Another year has come and gone, and it was fabulous year indeed! I made a lot of new friends, both professionally and personally. Added to my flock – literally. And learned tons of new things!

This year I attended my first SQL Saturday in Tampa, which was a ton of fun! What a great resource for people in the SQL Community! The energy and enthusiasm to share are off the charts. Hopefully, this year, I will be able to attend a few more and perhaps, *gasp*, even present at some!

Speaking of presenting, this year I officially presented solo for the first time for 24 Hours of PASS. This iteration of 24 Hours of PASS was all about the ladyfolk – and I think it was made very clear that the women know how to BRING. IT. There were a ton of great sessions and I feel honored to have the chance to present along side them.

This has inspired me to submit sessions to other events.  I submitted for PASS and was chosen as an alternate. Didn’t present this year, but it was nice to at least be chosen as an alternate! I’ve also submitted to SQLBits for this spring, and even if I am not picked, I’m lucky that mom *was* selected to present a precon and so I GET TO GO TO LONDON. Yay 2012!

2011 was a great year and I feel like 2012 is going to be even bigger. Resolutions always sound so imposing, so I am just going to make a few goals for 2012.

Goals:

-Present more! Hopefully at a SQL Saturday, but definitely at my local user group. And while I can’t control if I’m selected to speak at the “big shows,” I can’t be selected if I don’t submit, so I’ll definitely be submitting again for PASS and possibly Rally or Connections or something.

-Write more! Writing is something I have a hard time just sitting down and doing. I’m usually fine once words start marching across the screen, but sitting down and opening up an editor and beginning eludes me more often than not. I don’t lack for blog idea! But getting them written is something else. So this year is all about getting in the groove writing-wise. And to not feel like every post I write needs to be a doctoral thesis! So I will write some lighter material alongside the in-depth content, and participate in Meme Mondays and #meme15′s to keep me in the groove.

-Read more! There is a lot of information out there on SQL Server and databases and BI, and I need more of it in my brain! This year, for sure, I’m going to sit down and read The Data Warehouse Toolkit from Kimball all the way through. Maybe I’ll even blog about it! If/when I succeed at that, I’m going to sit down and digest Expert Cube Development from Chris Webb, Marco Russo, and Alberto Ferrari. I’ve already used bits of it in my day job, so it’d be nice to have a more thorough knowledge of everything in that book.

Seems manageable enough! Here’s to a happy and productive 2012!

If you haven’t heard already, SQLBITS is open for registration! aaaaaaaand you get to vote on what sessions you would like to see! The conference will take place March 29 – 31st 2012 in LONDON. ENGLAND. I submitted two solo sessions, and one session that I will be co-presenting with mom if we get picked.

The two sessions I submitted are:

Dynamic MDX: Packing a Punch into One .rdl

Dynamic MDX can be a great way to reuse, reduce, and recycle .rdls and simplify report maintenance. Have a lot of reports that are practically the same, minus a few pesky exceptions? Dynamic MDX could be the answer! In this session we’ll walk through how to create a basic .rdl that can support a variety of MDX queries that will be generated dynamically. We will also discuss the pros and cons of this approach so that you can make an informed decision of when and if Dynamic MDX is the solution for you.

Think Outside the Group! Take MDX to the Next Level in SSRS

Reporting Services is a powerful tool that can make designing reports a snap…most of the time. But every once in a while you have to format a report very specifically, and that starts with your data query.  In this session, we’ll think outside the group! Learn about how to use named sets, dummy members, and other MDX tricks to craft your queries in a way that allows you to conquer the trickiest report layouts.

The first session is one I haven’t done before, but I think is a really interesting topic.  I’ll show you how to REALLY make reports flexible with MDX, using parameters.  But I’ll also show you how you can dynamically create MDX based on MDX you store in a table and “glue” together with a stored procedure!  This is something I’ve done before in real life in order to handle a LOT of reports that were almost the same….except for a million tiny little exceptions that HAD to be accounted for.

The second one will be similar to the session I did for 24 Hours of PASS, but with some extra goodies thrown in.  When I’ve done this presentation, it’s been fun to take people into intermediate MDX, and really start to see the power of this amazing expression language.

Finally, the session I’m REALLY excited about:

(Way Too Much) Fun with Reporting Services

Head starting to explode from all the technical information you’re absorbing?  Come spend a session with us while we play games with Reporting Services…literally!  Come watch and cheer as SQL Server MVP Stacia Misner is challenged by her progeny and protégé Erika Bakse to an hour of word play, all wrapped up in SQL Server Reporting Services.  They’ll push the limits with what can be built in SSRS and have a stupid amount of fun while doing it.  Swag, trash talk, board games and SQL…who could ask for more?

