Tracy Boggiano
Database Superhero and Champion of Change
Raleigh, North Carolina, United States
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Tracy, a Senior SQL Developer with Abarca Health, juggles SQL queries and civic responsibilities. When she isn't busy exchanging banter with databases, Tracy amplifies her impact in the real world. Her dedication to the NC Guardian ad Litem program since 2003 has been louder than any keynote speech, providing a voice for the voiceless foster children. SQL Server might be her day job, but it's clear that her heart beats for these kids. She's not just a member but an active voice on several councils and boards, defending those with mental illness and foster families. A Day in the Life of Tracy: from data architect to architect of change!
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The Human Side of Automation: Burnout, Cognitive Load, and Building Sustainable PowerShell Teams
Automation reduces toil, but why does burnout still persist? What happens when alert fatigue, cognitive load, and shifting priorities outweigh the benefits of “just automate more”? And how can PowerShell teams build systems that support humans as effectively as they support infrastructure?
This session examines the human factors that shape automation success: unclear ownership, rushed changes, fatigue‑risk rotations, communication gaps, and cognitive overload during incidents. We’ll explore practical ways to design processes and automation patterns that protect engineers — reducing alert noise, improving handoffs, strengthening psychological safety, and creating humane on‑call rotations.
You’ll leave with clear strategies for spotting burnout signals, structuring healthier workflows, and using automation intentionally to lower cognitive load. If your automation is solid but your team is exhausted, this session provides the tools and language to build more resilient, sustainable PowerShell teams.
PowerShell for Data Reliability: Automating Checks, Drift Detection, and Recovery
Data systems fail differently than traditional infrastructure — so what makes their failures harder to detect, diagnose, and prevent? Why do configuration drift, silent corruption, and hidden misconfigurations slip past even mature teams? And how can PowerShell be used not just for automation, but as a true reliability guardrail that helps engineers see trouble before it becomes an outage?
This session focuses on practical, real‑world techniques for improving reliability across SQL Server and hybrid data environments. We’ll walk through automating health checks, detecting configuration drift, validating critical settings, and spotting early warning signs that often precede incidents. You’ll also learn how to orchestrate recovery workflows and build lightweight observability patterns that help teams catch issues earlier and respond faster — all grounded in field-tested experience rather than theory.
Attendees will leave with reusable scripts, reliability patterns, and a blueprint for reducing midnight emergencies. If you’ve ever wished your data systems would warn you before something breaks, this session provides clear strategies, actionable patterns, and PowerShell-driven guardrails to make your environments more predictable, resilient, and operationally mature.
Perf Tune Your Life with Atomic Habits
In the database of life, we often get fixated on the end result, forgetting the SQL syntax that gets us there. We obsess over the desired output (goals) but overlook the input and transactions (habits) required for success. This session, inspired by 'Atomic Habits' and sprinkled with some database humor, will explore how to optimize our path to success by treating daily habits like well-indexed systems. Join us as we refactor our life's code, turning daily habits into our own personal stored procedures for success. Expect a healthy dose of SQL puns and an exciting journey from SELECTing goals to INSERTing effective habits.
Mastering dbachecks and Dodging the Auditors
Let's face it, auditor visits can feel like pop quizzes nobody signed up for. Tired of scavenging for print screens or wrestling with endless server queries just to provide compliance data? Why not woo them with a slick PowerBi report whipped up through PowerShell's dbachecks? Join us as we delve into the magic of dbachecks, with a spotlight on CIS compliance. And for the encore, we'll craft custom checks tailored to your unique security needs. Let’s turn those audit blues into a compliance groove!
From Chaos to Clarity: Bullet Journaling for Mental Health Success
Life’s demands can leave our mental health feeling scattered and unmanageable. Bullet journaling offers a powerful way to organize your thoughts, track your emotions, and turn chaos into clarity. In this session, we’ll explore how to use bullet journaling as a tool for mental health success by capturing key data—like mood, triggers, habits, and medication—and transforming it into actionable insights.
Discover how to:
- Build a personalized mental health bullet journal that works for you.
- Spot patterns in your emotional well-being using simple data tracking.
- Turn raw observations into strategies for improved mental health.
Whether you’re seeking balance, growth, or a deeper understanding of your mental health, this session will empower you to use bullet journaling as a pathway to clarity and success. Take control, one page at a time!
Empowering Leaders to Champion Employee Mental Wellness
Navigating the intricate landscape of an employee's mental well-being can be challenging for leaders. What do you do when a team member struggles mentally? How do you address their return after a mental health break? Or even broach the subject when you perceive a problem? This presentation aims to unravel these questions, offering concrete techniques for leaders to effectively support the mental health of their teams. Ideal for anyone in a leadership capacity, this session brings clarity and actionable insights to a complex issue.
