A personal ‘thank you’ to everyone who attended my session at SQL Saturday Jax yesterday; your excitement about starting (or continuing) your technical journey was inspiring. A special ‘thanks’ to those who personally took the time to tell me that they were encouraged, that they could create their own technical path to ‘fully employed’ as a result of the session. I am truly humbled by your gracious comments.
The slide deck for the presentation is now loaded to the SQL Saturday website: scroll down the page, find my session, and you’ll see the download option. In addition, I’ve included the slide deck with this blog post as well. Three Foundational Bricks PDF format
Many of you took the time to complete the session survey, thank you for your positive feedback! There was one comment that caught my eye, and I want to address it briefly now, and hope to go into more detail with another blog post. The survey comment asked the question ‘how to become fully employed but no work experience’.
The focus of yesterday’s talk was to provide you resources to get you started in the learning process, but the ‘experience’ question is a good one. Until I can address this in detail with a future blog post, I’ll leave you with two ideas. After you’ve learned your skills, volunteer your technical skills at a non-profit organization.
Non-Profits
Small non-profits usually cannot afford much IT support, so you volunteering your services would provide them with the technical services they need, and provide you with the ‘real-world’ experience you need for your training (and your resume).
Create a Portfolio
Should any of your training incorporate Power BI, you can show your reports and dashboards live on your Power BI site (which is free for a personal account). Also, create some SSRS reports and capture them with screenshots; you can then embed the screenshots as part of your growing portfolio.
Let me know if delving further into this is of interest to you, and we can explore this in greater detail. I would love to hear from you, so feel to leave comments/questions on what you’re interested in hearing about. I’d like to explore Power BI Desktop and T-SQL basics you need to know in the coming weeks.
Before I close for today, you might want to sign up for IT Pro Camp on June 11th at Keiser University, click here for more information. 
So thank you for taking this technical journey with me as we continue becoming ‘technical’ together. And consider signing up for new blog notices by subscribing at the Subscribe@ section to the left. Until next time!
Susan Schneider lives in Jacksonville, Florida with her wonderful husband Steve. She enjoys sailing and is a ‘wanna be fisherman’, and loves all things BI. See more information under the ‘About Me’ section. Remember to sign up for new blog notifications: Go to Subscribe2 on the sidebar and sign up!