With Donald Farmer having moved on from Microsoft, the future of the infamous BI Power Hour sessions is uncertain.  Those sessions are always a ton of fun, and can really show you just how amazing the tools we work with every day can be, with a little creativity.  Since Reporting Services is our specialty, mom and I wanted to inject some of that fun into a session of our own.  We’re really excited to do this session, so please vote for it!

Voting is easy, but does require that you sign up on the SQLBits website.  Then, go to the sessions you want to see and click on them, anywhere but on the title.  You can vote for up to 10 sessions.  I have a shiny, never been used passport that’s just waiting to see me on my way to England.  Please help make it happen!  Oh, and vote for my mom (Stacia Misner), too.  She’s also got a precon offering, and odds are if enough people attend that she’ll take pity on me and hide me in her luggage.

Even though it’s been almost 2 weeks since PASS ended, I feel like I’m just now getting my bearings.  Of course some of that may be due to the fact that after I returned home from PASS, I turned around and got on another plane to kickstart a new project…but the week in Seattle was a whirlwind of good times!

One thing that was clear from the very first session: this year’s summit was PACKED.  In fact, I literally could not get through the door of the first session I was planning on going to (What’s New in SSRS).  Luckily, due to all the awesome content on the schedule, I had a backup session.  I hustled over to Craig Utley’s (fantastic) session on Aggregations – and was barely able to get a seat there.  This session, too, was standing room only, and it was not in a small room!  This quickly became a theme as almost every session I attended that week was filled to capacity.  Clearly a lot more BI people were in attendance and to them I say, welcome! I hope you enjoyed summit as much as I did.

One great new change for this year’s summit, is that all the presentations will be available streaming on the website.  I’d like to blog more about the sessions I saw, and I did see a bunch I swear!  But there was so much information, and so much I didn’t get to see, that I’m very excited to be able to simply go to the website and rewatch the ones I did see and watch the ones I didn’t see.  We always get the DVDs, but then I have to remember to go find them!  Having vids available via streaming is fantastic.

Another great change was the utilization of the Guidebook app.  And I had a bright and shiny new Android table to use it on!  Furthermore, the session information all included links to fill out evals online (and had the speaker/topic information auto-filled in) which was incredibly useful and really made it easier to fill out those evals.  Which we all know we need to do and should do, right?

On a more personal note, this is my 4th PASS Summit.  My first summit, I had graduated from college that June, so I only had a few months of job experience under my belt.  I was a total fish out of water.  Making everything even more intimidating was the fact that the vast majority of attendees are DBAs or in the DBA world, not BI, so I really felt like I didn’t understand anything.  Being so much younger than everyone, with so little experience, in a much smaller field made it hard to really get into the PASS experience.  The difference between my involvement that first year to this year is like night and day.  And kudos to PASS to really focusing on first timers and the community really banding together to make everyone feel included.

Tips to get involved:

Join Twitter!  I held off on joining twitter a long time – in fact I didn’t join until the 2010 PASS Summit.  I was worried I wouldn’t have anything to say, but what I found was – that didn’t matter!  You’ll be surprised how quickly you get assimilated – the community drags you in and won’t let go!  So take the plunge, you’ll be glad you did.

Go to parties!  And SQL Saturdays (which are pretty much the same thing).  I’ve only been to one SQL Saturday so far (in Tampa which was fantastic).  Meeting people outside of sessions is invaluable.  One of the most fun nights this year at PASS was #sqlkaraoke.  And performing there is a great way to break the ice.

In fact, I ended up recognizing a great performer from #sqlkaraoke the next day at the Birds of a Feather table on Mobile BI.  Mark Vaillancourt (Blog|@markvsql), who does an amazing impression of Gilbert Godfried, also does BI!  During our discussion at the table (which ranged from being theater students to report building frustrations), it came up how the #sqlhelp hashtag is not so helpful for us BI folk.  Given the aforementioned majority of DBAs in the SQL community, questions on SSRS, SSAS, and SSIS tend to get lost.  And while he didn’t create the idea, he should get the majority of the credit for popularizing the new hashtag #SSRShelp.  Furthermore, spurred on by this creation, we now also have #SSAShelp.  Both these hashtags are being monitored by some of the top people in the field in these technologies and I know they will be an amazing resource.

