T-SQL Tuesday #41 - Presenting and Loving it
Hello, T-SQL Tuesday! Thanks to Bob Pusateri (blog) for hosting. I’ll try to make it short and sweet.
The topic today is “Presenting and Loving it”. It’s relevant for me because I just gave a technical presentation last week at my job. The subject of my presentation was “MDX: Don’t Panic”.
The Topic
MDX is a fairly new language for me - I just started learning it late 2012. So, when the opportunity presented itself a few months ago to present on MDX, I jumped on it.
Why? Because I knew it would force me to learn the language even more. And boy did it ever! As the saying goes, “If you can’t explain it, you don’t know it”. As I worked through the material, I kept revisiting the same topics over and over. Each iteration provided clarity and reinforcement of the fundamentals.
Practice
A few days before the presentation, I did a practice run for my friend and co-worker Chadwick Smith (blog). He offered some invaluable feedback for improving the flow of the talk. After a few days of tightening up the slides and demos, I was ready for the big day.
Showtime
The day of the talk I was a little nervous, but I felt prepared (and that makes a HUGE difference). The reception was great, and the presentation was a success! I’ve been asked to give a make-up presentation to a few people that were out that day. And (I hope) that will allow me to polish it up even more.
Conclusions
Presenting to a group pushed me out of my comfort zone, and forced me to really learn a subject. I now feel like I have a solid foundation of MDX knowledge to continue building on. And I gained some confidence in my presentation skills. Who knows, maybe I’ll sign up to present it at Atlanta MDF or the Atlanta Business Intelligence group.
