Slack was a useful tool until I became overwhelmed with the number of groups and communities that wanted to use Slack to communicate. At some point, Slack went from a productivity saver to a productivity killer for me. And I’m not the only one that has noticed issues. Here’s a thread from Hacker News where people debate if Slack is good, evil, somewhere in-between, or if people just don’t know how to use Slack properly.

All that aside, my main issue today with Slack is this: there is no way for me to block or mute another person.

SlackHQ Conversation on Twitter Last Week

Late last week I had an exchange on Twitter with @SlackHQ, where I asked for the ability to block or mute a person. Here was the response:

This isn't possible at the moment. As Slack is mostly used for work, blocking a colleague wouldn't be productive.

— Slack (@SlackHQ) March 16, 2018

I won’t disagree with that line of thought. We use Slack for work at SolarWinds, and many companies use Slack. However, it’s not just companies, as I reminded @SlackHQ:

Sure. But Slack is also used for communities, too. And communities need such features. Otherwise people won’t join, because @Slack will be the blocker due to it lacking such features.

— Thomas LaRock (@SQLRockstar) March 16, 2018

Well, to be fair, people *will* join the communities, then find out that the ability to block or mute a person does not exist. And then they will disengage, and leave.

Why I’m Leaving Slack Communities

The ability to block or mute other users is vital for any platform that is being used by a community. If the platform is not able to provide that service, then a percentage of community members will not engage. I’d rather use platforms that allow for me to engage with as many people as possible.

But that’s not the only reason. Here’s a few more:

– I now have 172 inboxes. Managing threads, channels, and communities is out of control. I need tools to help me be more productive, not less.
– The client app now consumes >3GB of RAM at times, mostly because I’m a member of way too many communities.
– For Slack to be useful you need to be able to archive your content and message, and that can cost you some real money.
– Slack works about as effective for me as instant messaging, and I have better tools for sending messages.

Slack started out as something so promising but is now a victim of its own success. With everyone using Slack, it’s now hard for Slack to live up to the potential it once had.

Summary

Today I left a handful of Slack communities. It’s going to be good to have fewer distractions. I’m going to go back to focusing my time on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. If anyone needs to find me, check those places. Between those three platforms, I will have every opportunity to interact with the people I want to interact with daily.

I will still have Slack for work for now, until the next new tool comes along and promises to make our office more productive (hello Asana!)

The post Why I’m Leaving Slack Communities appeared first on Thomas LaRock.

I don’t believe that data breaches or shark attacks are increasing in frequency. What *is* increasing is our awareness of these events. Shark attacks are a bit easier to spot; person goes swimming, shark bites person, bystander calls television station, local police watching television then dispatch an ambulance to the scene, and the ambulance draws more attention and creates a bigger scene.

Data breaches aren’t as easy to notice for a bystander. They happen unnoticed for the most part. The only reason we do hear of them is that companies fear the backlash for a breach NOT being reported (as well as some laws requiring such breaches to be reported). Otherwise I bet we wouldn’t hear a thing about them (just like the Amity Mayor in “Jaws” didn’t want to scare the beachgoers during a holiday weekend.)

So we rely on persons inside the company to alert their bosses. The bosses alert their security team, who alerts the legal team, who then work with the PR team to craft a message to be delivered via some television network, and then everyone watching television knows that their financial details are at risk because they shopped at a Target during Christmas.

It Can Never Happen To Me

Let’s talk odds.

Currently (this post was written in 2014) there is a 1-in-11.5 million chance you will be bitten by a shark, and a 1-in-264 million chance you will die from a shark bite. Hopefully you will feel safer at the beach this year knowing the odds are in your favor to stay in one piece.

Unless you use a credit or debit card to buy some Del’s lemonade at the Snack Shack, that is. Then you may find your life isn’t as together as you might hope.

While you may not be likely to suffer a disfiguring bite from a predatory shark this summer, your odds of suffering a financial loss due to data theft is currently 7% or about 1-in-14.

Think about that number for a minute. Every 14 times you use a credit or debit card, you have a good chance of your data being stolen. That’s a remarkable number. And yes, the number of data transactions (financial, medical, etc.) on any given day is far more than the number of beachgoers in a given year. Let’s just focus on that 7% for a minute.