On a lighter note, Mark and I also think there should be a Birds of a Feather table next year for theater folk – or more inclusively, Stage and Screen.  There seem to be a shocking number of people in this community with a theater background and let’s face it, they make great presenters and are a lot of fun!  Let’s get this ball rolling!

And finally, if you didn’t notice, one of the pieces of swag in the PASS backpack this year was a deck of cards.  Yet there was nary a game of #sqlpoker to be found.  Perhaps a Birds of  a Feather table needs to be created for poker!  Or even better, perhaps a vendor would be willing to sponsor a #sqlpoker tournament!  Oh the possibilities!

tl:dr PASS 2011 was awesome and I can’t wait for next year.

I’m back! I swear! You know how when you put off a task for so long it just becomes THAT much harder to start it? I’m awfully bad at it, and blogging has become one of those things where I know I just need to sit down and do it, but as the days go on it gets harder and harder. I even have topics! Just a massive case of i-don’t-wanna-write-it-block.

The solution to this? An easy peasy short tidbit that I recently learned.

Mom has been teaching an MDX class and learned something she’d never known before – which is a shock in and of itself! But then, right after she told me about what she learned, I actually had occasion to use it! So now I’m going to share what we learned with you.

I hope you are familiar with member properties in MDX, as they are tremendously useful. A common example is the NAME property: [Product].[Product].CurrentMember.NAME or [Product].[Product].CurrentMember.Properties(“Name”), which returns the string that is the name of the member.

Similarly, you can return the key value of the member with the following syntax:
[Product].[Product].CurrentMember.Properties(“Key”).

NB: You can’t use [Product].[Product].CurrentMember.Key. Doesn’t work. When in doubt, use the Properties(“”) syntax.

Now for the property I didn’t know (which is not surprising) AND that Stacia Misner didn’t know (which is VERY surprising) – in the case of a composite key, there are Key0, Key1, Key2 properties that you can use to call the individual parts of the key! When this was first mentioned to me I thought hey that’s cool, but as Mom pointed out, she rarely uses composite keys so it simply hadn’t come up. However, just a few days later I had an occasion to use this new-found knowledge and I can see it being very useful in the future!

One place where composite keys seem to pop up commonly is the nefarious Date dimension, in a Calendar hierarchy. A particular month, say June 2011, will have the unique member representation [Date].[Calendar].[Month].&[2011]&[7]. In my case, I wanted to split up the month and year info, and have the month represented as a number. That information is very simply represented in the key, and now I had the tool to extract it!

[Date].[Calendar].[Month].&[2011]&[7].Properties(“Key0″) returns 2011.
[Date].[Calendar].[Month].&[2011]&[7].Properties(“Key1″) returns 7.
Easy as pie!

And now I’m going to go spend some time reading this MSDN page on  Intrinsic Member Properties.

Coming at you from SQLRockstar:

Fear not MDX. ‘Tis just cubes in cubes. Afraid of legos?

I tag Stacia Misner and anyone else who is super excited about the fact that she was finally awarded an MVP Award on Friday! Way to go Mom!

Whew, presentation for 24 hours of PASS is done.  Still some great sessions going, so go watch if it’s still March 16 when you read this!

As promised during my presentation on Clever Queries, here are my slides and here are my queries.

Enjoy!

And if you had any further questions about my presentation, please post here and I will try to answer them ASAP.

Warning: Some whining ahead…

Whew, so these past few weeks have been crazy!  For one, I was selected to speak for 24 Hours of PASS!  I will be doing a session on MDX queries in SSRS, namely pointing out some useful tips and tricks I’ve learned with MDX in order to get my reports to do what I want .  Unfortunately for me, this is not a session I’ve done before, so I have to generate content from scratch, and I get the worst cases of PowerPoint block….

I also was recently cast in a play called Matt & Ben, about Matt Damon and Ben Affleck who happen to be played by two girls.  I play Ben Affleck .  This has been a lot of fun, but it’s a very short rehearsal schedule (we open on Friday) so I’ve been at the theater every night.  The show is over March 7th, so I thought, oh I’ll have plenty of time after that to work on my presentation!  Except that the slides are due February 23rd, which is Wednesday.  Eep.

Even this wouldn’t have been SO bad if it wasn’t also for the fact that I recently signed on to a new full time project doing some report and cube development.  This is good because it means I make money.  This is bad because when do I find the time to do my presentation?!  I’m a perfectionist and I’m starting to get a weeeeeeeeeee bit concerned.  I’m also really tired.

