12 May 2015
By Allen
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Giving Back

Cognos
From previous posts, you know I believe in giving back to community. Last week my wife had an aunt pass away who had suffered with MS for many years. This week I learned that one of my client companies has a team in the Central Oklahoma MS Walk. I'll be donating and I invite you to join me here: http://walkoke.nationalmssociety.org/site/TR/Walk/OKEWalkEvents?team_id=437146&pg=team&fr_id=25519   Thank you.
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28 Apr 2015
By Allen
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Want to Be a SQL BI Consultant?

Want to Be a SQL BI Consultant?

Business, Downloads, Featured, , ,
  At the February meeting of the OKC SQL User Group, I presented a session on what it takes to become a consultant. After having done consulting for 8 years, I've learned a few things the hard way and still made a good go of it. Here is that presentation for download. [download id="870"]   This download does not constitute any legal or accounting advice.  By downloading you assume all risk for yourself getting into business, after all, that is part of being an entrepreneur. Best wishes in all your endeavors. Allen
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19 Dec 2014
By Allen
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Appreciation Dinner at Vast

Uncategorized
We had a wonderful evening with clients and advisory board members at Vast this evening. Thank you to all who made this a great year. Thank you to Denise for putting together the dinner. High resolution copies of tonight can be picked up on the Facebook photo gallery. Post by Cognitive Information.
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26 Nov 2014
By Allen
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Book: Hadoop, The Definitive Guide (O’Reilly)

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This book gave me the tools I needed to get started with Hadoop.  The author uses easy to understand language to describe a very compicated set of tools.   The example code is easy to download and get started right away. I was working 3 IT projects, fixing stuff at home, starting a new job, trying to stay fit and thought I needed something to do in my spare time so I'll learn Hadoop. This book came to our OKC SQL User Group as part of O'Reilly's user group outreach, but it deserves a review so I read it. I read…
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21 Nov 2014
By Allen
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My Board Experience at The Alternative Board (TAB)

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About two years ago I was invited to visit a Business Owner Advisory board, hosted by Art Miller at The Alternative Board (TAB). These meetings are where owners who don't have a full board agree to meet monthly for half a day with each member bringing one business problem or goal to discuss with the group.  Everything shared in the group good or bad remains confidential, like Vegas in a good way. The members are not in competition with each other and the goal is not referrals like some other groups. The goal is to learn from the commonalities between…
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20 Oct 2014
By Allen
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My Intro to SQLFamily

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By trade, I'm a Cognos BI developer that jumped the fence to MS SQL BI a few years ago. My first encounter with SQLfamily was at SQL Saturday #63, April 2, 2011 in Dallas, Texas. First SQL Saturdays and SQL Rally I came to a SQL Saturay #63 pre-con to learn more about the BI stack.  There, I met Sri and learned about the North Texas User Group.  I didn't know anyone in town or in SQL, so after the pre-con Sri Sridharan and the NTSUG people welcomed me into their group, invited me to dinner, invited me to volunteer…
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08 Oct 2014
By Allen
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Time Value of Data

Time Value of Data

BI/DW Projects, Featured, , ,
The concept of 'Time Value' of data and the associated costs of data are a segment of the 'BI Basics' session which always brings up a lot of discussion at SQL Saturday.  Here, I will expand on the discussion and hope you will join in below.  This session was given at SQL Saturday in Oklahoma City and Kansas City and can be downloaded here. My background is in economics with a good bit of finance thrown in. In Economics, we often look at markets in terms of supply and demand curves. In Finance studies, the 'time value of money' is a…
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13 Sep 2014
By Allen
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SQL Saturday #300 Kansas City, MO 2014

SQL Saturday #300 Kansas City, MO 2014

Microsoft SQL Server,
This is my second year at SQL Saturday in Kansas City.  I thoroughly enjoy the people and of course the BBQ Crawl.  This year my hands down favorite was Q39.   Of course that's not what your'e here for, so here is the synopsis and download for the BI Basics session.  This slide deck has been updated since SQL Saturday in Oklahoma City. Session Outline: This session will you chart the waters through the sea of Business Intelligence (BI) options. IT departments need tools to turn data into useful information for users. Instead of ROI, this session talks about Return on…
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