Automating SQL Server Security Audits with PowerShell: dbachecks and CIS Benchmarks
Security baselines are only useful if they’re consistently enforced, and in most SQL Server environments, configuration drift, missed patches, and inconsistent settings quietly accumulate until they become real risks. The CIS Benchmarks provide a clear standard for secure SQL Server deployments, but manually validating them is time‑consuming, error‑prone, and rarely done with the rigor auditors expect. PowerShell changes that.
In this session, I will demonstrate how to automate SQL Server security audits using PowerShell, dbachecks, and custom validation logic aligned with CIS Benchmarks. We’ll walk through how to detect drift, validate critical security settings, confirm least‑privilege access, and surface misconfigurations before they become incidents. You’ll learn how to build repeatable audit pipelines that run on demand or on schedule, and generate evidence for compliance teams.
We’ll also explore how to extend dbachecks with custom rules, map checks directly to CIS controls, and produce clear, leadership‑friendly reports that highlight risk, remediation steps, and trends over time. This session focuses on practical, real‑world patterns you can apply immediately, whether you manage one SQL Server or hundreds.
If you’ve ever wished your SQL Server environment could tell you exactly where it’s drifting from secure baselines, this session will show you how to build those guardrails with PowerShell.
Workload Analysis Made Super Easy: PowerShell and WorkloadTools
This session is designed for DBAs and data professionals who need to analyze SQL Server workloads efficiently without getting lost in complexity. Workload analysis often feels overwhelming—manual configuration, time-consuming processes, and inconsistent results can slow you down.
In this presentation, you’ll learn how to eliminate those pain points by automating workload analysis with PowerShell and WorkloadTools. I’ll show you how to streamline configuration and execution, enabling you to collect, analyze, and interpret workload data with minimal effort.
By the end, you’ll walk away with practical scripts and techniques to simplify workload analysis, save hours of manual work, and gain actionable insights to optimize database performance.
The Superhero's Handbook for SQL Server Error Handling
Every hero needs the right powers—and for DBAs and data professionals, mastering error handling is essential. This session is for anyone who wants to build resilient SQL Server code and stop errors from becoming villains in their environment.
We’ll tackle common challenges: unpredictable failures, poor error messaging, and inconsistent handling that leads to chaos. You’ll learn how to implement TRY…CATCH blocks, choose between RAISERROR and THROW, and craft custom error messages that turn confusion into clarity.
By the end, you’ll have practical techniques to prevent downtime, improve troubleshooting, and strengthen application reliability. Join us and unlock the superpowers that make error handling a strength, not a weakness.
Heroes of Compliance: Mastering SQL Audit and Extended Events
Every hero needs a stronghold—and for data defenders, that fortress is SQL Server Audit. In this session, we’ll uncover advanced auditing techniques to secure your environment across on-prem and Azure. Learn how to configure audit specifications, action groups, and filters, optimize performance, and meet compliance requirements. We’ll also explore how Extended Events complements SQL Audit for deeper diagnostics and troubleshooting. By the end, you’ll know when to rely on SQL Audit for compliance and when Extended Events becomes the hero for granular monitoring. Join me and master the superpowers that keep your data safe in hybrid environments.
The Hero’s Journey: Mastering Your New DBA Role
Starting a new DBA role can feel like stepping into a world of chaos—but every hero needs a plan. This session is for DBAs and data professionals who want to confidently take charge of their environment from day one.
We’ll tackle common challenges: disorganized code, weak security, and inconsistent standards that make systems unpredictable. You’ll learn how to prioritize tasks, implement best practices, and follow a clear roadmap with 30-day, 90-day, and 1-year milestones for success across on-prem and Azure environments.
By the end, you’ll leave equipped with strategies to transform uncertainty into control and become the hero your data environment deserves.
Leveraging Data for Mental Health
This session is for database professionals and data enthusiasts who want to apply their data skills to personal development and mental health. Managing mental health can feel overwhelming, and many struggle to identify patterns or take proactive steps.
We’ll solve that by showing how data-driven journaling can turn scattered thoughts into actionable insights. Attendees will learn how to collect, analyze, and visualize personal mental health data.
By the end, you’ll have practical techniques to track mood, identify triggers, and make informed decisions to improve well-being. This session empowers you to use your data expertise for the most important system you manage—yourself.
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Tracy Boggiano
Database Superhero and Champion of Change
Raleigh, North Carolina, United States
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