I must get out and write more

I had my monthly session with my business mentor today. Within my division mentors (or as some might say, coaches) are chosen to offer differing perspectives on the world. My first mentor was our former director of outsourcing; on his retirement I moved to guidance of the head of our financial services group. True, my work crosses several markets; finance, retail, utilities, and, occasionally, government but in reality my finance work is miles apart from the banking solutions my mentor delivers. Having one-to-one access to a senior manager is an amazing way to spend a significant part of the day.

Part of the session we white-boarded a few short-term career goals for me to achieve and what he needed the company to do for me to succeed. The main upshot of this is more writing. I have been given the company’s permission to submit an abstract for UK OUG – I have two possible titles in mind; one on summary performance (risky for a non-DBA such as myself) and the other an introduction to analytic functions (even more risky if Tom Kyte is in the audience). Conferences are about sharing knowledge and not every paper has to be impossible to understand by the majority. If I’m accepted to present I get free time to write the paper! But I must not spend too long on it as I also have a whitepaper to research and write on BI. This should be a challenge as it is to be vendor neutral and business (not IT) focused. There is also a longer piece of writing bouncing around my head that may see the light of day later this year, but that’s another story.