Archery targets in a field of yellow flowers

Talks, Shoots, and Leaves

Just a general life update.Tall white yarrow flower in middle of lots of red firewheels

New job as Open Source Relations Manager at Vertica is going really well. I’ve been managing the Industry Trends section of the new Vertica blog, and writing some of their product release posts, so be sure to check that out.

Talks

Speaking engagements are part of this job, so I’ve submitted a bunch of abstracts. Because of when I started, I missed the deadline for a lot of the spring speaking slots. So, just last week, I went to my first speaking engagement at an AIM lunch and learn in Salt Lake City Utah. It was my first time there, and I was in and out in less than two days, but I have to say that city has some gorgeous mountains.

In calendar order, it looks like I’ll be speaking at:
DBTA Data Summit – Boston – 5/21/19
Two RIoT North Carolina talks – Raleigh 8/6/19, Charlotte 8/8/19
Texas Scalability Summit – Austin – 9/13/19
Strata – NYC – 9/25/19
Data Day Texas – Austin – 1/25/20

And, of course, the Vertica Big Data Conference – Boston – 3/30/20 – 4/2/20

Yellow Texas star flower in the middle of lots of white flowers

Just a few so far. Lots of other events that I’ve submitted to, but haven’t heard back yet, so probably will add to that list as I go along. Be sure and catch me if you happen to be at one of those events. I’ll be speaking on a variety of subjects, from IoT to Kubernetes, machine learning to Cloud. Mostly, discussing data architecture and practical production data engineering in those various contexts, since that’s my thing.

Particularly excited about speaking at Strata. Lots of competition for earned slots there, and this will be the first time I’m not using a sponsored slot. Co-presenting with one of our lead engineers about the challenges of wrestling a giant stateful MPP database into Kubernetes, which is designed for small stateless micro-services. I’m covering the what and the why and Deepak Majeti is covering the how. Looking forward to that.

Also, just talked to the folks at TechBeacon about being a regular contributor. I’ll probably provide an article a month once I get going. I’ll be out of commission for a fair amount of June due to health stuff, so may not start until July.

Shoots

Field full of yellow daisies with blue sky, trees and some purple thistle flowers on the left

So, I may have mentioned that I like archery once or twice. My husband and I went to archery practice every Sunday with a bunch of friends until we moved away from Austin. Now, we live on a slice of paradise, but it’s super far away from everyone and everything. I literally have an archery range in my back yard. And yet, the target has mostly just been sitting out there getting faded by the sun. My husband and I have not been putting holes in it on a regular basis. It just isn’t as much fun without a group.

So, we went to the tiny local SCA group (local being relative since they meet in a town 50 miles away). My husband says, “What do I have to do to get archery practice going around here?” The seneschal says, “Run it.” And so, my husband got appointed as the local archery marshal, and charged with the duty of making archery practice a regular thing in our area. A few barriers to that:

  1. My husband hasn’t had the training, and so is not qualified in our group to run an archery practice.
  2. It’s illegal to shoot a bow in our local town park.
  3. Our entire local SCA group is made up of about a dozen people, none of whom are archers.

Fortunately, my husband is very good at finding a way around obstacles.

milkweed flowers, prickly pear and wine cup flowersSo, now we have been driving 2 hours almost every weekend for the last four months to our old group in the Austin area, not just to practice, but also to get Joe trained to be a qualified marshal, so he can run practice. He talked to the city council in our tiny local town, and got a resolution passed making an exception to the law for SCA-qualified-marshal-run archery practice. They designated a nice big chunk of the park for us to use as well. And, we got in the local paper, wearing medieval clothes and showing handmade bows and arrows to the city council. It made a big buzz, and a lot of the locals now want to join in the archery practice, and possibly in the SCA. The group in the larger town 50 miles away has decided to move their sword combat practice to the park in our little town, so they can also benefit from the influx of people.

Plan is for first practice to be in mid-June, although it may be delayed because Joe has one more requirement to be officially qualified. He has to run a tournament, with a supervising marshal. The last two tourneys have been cancelled due to bad weather. There’s another one coming up next weekend, the biggest SCA archery tourney in Texas and Oklahoma. The guy running it offered to let Joe help and get his last qualification done. So, we’re competing in, and Joe will be helping to run, the “Royal Huntsman” tourney for Ansteorra, aka the two-state SCA archery championship.

Leaves

And speaking of moving out to the sticks, and the crazy rainy spring we’ve had, it is beautiful out here. I mean, amazing, gorgeous, wow. Flowers everywhere. Butterflies in droves. I made some comment about flowers on Mother’s Day, and Joe laughed, kissed me and pointed out that I have more flowers than anyone.

He’s got a point.

(All pics, except the top one taken at my house. Top pic taken at last archery tourney Joe and I competed in, just before the arrows started flying. The whole state is a giant garden right now.)
dozens of firewheels

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