Tools Series: Evernote

This week I started thinking about the tools that I use and how I use them.  Evernote has played such an integral role in both my work and personal life I decided to review this one first.

Evernote is billed as a tool to help users remember everything.  It is more than its name suggests.  It captures notes, pictures, files, and more.  This is not an article designed to sell Evernote, just display how one consultant leverages it to be more efficient and productive.

Code Library

Reading through blogs, websites, and writing queries for clients generates a lot of code.  Much of the code is reusable.  Evernote gives me a central location to store this code and make it available on any device at any time.  The code can be tagged with keywords and then the it all becomes indexed and then searchable.  Code does not have to simply be in a text format.  I can attach the original code file or document to the note.

Reference

I will be the first to admit that I do not know everything.  I discover and learn new things all of the time.   Evernote allows me to collect that information in a central location and have it accessible in the modality of my choice.  I can clip sections of articles and keep that information as well as a link back to the original reference so I can always go back to the source.

Bookmarking

I have been a huge fan of bookmarking and began working with Delicious when it started in 2003.  I was drawn to the ease of use and the tagging concept.  Delicious has been in flux for some time and Evernote was a very natural transition with similar tagging and searching functions that drew me to Delicious.  I now use Evernote as my central repository for bookmarks.

Searching

I have discussed the storage of information but the power of this information is not in its storage but its recall and availability  Evernote indexes the content that I store on it and make is accessible via a powerful search engine.  It is not just text and PDFs that become searchable but images as well.  Evernote leverages Optical Character Recognition (OCR) to make text in images searchable.

Collaboration

John Donne quipped that “No man is an island…”.  This is especially true working as a member of a team.  Evernote allows users to create notebooks that can be shared with other users.  This has been huge when keeping running server change logs and multiple consultants working on different tasks.  It has also allowed my wife to keep track of all of my travel itineraries without having to ask me where I am all of the time.

Evernote has been a great tool that I leverage on a daily basis.  Without it I would be like the absent minded Professor Brainard.

Original Article

SQL Saturday #107, Houston

SQL Saturday is coming back to Houston on April 21st. Last year we had a great event and are looking forward to making this one even better. To that end we are pleased to be able to offer a pre-conference session on SQL Server Query Plans: Tuning and Management. The session will be lead by Kalen Delaney (Blog ). If you would like to get more information regarding the pre-conference and to register please see the registration page here.

For more information regarding SQL Saturday, please see the events site. I hope to see everyone there.

Original Article

Houston User Group Casino Night

The Houston SharePoint User group reached out to other area user groups this year and asked if we would like to participate in a joint user group event around Christmas time. We, of course, thought this was a fantastic idea. What is better than having community get together? Having multiple communities get together for a great event. Thus the joint Casino Night was born.

*When:* Wednesday, December 14th, 2011

*Where:*Norris Conference Center, Red Oak Ballroom

*Registration:* [Link](http://events.r20.constantcontact.com/register/event?llr=tbpmj6gab&oeidk=a07e5fkdzz637e59152)

##Special Notes
The registration email contained some special restrictions. Please see below:

Special restrictions may apply, some offers not valid in all states, see in-store for details, this offer not valid in Iceland or the Turkish Islands, no purchase necessary when purchasing, if you experience certain conditions longer than 5 to 6 six hours please see your doctor.

##Special Thanks
While I was not involved with sponsorship for this event [Red Gate](http://www.red-gate.com/) reached out to the community looking for special events at the end of the year. I responded with information for the event and they loved the idea. They loved it to the point that they helped sponsor the event. Just another reason I love being a part of the SQL Community.


Original Article