Hi everybody!
My name is Daniel Hardegree and I'm currently the Box Office Manager at our organization. We've been on Tessitura for almost three years and we have a pretty small staff and only a handful of us really use Tessitura beyond just selling tickets. We've discovered that there is STRONG need for someone who can fulfill more of a comprehensive Systems Admin/DBA/Systems Analyst/General IT role, and I'm looking to move into that position. I'm in the process of gathering details to compose a job proposal to our executive staff and I was hoping some of you guys would be able to point me in the right direction on some of the details. I'm mostly looking to see what kind of training and resources one would need for this position.
Here's a little background on myself. I've been the box office manager for 5 years and am the closest thing to a Tessitura Superuser at our organization. I ran point on the majority of our implementation process with oversight from our university's IT project manager and staff. I am currently in school pursuing a B.S. in Information Systems so I'm already on the path for this kind of role. I do have some basic SQL skills and understanding but not any practical experience with it.
As mentioned above I really need to discover what all training and resources I would need for this role. Anything you can provide would be greatly beneficial, and I look forward to your responses.
Thanks!
Hi Daniel!
Your story sounds rather similar to mine; I was the Box Office Manager at my org, and in the process of implementing Tessitura and beyond, my role shifted gradually to be purely IT-focused. At the time, I had enough of a background in technology to get started (though my degree is in music), but the past five years have been characterized by constant learning of new skills and technologies.
I echo the great information already in this thread, and will add the following:
I can't overstate how beneficial it can be to immerse yourself in the community culture surrounding the technologies you find yourself working with. These forums obviously are a great jumping-off point, but I'll also direct you to some more community resources: https://www.tessituranetwork.com/devs -- if you scroll down the page a bit, you'll find information on the Developer Portal, Virtual Coffee, Code Repository, and Slack Channel, with a link to request access (authentication isn't automatic from your usual tessituranetwork.com login). I've invested personally into building out a small library of Community Documentation on the Developer Portal wiki that includes information on getting started in an IT role, lots of links to resources within and outside of the network, and a number of articles demystifying various aspects of database-level Tessitura functionality: https://developer.tessituranetwork.com/display/devportal/Community+Documentation. I would also say the Slack Channel is a primary venue for ad-hoc mentorship, and we've built a nice community there that runs the gamut from DBA to web developer. I hope to see you there!
Outside of Tessitura, the SQL Server Community is tremendous, and I would want people to know about the following:
If you have some money to spend and it fits your learning style, Pluralsight.com has a massive library which includes SQL Server- and Windows Server-focused training courses that are both comprehensive and high-quality.
P.S. I highly recommend looking up T-SQL in Microsoft's own documentation at https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/t-sql/queries/queries as opposed to "W3Schools" which often has higher SEO. Usually it'll be close by in your google results if you append "tsql" instead of "sql".