Today in our rogue’s gallery of #SQLCruise attendees, we’re meeting Karen Lopez. She’s @DataChick on Twitter, and she blogs at InfoAdvisors.com, her consulting company.

Howdy, Karen! Congrats on being the very first person to sign up! What made you want to get on board?

@DataChick on Twitter

Well, it’s a cruise…and it’s SQL Server…

Seriously, I’m drawn to the longer sessions allowing for more than just an overview of a topic. Being first was about making certain that I got a spot in the class.

From watching you fly around on Twitter, I know you travel a lot. Have you ever been on a cruise before?

No, I haven’t, so I’m looking forward to this. The main issue with being on the road all the time is that when I do have time off I just want to be home. So time off for me is typically staycations or vacations tacked on to the beginning or end of work-related travel when I can do that. The SQLCruise allows me to have vacation time between training sessions. That’s going to be a wonderful change of pace for me. I’m also looking forward to the socializing that will happen between sessions. Even though I haven’t met any of the people leading or attending, I feel as if I know all of you from our conversations on Twitter, reading blog posts, and attending webinars.

When you’re not in the training, where will you be? Me personally, I’m the Lido Deck type – I just veg out on lounge chairs drinking margaritas and watching the waves go by.

I’m trying to make those plans now. The chance to eat, drink, relax, then eat some more will be in the top running. I have no idea how I’m going to survive limited connectivity, though. Perhaps some time offline and interacting with real humans will be good for me. Margaritas may help that. It’s bad enough that most of my writing has devolved to sentences that are 140 characters or less.

I did take a look at a few of the excursions. The adventure and kayak ones looked good. I was also hoping to take a few loops around the jogging track so that I can say I ran from Miami to Cozumel. So many choices…

What books are you bringing for the cruise? I’m especially interested since you recommended Jerry Weinberg’s book “The Secrets of Consulting” to me, and I absolutely loved it.

I’m glad you liked it. I use the knowledge I gained from The Secrets of Consulting book every day, often several times in the same meeting. In one of my reviews of it I say that it’s not really about consulting at all; it’s about how to make decisions and how to give advice. We all do that constantly, even if we don’t have “consultant” in our titles. You should check out some of Jerry’s other works, especially those about Systems Thinking.

I have my phone loaded up with many days worth of Audible books, which I’m hoping will be even easier to read while I’m relaxing with my eyes closed. I usually choose what to read based on my mood, so it would be difficult now to say what I’ll be listening to when the time arrives. My top candidates at this point are _Leadership and the Sexes_ (Gurian & Annis) which looks at how gender impacts how people work, and _The Drunkard’s Walk_ (Leonard Mlodinow), which is about randomness and how we sometimes misunderstand how it works.

You work with lots of database servers – what kind of reputation does SQL Server have at the moment? Is it gaining any credibility amongst the Oracle folks?

I don’t know how well it’s doing with Oracle professionals, but I work with many clients building large data systems and software products on SQL Server. In my role as a data architect, it’s important that tools I use support the DBMSs I’m working with. SQL Server is well-supported with those tools, and more tools are coming to the market regularly. That’s a great sign that SQL Server has credibility.

What kinds of topics interest you most in the database world these days? With your architect work you must see all kinds of cool stuff.

Right now the most interesting things I’m looking at are semantic technologies and newer forms of databases. I see these as good complementary technologies to SQL/relational technologies. Some people see these as competitors, but I don’t see them that way; there’s no one right tool for all uses. I’m also interested in data protection approaches – from business processes that protect data all the way through implementation techniques. Data protection is a hot topic these days and we in the data profession need to be prepared for increasing requirements to protect data privacy, data quality, and data security.

I’m so looking forward to working with everyone on the trip…er…class.

Thanks for taking the time to do this interview!

So to recap, we’ve got two attendees from very different backgrounds: a production DBA at high-load web site, and an architect-level consultant. Beyond that, though, they’ve got two very different blogging backgrounds; Karen is an established blogger who’s taught Brent a few tricks, and Yanni just got started blogging. This kind of diverse group is going to make for some great dinner table discussions about careers, business, and databases. This interaction is one of the reasons we’re so excited about SQLCruise.

Next up: someone in between these two blogging extremes.

And you could be here too! We’ve still got plenty of space available. We’ve heard from a few people that they’ve taken a chance, showed the SQLCruise site to their boss, and their boss has said yes! It’s just turned into a matter of getting their better half to go along. Why not ask your boss – you might be surprised!