix/Linux) platforms.
• Understanding the MySQL architecture.
  
• Installing MySQL using MOCA (GOCA) for best practices.
• Starting and stopping the MySQL database server.
• Top ten things to configure after creating a MySQL database server.
• Using MySQL with ZFS.
• Managing MySQL on a Solaris platform.
  

Top Ten Keys to Delivering a Great Presentation

Here is my list of top ten things to do to deliver a great presentation.

1. Make sure you properly prepare your presentation.
   
2. Create a great first impression in the first ten seconds.
   
3. Show enthusiasm and energy for your topic.
4. Speak to the audience. Use the works "I", "you", "we" to engage the audience.
5. Make eye contact with individuals throughout the presentation. Make each person feel as if you are talking to them.
6. Break your presentation into different pieces. First five minutes, last five minutes, then break the rest of your presentation into 5-10 minute sections.
7. Use variety: telling a story, visual aids, props, music, sound. Make sure you use your props wisely.
8. Good body posture and movement.
9. Audience will care more about what you say versus what is in your slides or presentation materials.
10. Have fun and make sure you use your "own" style not someone else's style.
    

Being a "Great" Presenter

Being an excellent presenter is one of the most important skills you need to have to be successful in your career. Excellent presenters:

• Make more money.
• Have larger social and business networks.
• Have more opportunities brought to them.
• Have more opportunities to positively impact other people.

At the same time, when lists of top fears are shown, public speaking is always number one on the list of top fears. Public speaking is always at the top of the list ahead of cancer, dying in a plane crash, etc. There are so many excellent ways to develop your public speaking.

• Starting small at a local ToastMasters would be a great way to meet others that present.
• Practice giving a ten minute presentation and video taping your presentation is a good way to practice privately.
• There are lots of great books on developing your presentation skills.
• Joining local business, social and technology user groups is another way to get an opportunity to present.
• There are excellent online resources. Below I have a few sites to look at.
• Watch other people present. See what they do well and don't do well. You can attend local business and social user groups, business chambers, etc.
  

If you practice by video taping your presentation, keep improving it until you see someone you would enjoy listening to. Networking groups are always looking for speakers to present to them. Just make sure you find some ways to practice your presentation before speaking in front of other people.

Here are some good sites for learning more about delivering presentations:

• http://ezinearticles.com/?What-Makes-A-Great-Presenter?&id=8872
• http://www.knowhr.com/blog/2006/11/03/how-to-give-a-great-presentation
• http://www.creativekeys.net/PowerfulPresentations/article1078.html
• http://www.lawcrossing.com/article/index.php?id=2987
• http://www.flyingsolo.com.au/p234839702_Presentation-skills-What-makes-a-great-presenter.html
  

Developing your presentation skills is one of the more important career decisions you can make! Try some of the above sources to develop your presentation skills and start finding ways to start presenting to different groups. The key is to start small and slowly build to presenting to larger groups.

Good luck and I'd love to hear some success stories on how you got started on presenting!

Very cool class in San Francisco

It's an incredible privilege to be able to teach other people. I've always found that knowledge is like love. No matter how much you give you always get more back.

I'm teaching a class this week in San Francisco to a very cool group. Students are from all over the world: China, Malaysia, Germany, Spain, Italy, India and the U.S. It is great to have people from all over the world and we all speak the same language, databases. We're all having a lot of fun singing "Kumbaya". :)

So far the top rated restaurants among the class this week include:

• Colibri
• House of NanKing
• Great Eastern Restaurant
• Sultan
• Puccini and Pinetti's
• Magnolia Pub and Brewery

Excellent Open Source Presentations

Last night I went to some presentations that were put on by the Chicago chapter of ACM. The two presentations were:

• An Introduction to Bloom Filters - This presentation focused on choosing the best algorithm to solve a problem. The most familiar trade-off is between storage space and time, but there are more exotic possibilities that can lead to data structures with surprising properties. This presentation discussed Bloom Filters, a probabilistic data structure that efficiently encodes set membership and allows a trade-off between storage space and uncertainty. It was an excellent presentation on how to achieve very high scalabliity with inexpensive hardware using open source.
• How Open Source Projects Survive Poisonous People -Every open source project runs into people who are selfish, uncooperative, and disrespectful. These people can silently poison the atmosphere of a happy developer community. Come learn how to identify these people and peacefully de-fuse them before they derail your project. Told through a series of (often amusing) real-life anecdotes and experiences.
  

These were two absolutely outstanding presentations. The second one was probably the best presentation I've seen in years. Both presentations had tremendous take aways. I would highly recommend attending both of these presentations if they are given again (they will be the audience was asking the presenters if they would give it again at different locations). If this is the type of presentation given at the Chicago ACM chapter I would highly recommend attending a meeting of this organization in the future.