If reports of shark bites were at the same rate of data theft than on any given Saturday afternoon at the beach this Summer with 10,000 of your closest friends, 700 of them would suffer a shark bite…and about 30 of them would die.

I’d like to think that if shark attacks were happening at that rate then we would take steps to do something to avoid them. So why not do something with regards to data theft?

Can’t Win, Don’t Bother Trying

The only way to truly protect yourself from data theft is to live in a cave on a deserted island devoid of all human contact. Since that isn’t an option for many of us I believe we have just come to accept the risk associated with data theft.

Let’s get a few facts out of the way right now.

1. Your data is not safe once it leaves your possession. You don’t control it anymore. You can’t trust what others will do with your data.
2. Your data is not necessarily safe while in your possession. Think social engineering, or just leaving your workstation unlocked while you get coffee, or talking loudly about your work projects during dinner in a restaurant.

Nothing on the internet is safe. Blog posts, images…all ripe for theft. If you post or publish just know that someone is going to take from you at some point.

Likewise, every time you are asked to share information about yourself on a website you should just assume it will be used by someone, in some manner, whether you want them to or not. You are likely to find yourself added to email and cold calling lists. Any piece of data about you is out there for others to use.

Also, companies that pledge to guard your information often don’t (but they DO protect the businesses identity, so there’s that I guess). More than once I have caught companies sharing my information despite their pledge to never do so. And then I find that unsubscribing from spam results in more spam. Right now I have an outlook.com email alias that gets nothing but spam from France and I have never once used that email address for anything. So, where did they get my email address from?

Resistance Is (Mostly) Futile

It is true that resistance is futile here. However, you don’t have to make it easy for the bad guys to get your data.

Here’s a few things you can do:

1. Shred any documents that has personal information. Things like unsolicited credit card applications you get in the mail.
2. Do not share your location every minute of the day. Be aware about the geotagging of photos, too.
3. Question everything. No, Best Buy doesn’t need your phone number for every transaction.
4. Don’t use public computers for financial transactions.
5. Don’t talk loudly about work projects that are likely bound by a non-compete clause (or an NDA) with your employer.
6. Just say no: don’t give away common things like Social Security numbers, credit card info, date of birth, etc. If it seems odd, don’t give it, and move on.

Making it even just a tiny bit harder for a thief can be all it takes for them to look elsewhere.

Let’s face it, your data isn’t safe from theft, ever. You share, you run a risk of losing. This fact shouldn’t be new to anyone. Even Benjamin Franklin knew about the futility of trying to keep secrets:

“Three people can keep a secret if two of them are dead.” – Benjamin Franklin

If you want to avoid data theft, then don’t share your data with anyone. It’s as easy as avoiding shark attacks by not going to the beach (don’t get me started on Sharknado).

UPDATED: I meant to include links to two books written by Denny Cherry (blog | @mrdenny) regarding security. The first book from Denny is Securing SQL Server: Protecting Your Database from Attackers. The second is The Basics of Digital Privacy: Simple Tools to Protect Your Personal Information and Your Identity Online. Full disclaimer here: I served as the technical editor for both of those books, so of course I would want to pimp them in a blog post regarding data theft. No, reading those books won’t protect your data from theft, but they will give you the opportunity to make things more difficult. Most thieves don’t like difficult, they prefer the easy targets. Don’t be an easy target, go read those books.

The post How Safe Is Your Data From Theft? appeared first on Thomas LaRock.

It’s a big number.

Most numbers we deal with in life are at a much smaller scale. Speed limits, cups of coffee, street addresses, and even TPS reports (that’s transactions per/sec) aren’t usually in the 30k range.

So when I saw that I was coming up on my 30,000th tweet today I spent a few minutes reflecting upon what it all meant. The first thing I had to do was to define them in some way. So I decided to estimate that on average it takes about 40 seconds for me to write a tweet. No, it’s not that I am a slow typist, it is because most tweets are part of a conversation, so I have to spend time reading up to 140 characters before posting a reply. So, if every tweet of mine takes roughly 40 seconds of time then I would have spent 14 days of my life (since August of 2008) on Twitter.

Is that a lot? It depends. Was it worth it? That, too, depends. It depends on whether or not I can look back and find value in the time spent. I believe I can, and here are the main areas where I have found the most value for my time spent on Twitter.