So I’m sitting here now, getting together an outline and resources and figuring out, what the heck do I want to SAY to you all?  I plan on keeping the actual slide portion short (although I’m terrified it will be too short) and doing a lot of demos.  After all, I want to show you clever queries, not yap at you about them.  I have a few demos planned, but here’s where I ask you all for help.

You voted for my session, so that means you want to see something that will hopefully help you out.  I’m going to have a section at the end of my presentation where I show you some miscellaneous queries that solved an assortment of problems I’ve come across.  They will use the tricks I show you earlier in the presentation, but also walk you through my thought process when I’m thrown an SSRS curve ball.  I want YOU to throw some of YOUR SSRS curve balls at me.  What scenarios have you run into with queries for an SSRS report where you just couldn’t figure out how to get the query to do what you want?  Strange groupings?  Sorting issues? What causes you to beat your head against the wall?  I’ll take ‘em on!

Last Saturday was SQL Saturday #62 in Tampa, Florida.  I just want to say, thank you SO much to Jose Chinchilla (Blog | Twitter) and Pam Shaw (Twitter) for making it possible for me to tag along with Stacia Misner (Blog | Twitter), who delivered a pre-con session on BI.  Also, thank you so much for all you did to make this event possible.  It can’t have been easy, but it was well worth it.  This was my first ever SQL Saturday and I now TOTALLY understand why everyone gets so excited about these.  It will definitely not be my last.

I was really struck by how much energy there was.  On Friday, Stacia did an end-to-end presentation on the Microsoft BI stack in ONE day- something I’ve seen her barely be able to squeeze into 3 days.  Naturally, she ran over, but I feel the only thing that got truly short shrift was SSRS, and well, I know a good book you can get if you want more detail than you can handle with respect to that particular product .  Surprisingly, people managed to stay with her and not conk out!  It’s a lot of information to digest, especially at the whirlwind pace necessitated by the time constraints, but the attendees asked good questions and were engaged which is always great to see.

The actual SQL Saturday was a ton of fun.  So much content! And I loved the informal atmosphere, which really allowed people to have a lot of fun, and frankly makes it easier for me to learn.  I have a hard time sitting still and paying attention while one person talks in a big cold room.  The energy surrounding me actually makes it easier for me to pay attention.  That, and you may have seen me knitting .  But I guarantee, if you quizzed me on the content I could give you a complete run-down (even if I didn’t understand everything, what can I say? I don’t use Powershell or SSIS much – but I’m much more motivated to learn now!).  Yay ADHD.

There were two standout sessions in particular.  SQL Smackdown: SSIS vs Powershell featured Aaron Nelson (Blog | Twitter) and Mike Davis going head-to-head with Powershell and SSIS, respectively.  Both had good examples to let their choice of weapon shine.  I played devil’s advocate a bit on Aaron’s presentation, and inadvertently won a book from Mike!  But actually, I feel that Aaron might have eked out the win overall (in my mind, apparently the voters felt otherwise).  I like the ease of SSIS, I don’t need a lot of knowledge to get up and running with it, but the flexibility and capability of Powershell has me intrigued.  Plus, apparently Powershell can be used WITHIN SSIS.  Now I just need to find me a good book…

I also got tagged to be a judge for IRON CHEF SQL SERVER.  Emceed by Brian Knight (Blog | Twitter), the contender Devin Knight (Blog | Twitter) went head to head against Adam Jorgenson (Blog | Twitter) to see who could produce the most BI the fastest with ‘illicit’ pharmaceutical data.  I say they went head to head because, well, they weren’t allowed to use their hands! That’s right, no use of the keyboard or mouse allowed, necessitating each chef to grab a sous chef: Jorge Seguerra (Blog | Twitter) for Devin and Sherri McDonald (Blog) for Adam.

My task was simple: make snarky comments.  Which I hope I did well enough.  I decided to play the PowerPivot convert and question why, if the contestants were tasked with producing the most BI in the shortest amount of time, did they not open up Excel first thing?  I want my charts NOW dammit!  I was being somewhat facetious, but I have to say it would actually have been intriguing to have one contestant go down that path, while the other chose SSIS, instead of just seeing the straight load vs building SCDs.  Especially since Adam ended up firing up SharePoint and doing a lot with the data once it was loaded up in there.  Given that uploading PowerPivot into SharePoint makes a sandbox cube available, as well as becoming a data source for other reports and PowerPivot workbooks, a lot could have been done.  Although apparently all of this could have been done with only 4 lines in Powershell, so maybe the discussion is moot.

