Rie Merritt
Sr Program Manager, Data Platform MVP & SQL Community Lead, Microsoft
Atlanta, Georgia, United States
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Rie lives with her family just north of Atlanta, Georgia. She worked as a SQL Server DBA, manager & director for over 20 years in many industries including the non-profit sector, education, big pharma, and e-commerce. She was awarded the MVP in the Data Platform 3 times beginning in 2017 and gave that up to accept her role as a Senior Program Manager with Microsoft in 2019. She is very involved with the Atlanta MDF User Group, various virtual conferences around the globe and leads the Microsoft initiative for Azure Data Tech Groups.
Area of Expertise
Topics
Identifying, Understanding, and Combating Gender Bias & Inequality
Gender Bias is something we're all guilty of. It's typically unconscious and often stems from long held misperceptions about women and job responsibilities. We'll learn about the origins of some of these biases and how to identify gender bias when we see it. We'll discuss some strategies for how both men and women can combat this at work and in our every day lives. This session is about developing *positive* solutions to a problem that often goes undiscussed.
Let Her Finish: Supporting Women's Voices in Tech
Next time you attend a meeting, watch what happens when women at the table offer ideas. If your office is like most in America, you’ll notice women are interrupted almost three times as often as men. Some interruptions are to assert dominance but sometimes people do it to be helpful & offer affirmation. Regardless of the intent, the results are the same. Women are being left out of the conversation. The consequences are real. Male executives that speak more frequently in meetings are rewarded with 10% higher competence ratings from peers & better performance reviews from bosses. This translates into $ when raises and bonuses are handed out.
This discussion will cover positive solutions that help women’s voices be heard. Women need to be more assertive. We need to learn to say “Stop interrupting me.” and “I just said that.” However, men can be, no HAVE to be, part of the solution. They can help women become part of the conversation.
Real World Implications of Bias in Coding & Machine Learning
Computers can't be biased, right? I mean, it's just lines of code. Yes or No. Ones & Zeros. Those lines of code are written by people. People have life experiences that color how they see the world. Okay, let's be blunt. People have baggage. And that baggage is seeping into your application, surveys and web forms.
You've got an idea for a new app and it's going to change the world! Right? You're working on the GUI for your company's web portal and you know just what information to collect from the user. Are you sure about that? Odds are pretty good that the information you're going to collect is a reflection of your life & your experiences.
Learn how to identify bias when it seeps in, how to code to be inclusive instead of exclusive , and some quick tips & tricks to make sure you're accounting for all the users that will use YOUR application to change the world. Instead of just the ones that look like you.
10 DBA Tasks for Azure SQL: Whats Different from On-Prem
Adoption of Cloud is at an all time high, with no end in sight. Managing a small fleet of databases on-premises was something you used to understand. In this session, we'll cover the 10 most common tasks a DBA needs to learn to manage in Azure SQL as well as they currently manage their On Prem installs. One of the great things about Azure SQL is that the skill set your team has developed over the years translates well. The tools and technologies you're familiar with are all there. So much is the same but some of the tasks that DBAs do are different.
Rie Merritt
Sr Program Manager, Data Platform MVP & SQL Community Lead, Microsoft
Atlanta, Georgia, United States
Actions
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