By Wendy Pastrick

PASS is growing every day across the globe. Since the first of the year, we have welcomed 18 physical chapters across Asia, Africa, Europe, and South and North America, bringing us to 306 total PASS Chapters. Local groups allowing SQL Server professionals and enthusiasts to meet face-to-face and talk about their favorite technology builds our community and makes each of us a better professional. When was the last time you attended your local chapter meeting? If you aren’t sure when it meets, find your chapter on the PASS website and check out its schedule.

If there isn’t a Chapter in your area, PASS has all the tools you need to start one. With the help of online tools - plus the expertise of our amazing Community Evangelists, Karla Landrum and Niko Neugebauer -  setting up a group and getting the word out for your first meeting should be a smooth process. You can reach out to Karla and Niko for all the details. Let’s continue the growth of our community and provide local networking in your city.

One of the things Chapters routinely need are people who will stand up in a room of their peers and share their knowledge. It doesn’t matter what your passion is, as long as it can teach at least one person one new thing, your willingness to share it will be appreciated. I hope that anyone who has attended one or two meetings can be encouraged to sign up with their Chapter Leader to speak at the next event!

You don’t have to be an MVP, or even someone with a special title at work. All you need is the desire to share with the community. Here are some questions to get you thinking about topics you could present:

•    Do you have a favorite feature, such as log shipping or Service Broker? Many people have very little knowledge in these areas and would welcome a short demonstration or case study about how to use them.
•    What kind of configurations do you use when you install your server? How about database settings that become part of the standard for your organization? Share them with your colleagues!
•    Have you solved a tricky problem? Describe it to the room, and let them know how you went about solving it. Your experience could benefit others.

Remember, keep up the great work and let people know how your local Chapter has helped you. Then, give back a little and volunteer to help your Chapter Leader or SQLSaturday event team, or sign up as a speaker! I’m looking forward to meeting all the Chapter Leaders, Regional Mentors, and community at large at PASS Summit 2013 in Charlotte in just a few months.

It’s been a big year already, and I’m sure more great things are coming soon!
 

With the election season for the PASS Board of Directors fast approaching, there will be three seats up for grabs in September. These seats will represent US/Canada, EMEA, and one open seat. As such, the Nomination Committee (NomCom) will reflect the composition of the 2013 Board elections. The NomCom will be composed of five members and chaired by Immediate Past President, Rushabh Mehta. One of these positions will be filled by a member of the Board of Directors, and the final three members of the NomCom will be elected by the PASS community. 

Being a member of the NomCom is an exciting opportunity. Members of the NomCom get a behind-the-scene experience with the Board of Directors election process, using their knowledge and previous volunteer experience with PASS to review applications for candidacy of the Board according to process and criteria outlined by the Board of Directors. Once complete, the NomCom then presents a list of recommended candidates to the Board of Directors, which then approves the final slate.

Think you might be up for the job? The NomCom election process starts with an application, opening June 12 and closing June 19. Stay in the know and watch the next issue of the Connector for application information.


 

You’ve probably tapped into the gold mine of session recordings available to PASS members from events such as PASS Summit, PASS SQLRally, and 24 Hours of PASS. But did you know you also have access to hundreds of hours of free SQL Server training via PASS Virtual Chapter archives?

From the PASS Virtual Chapters page, simply click on the Virtual Chapter you’re interested in, and check out the group’s Archived Presentations page. If you miss a session or want to review a favorite, most VCs have recordings available for on-demand replay within a week of the live presentation.

To receive notifications of upcoming webcasts from the VCs of your choice, just click “Register to Join” for the VCs you want to hear from. You’ll be in good company, with more than 27,000 VC members from across 100+ countries taking advantage of the free training right at their fingertips.

 

After receiving positive feedback on the PASS Business Analytics Conference (BAC) Chapter referral program – 14 local PASS Chapters received monetary rewards by participating! – a similar program for PASS Summit has been created. For PASS Summit 2013, any local PASS Chapter (by local, we mean that your Chapter meets in-person) is eligible to participate.

All Chapter leaders should have received a unique discount code to share with their members. When the discount code is used to register for PASS Summit 2013, the Chapter receives $50 USD, with a maximum of $1,000 to be paid out at the completion of the event. Please note that use of the Chapter discount code is not retroactive and cannot be applied to an existing PASS Summit registration.

The following PASS Chapters benefited from the BAC referral program:

The inaugural PASS Business Analytics Conference made its mark on Chicago and the world of business intelligence and analytics last week, featuring 1,150+ registrations and almost 900 attendees from across 26 countries. Thanks to all our attendees, speakers, volunteers, sponsors, and organizers for making the event such a success!