I was also picked to be a panelist for the WIT session – a session which unfortunately didn’t seem to get the publicity due to difficulties in getting it to properly show up on the schedule.  But we had enough people for a round table discussion that I think was very enlightening.  And we got to hear a success story: One of the attendees had been at the PASS WIT luncheon and taken the advice to heart.  She got called in for an interview for a job she’d wanted for quite some time and decided to really own what she knew.  Instead of downplaying her capabilities, she put them forward, and if she wasn’t an expert in anything, she made it clear that she could become one.  She got the job.

It was a crazy weekend and I was glad it was done – simply cuz I needed a rest!  But a lot of fun and knowledge was packed into the weekend.  The location was great, the atmosphere was exceptional, and it really showed just why people find the SQL Community so fantastic.  I can’t wait for my next one.

So the next 24 hours of PASS is going to be for the birds chicks!  They are looking for a selection of all female speakers in honor of Women’s History Month: “I need more women!”

Being a witty WIT, I have been debating whether or not to submit.  But I fall into the traps that have been outlined here in an excellent blog post by Karen Lopez, namely that I am not enough of an expert, or my usual excuse: I don’t feel I have anything new to say.

This is also a reason why I probably don’t blog as much as I should.

Rationally I know that most of the blogosphere and conference presentations are NOT new material.  After all new people are entering the field every day who need to know the basics and hey, it’s new to them!  But how do I decide that I can do it better?  Also, I hate PowerPoint.

I suppose I should throw my hat into the ring.  But, I need your help.  What do you want me to talk about?  What would you like to hear?

Some ideas bopping around my head:

1: Creative Queries: MDX in Reporting Services (obviously I like that I already have a title)

-Most of my MDX writing has been for report datasets.  Given the limitations that MDX faces in SSRS (namely that you can only have measures on columns) sometimes I have to do some creative tweaking of my queries to get what I want.  I could showcase some of those tweaks.  Potential excuses for not doing this session?  Tablix eliminated a lot of the tweaking I HAVE to do so I may have fewer examples.  Do I have enough examples for an hour session? Potentially too advanced for beginning reporters while being too novice for advanced reporters?

2: Generic Reporting Services Tips and Tricks

-Everyone loves reporting services (or at least they love going to sessions on it).  There’s a lot that can be done with it.  It looks pretty (or should if you do it right).  Excuses?  What can I say that is new?

3: Visualizing MDX: A Set Theory Primer

-I just did this session remotely for the St Louis BI Group.  I feel like in order to understand MDX, people should have a basic knowledge of Set Theory, but I may be biased because I was a math major that loved (and aced) my set theory classes.  Excuses? New content and I really don’t know how to phrase it.  It ended up only being about a half hour long.  It’s hard to do via PowerPoint (if it was a chalk talk I’d be ALL over it.  But again, I’m a mathematician.  Chalk is like crack to me).

4: Something with PowerPivot

-I figured out how to do some correlation/rollup stuff despite the lack of stat functions and hierarchies in PowerPivot.  So that could be one long demo.  I also did that whole post on the ALL() function.  Excuses:  A lot of people are better at PowerPivot than me (read: powerpivotpro, Marco Russo, Alberto Ferrari).  Plus, the stuff I figured out will likely be obsolete once the new version of PowerPivot comes out since they are adding hierarchies and stat functions (yay!)

5: Dynamic MDX/mixing MDX and SQL/Analysis Services Stored Procedures

-I’ve had to do a lot of this for a project.  Excuses: Is it too niche?  Positive:  I can steal some of my mom’s slides from her talk on ASSP’s while adding (what I think) were some omissions in her examples of usage of ASSPs (namely being able to call SQL stored procs using your ASSPs to return data in your MDX query omgomgomg useful)

So those are my ideas and excuses.  I am also open to any other suggestions – What do YOU want to hear?  And also – what is the level you are at?  Do you want more intro stuff, more intermediate stuff, or advanced deep dives?  Help a sister out!

I couldn’t come up with an interesting title and ‘Simply The Best’ was not going to cut it.  I hold my titles to high standards!  You know that I really tried to think of a good title because this post is a week late (and that’s because of the title – not because I was sick or had jury duty or am a chronic procrastinator or have been spending way too much time watching Netflix…), but in the end I knew I had to just bite the bullet and write.

