Bob Pusateri, Author at Bob Pusateri

21 Aug 2019

AI-Powered Alt Text in PowerPoint

Artificial Intelligence, Design, Presentations

I was working on a slide deck and did something I don't normally do - I added a photo. Usually the graphical content of my presentations involves diagrams or other vector art - I don't often have the need for actual photos. But this time I did, and I was really surprised to see that PowerPoint generated a text description of the photo and placed it in the alt text field. It also superimposed it on top of the image, which is how I discovered this was occurring to begin with. Well that's really neat. I don't know when this…

07 Aug 2019

By Bob Pusateri

PASS Summit 2019 Schedule is Live!

PASS Summit

After months of hard work on the part of volunteers and PASS HQ, the session schedule for PASS Summit 2019 is live! You can find it here. My hat goes off to the fine people who put this together - building conference schedules is not for the faint of heart. Now that session times and locations have been determined* it's a good idea to give a little thought about which sessions to attend ahead of time. PASS provides a schedule builder tool just for this purpose! Additionally, this tool provides feedback to PASS HQ about how many people are considering…

06 Aug 2019

By Bob Pusateri

Speaking at SQL Saturday Indianapolis 2019!

Community, Speaking, SQL Saturday

SQL Saturday Indianapolis is coming up quickly - it's in less than two weeks! I am very happy to be returning to Indy on Saturday, August 17 to deliver my session Dipping Your Toes Into Azure Data Lake for DBAs. Abstract: As a data professional, you know what data is, and hopefully know what a lake is too. But what's a Data Lake? This session covers the very basics of Azure Data Lake, and is geared towards those who are familiar with relational databases and also curious about other technologies. Topics covered will include Data Lake storage, security basics, and…

24 Jul 2019

By Bob Pusateri

Test Your Restores. TEST. YOUR. RESTORES.

Backup

In the past few months I've had not one but two shining examples of how having a backup strategy meant absolutely nothing when it came time to restore from a disaster. All the backup planning in the world is completely useless if you can’t successfully restore your backups. The Ransomware I had a client that was hit by a ransomware virus, encrypting several of their systems including the database server. Not to worry, though, they had "full backups" of all the affected machines, done by a third-party backup utility. After taking a day to cleanse their network, they restored these…

20 May 2019

By Bob Pusateri

Introducing PASS Summit Learning Pathways

PASS Summit

As an attendee, deciding which sessions to attend at conferences can be a daunting endeavor. With so many choices available and the impossibility of being able to attend every interesting session, it really can make sense to buy recordings if they are available. One of the ways PASS is trying to help for Summit 2019 is by introducing Learning Pathways, which are curated sets of sessions designed to help attendees achieve a goal. Each pathway will consist of at least three sessions, presented by at least two different speakers. The pathways being offered in 2019 will be: AI for Everyone…