1. I’m Introverted

I’ve always been a shy person, and meeting new people usually scares the hell out of me. However I am much more social online than I am in person. I know I’ve written about this before, and even told it to many of you and yet I still find myself having to answer the questions of “what’s wrong” when I appear withdrawn from a group or a discussion. Twitter allows for me to have conversations with people that I would likely never walk across a room and speak with. It helps me to break the ice, to become comfortable with someone to the point that I don’t mind meeting with them for the first time.

2. I Can’t Be Everywhere

Twitter allows for me to connect with people all over the world that I would not have been able to meet – especially if I only had 14 days in which to do so! By being active on Twitter I have been able to meet some truly wonderful people. These past four years have given me the opportunity to connect, share, and learn from many more people than if I had just sat in my cube and remained comfortable. Many times I think about all the people I have met through Twitter and it often seems as if it were not for Twitter I wouldn’t know 98% of you.

3. STS-133 and STS-134

Yeah, because of Twitter and @schierholz I got to see the Space Shuttle launch last year. Something like this doesn’t happen to me without Twitter:

I’d say that was worth the time spent, wouldn’t you? Think about all the other opportunities that exist for you to attend similar Tweetup events. Sure, nothing you go to will be as cool as a shuttle launch, but I’m sure you will find something worthwhile.

Interesting side note here…one of the people I met through Twitter, @tameraclark (rhymes with ‘camera’), is the whole reason I even knew about the NASA Tweetup. That’s like a double rainbow if you ask me.

4. Laughter

I love to laugh, who doesn’t? Twitter and social media in general allow for that to happen more frequently than ever before. Most of the time I have spent on Twitter has been spent laughing. Can you imagine being able to laugh for 14 days in a row? That sounds amazing to me. If you are using Twitter to be serious all the time then you are doing it wrong.

And the best part is that I’ve already done that.

The post The Value in 30,000 Tweets appeared first on Thomas LaRock.

Tomorrow at 9AM ET I am taking part in a tweetchat with MS Learning where we want to help promote the new training and certification options for SQL Server 2012. If you can’t make the 9AM show we will be doing a repeat performance at 9PM ET as well.

We will be tweeting about the skills database professionals will need to be successful in the future, and how the role of the DBA will evolve over the next 5+ years. We will also offer expert advice on getting certified, keeping your skills relevant for career advancement, and getting a foot in the door for a job.

If you want to join just use the #20yrs20ways hashtag and send us your questions, comments, and concerns. I look forward taking part in this as it gets me one step closer to being paid to tweet all day as a full-time job. You can find out more details at http://borntolearn.mslearn.net/btl/b/weblog/archive/2012/03/06/2020tweetchats.aspx

See you tomorrow!

The post Tweetchat with MS Learning tomorrow appeared first on Thomas LaRock.

Last fall I gave this blog a much needed makeover. I had a few goals in mind. One of them was to engage the readers (that would be you). And one way to measure this engagement is by using the Google Analytics, specifically the bounce rate. Now, the bounce rate is only one measure provided by the Google, there are many others, but this post will focus on only that one because I have a really cool graph to show you:

See that dip in my bounce rate? From December 1st 2010 until December 1st 2011 my bounce rate was 75.91%. From that dip on December 14th 2011 until today (March 7th, 2012) my bounce rate is 0.75%

And this dip drove me crazy. I couldn’t explain what had happened. Most of my blog changes were done over Thanksgiving weekend. But clearly something changed in mid-December. But what? I started pulling apart pieces of my blog, turning things on and off to see if they had an affect on the bounce rate. Clearly there were issues with my bounce rate and I needed to find what they were.

A little digging on the Goog and I found this article that helps explain why the traditional bounce rate metric is mostly crap anyway. It also told me about event tracking. And that gave me the clue I needed. So I went over to the plugin named Google Analyticator and found the option for Event Tracking and saw it was enabled. I disabled it and watched my bounce rate increase. I vaguely recall editing this option at some point, and it is likely I did so in mid-December and that this is the reason for my low bounce rate at the moment.

The reason event tracking changes the bounce rate is because it tells the Google that the reader is still reading my blog and marks that as an “event”. And events are considered to be the same as a pageview, which means your bounce rate is lowered as a result.