I started off PASS week with Chris Webb’s session on “Comparing PowerPivot with Analysis Services”.  And it was fantastic (did you have any doubts?)!  I bugged him personally to make sure he got his “Is he right for you?” quiz up on his blog and without further ado here it is, the definitive way to know if you should go for the complicated but steady guy (SSAS), or the speedy, slick new kid on the block (PowerPivot):  They’re both so dreamy!

Chris Webb was also the source of some controversy in the blagosphere for his post following Day 2 of PASS: Day 2 of PASS There have been some rumblings of concern in the BI community concerning whether PowerPivot and the BI Semantic Model that was unveiled that week were going to end up being the future of Analysis Services, thus heralding an end to MDX and the Dimensional model as we currently know it.  Chris’ post did a wonderful thing – it got a response from Microsoft!  Amir Netz personally responded in the comments of the post and the Analysis Services team also wrote a post in response, clarifying the SSAS roadmap for Denali and beyond: HERE.  Chris finished up with a final post responding to the response HERE.

Now, of course, while we have these statements from Microsoft, the proof is in the pudding and it is VERY clear that PowerPivot is here to stay, and that means learning DAX.  Thankfully, a lot of new improvements (that were very necessary) are coming in Denali, but even with additions to help simplify things like statistical calculations, DAX is far from an intuitive language.  It looks like Excel, but it’s not Excel.  It’s used in SSAS but it is DEFINITELY not MDX.  I hated MDX at first but I love love love love it now because of its flexibility and power and it would be a shame for it to disappear.  As much as PowerPivot in Excel is touted as being user-friendly, there is much about DAX that is NOT intuitive.

I attended Alberto Ferrari’s session on “Advanced Data Modeling in PowerPivot” and had my mind personally blown.  I’ve spent some time trying to understand some of the trickier things DAX can do (when there are only two people in your company, SOMEONE has to become the ‘expert’), but all Alberto had to do to make my head hurt was use a Calculate function with one argument.  One.  I didn’t even know that was ALLOWED!  In doing so he changes row context to filter context.   Brilliant.  I think I understand it, but don’t ask me to explain it.  I will simply wave my hand and say it is magic.  But I will also direct you to Alberto Ferrari and Marco Russo’s excellent book on PowerPivot: Microsoft PowerPivot 2010 for Excel: Give Your Data Meaning.  You want to learn DAX?  These guys know DAX.  But even Alberto was quick to remind that this stuff is NOT intuitive and definitely NOT for just power users.  LEARN DAX.

Finally I have to give a shout-out to Stacia Misner’s session on Analysis Services Stored Procedures.  There is not a lot of info on how to use these.  I know this, because I had to figure out how to use them!  But once you learn, it’s amazing what kind of things you can do with them that simply aren’t possible in native MDX.  I highly recommend checking out her session if you got the DVD and weren’t able to attend.

But PASS wasn’t only about the sessions – there were parties and luncheons and swag oh my!  In particular, I just want to mention the Women in Technology luncheon at PASS.  This was my first time attending the luncheon, despite this being my third year at PASS.  I was pleasantly surprised at the turnout, and how open it was to not just women, but men.  I am always cautious about aligning myself with groups that seek to promote women, because so many of them can degenerate into groups that try to promote women at the expense of men.  I know there is discrimination out there – often subconscious and passive  - and I do think that societal attitudes towards what we expect from women need to change, but my hope is that this can be done through pushing equality and gender-blindness and acceptance of diversity.   It really was lovely to see all the men there (some even in skirts) and hearing stories about how they want the best for their daughters.

I also thought Billy Jo Murray was excellent as a panelist, and I loved how she simply told women “Sit at the table…And once you’re at the table, SAY SOMETHING.”  My favorite feminist is Virginia Woolf.  A Room of One’s Own is my personal feminist manifesto and she says exactly what Billy Jo said – Sit at the table, and say something.  Walk the walk.  You can’t wait for someone to give you permission to do so, you have to do it.

I also have to insert an obligatory “Moooooom, you’re embarrassing me!” line since I figured it unwise to do it myself at the luncheon for fear of drawing even MORE attention to myself.  I am my mother’s favorite example of how she’s contributed to Women in Technology .  In somewhat related news, I finally broke down and joined twitter as @BakseDoesBI.  I figured if she’s going to go chattering away about me in cyberspace, I better be able to keep tabs on it.  Expect many tweets on knitting and tea.