But is that a good thing? Now that my bounce rate is so low, does it have any real value for me? I went from one version of incomplete data to another. I can’t say that what I have now is any better than before. Oh, sure, I win bets with the other bloggers hanging out at Starbucks who don’t believe that my bounce rate is less than 1% for the previous 30 days. That part is nice. But in terms of engagement, I don’t think it is helping as much as it should.

So if engagement is my goal here, what metrics would I want to be using in conjunction with bounce rate?

• New Visitors – I want my content to be engaging, shareable, searchable, and useful. This metric helps me see if I am doing that.
• Top Landing Pages – I want to see which pages were hit and check the bounce rate there, this way I can see which pages were more engaging than others.
• Traffic Sources – I want to see where people are coming from. Is it through a search? A referral? I like for these percentages to be evenly distributed.
• Events – Well, if it is enabled, you might as well go and look to see what pages have the most events.

I am also thinking of disabling the bounce rate metric permanently, but I do enjoy the free lattes.

The post How To: Lower Your Bounce Rate in Google Analytics appeared first on Thomas LaRock.

No, not the big dip you see…the smaller dip just to the left. Turns out that the number of +1’s, shares, and comments to the old G+ account had an effect on my Klout score, dropping it 0.94 points in one day. Being the inquisitive type of person (and knowing that there is no real value to Klout anyway but I will save that for a different post) I decided to do an experiment.

On my Klout page there is a section for Facebook statistics. Unfortunately for the past year or so all it has ever said is “Facebook activity statistics are coming soon.” I am fairly certain the Mayans are coming faster than these statistics.

Anyway, I decided to remove the connection to Facebook since it didn’t appear to matter anyway. So I did, and the result is the rather large drop in my Klout score by 2.69 points.

Have you ever read the Klout page that explains how they do their scoring? I have. Here is the pertinent part I want you to pay attention to:

“Influence is built over time

In most instances, your influence should not radically change from one day to the next. The Klout Score is based on a rolling 90-day window, with recent activity being weighted more than older activity. So being inactive over the weekend or taking short break won’t have a major impact on your Score, but if you’re inactive for longer periods your Score will decrease gradually.”

Really? I don’t see how that can be true. And I reconnected my Facebook account the next day and then saw a jump by 2.81 points. Hey…wait a second…I gained .12 points and all I did was disconnect and reconnect one network? Hmmm….I wonder if I can keep doing that and inch my way towards 60? And now I wonder why I would ever care (sorry, that is a different blog post).

What I do believe this means is that we should be able to disconnect a network, measure the drop, reconnect, then repeat with a different network. The idea is that we should be able to see just how important each of the networks are for your overall score. This means you could then get an idea as to which network you should focus on in order to increase your Klout score. Is it Flickr? Instagram? YouTube?

Go ahead and try unplugging one network at a time and see where the data takes you.

The post Think Klout Isn’t Using your Facebook stats? Think Again… appeared first on Thomas LaRock.

Why? Well, I was given some good advice a long time ago about writing. I mentioned that I didn’t have anything to write about and my friend (a professional writer) told me:

“…then write that. Sit down at your desk, put the pen on the paper, and write out ‘I have nothing to write today.’ And if that is all you have for the day, that is fine. But chances are some extra words will come out. And when they do they will often keep flowing, like a brook that turns into a stream, and then a river.”

And she was right. So I want to give you the paper and pen. If you have felt that you wanted to write about something but never know where to get started, let Meme Monday help you get going.

The meme will be kicked off on the first Monday of each month. The first one will be on Monday, April 4th. The meme will be this:

Write a SQL blog post that tells a story in 11 words or less. (Yes, I was inspired by the same challenge laid down to Ernest Hemingway and we will use 11 words in honor of SQL11 ‘Denali’ and the fact that none of us are Hemingway.) As an example, your post could be something like “Query killed, rollback begins, family waiting while your dinner gets cold.”

I will make my attempt and then tag three others. But don’t wait to be tagged. Just write your own post and tag three people. If you have an idea for Meme Monday just let me know and I will kick it off on the first Monday of the next available month and tag others. But like I said, don’t wait to get tagged. When you see the topic just write your own post and tag some others.

And let the words flow.

The post Meme Monday appeared first on Thomas LaRock.