From amazing keynotes by Microsoft’s Kamal Hathi and Amir Netz and Freakonomics author Dr. Steven Levitt, to over 60 sessions by 85 of the BI/BA industry’s top experts and a Community Appreciation Party at Lucky Strike, the event delivered world-class training and nonstop networking opportunities. Many attendees also spent a day in one of the BA Conference’s five pre-conference sessions or took advantage of the co-located BigDataCamp meet-up before the Welcome Reception.

Check out all the highlights – including Microsoft’s public preview announcement of 3D mapping tool Project codename “GeoFlow” for Excel - in our community blog post roundups and on our Facebook photostream.

If you missed the conference or just didn’t get to all the sessions you wanted to, you can own the full set of PASS BA Conference session recordings on USB flash drive, including 60+ conference sessions and the Microsoft keynote. Order yours today!

More Business Analytics
Join Microsoft’s Roger Barga, who wasn’t able to make the PASS BA Conference due to weather, for a webinar presentation of “The Unrealized Power of Data,” Thursday, April 25, at noon ET – hosted by the PASS Business Analytics Virtual Chapter.
 

Scott Shaw, co-leader of PASS’s Virtualization Virtual Chapter, shares the group’s mission, upcoming speaker lineup, and a message for the community: Don’t be afraid to run SQL Server on a virtual machine.

Q. What’s the mission of the Virtualization Virtual Chapter?
A. The primary mission of the Virtualization VC is to educate and inform database administrators and other IT professionals about the risks and benefits of virtualization. We focus mainly on promoting running SQL Server on virtual platforms such as Microsoft Hyper-V and VMware vSphere and the techniques and methodologies for managing the environment.

Q. If you had one message about virtualization you’d like to share with the SQL Server world today, what would it be?
A. Don’t be afraid to run SQL Server on a virtual machine. Almost every implementation of SQL Server has the potential to run in a virtual environment, and the benefits far outweigh the risks. Take the time to understand the technology, and use it to your advantage.

Q. What can you tell us about the meetings you've had so far this year, and what can we expect the rest of the year?
A. We’ve had some very successful meetings this year. Attendance has been wonderful, typically ranging between 40 and 80 but sometimes shooting up to 120 or higher depending on who’s speaking. Interest is definitely strong for understanding virtual environments, and we thank the community for both speaking and attending. Looking forward, we have some great speakers coming up, including Brent Ozar (May 8), Grant Fritchey, Jes Borland, and Kendal Van Dyke.

Q. When are your meetings, and how can people keep up with VC news and sessions schedule?
A. Our meetings are on the second Wednesday of every month. We had some initial glitches with recording our sessions, but we currently have three presentations in the archive for on-demand viewing and will be making all future meetings available there soon after the live presentations. To keep up with the Virtualization VC, just sign up with us on the PASS Virtual Chapters page.

Q. How did you and co-leader Tom Norman get involved in the VC?
A. When previous VC leader Mark Swofford asked for volunteers to take over for him, Tom and I both answered the call, and I give thanks every day that Tom is there to help. Tom is unbelievable at getting great speakers to take the time to present. He sends out presentation notifications and does a lot of the hard work behind the scenes.

Q. How can people interested in speaking or with suggestions/questions contact you? Are you looking for sessions on any particular topics in the virtualization world?
A. If you are interested in speaking, please send an abstract to either me or Tom, and we'll be happy to schedule you. The presentations don’t have to revolve around SQL Server – we will accept almost any virtualization topic, including those that focus just on virtualization technologies and where they’re headed.

Congratulations and welcome to all the members of this year’s PASS Program Committee! Guided by Program Director Adam Jorgensen and co-Program Managers Amy Lewis and Lance Harra, the Program Committee is responsible for organizing a world-class PASS Summit educational program that equips SQL Server and Business Intelligence professionals for today’s fast-changing world of data.

The 58-member group – PASS’s largest volunteer committee – reviews and selects speakers and sessions for PASS Summit, builds guidelines and resources for creating top presentations, ensures all PowerPoint slide decks meet the highest standards, and works to improve processes for developing and evaluating speakers and encouraging participation in all PASS speaking opportunities, from local and Virtual Chapters to SQLSaturday and 24 Hours of PASS to the Business Intelligence Conference and Summit.

As the PASS Summit 2013 Call for Speakers draws to a close this week, Program Committee members stand ready to begin their work and deliver an exceptional lineup of sessions and speakers. Without further ado, here is your 2013 Program Committee:

Last month we asked the community about the sessions, content and speakers they want to see in the line-up for PASS Summit 2013. The results of the survey provided some interesting insights: a ranking of session types indicated that content on tips & tricks and best practices were the top choice and that tracks on Application and Development, Administration and Deployment and Business Intelligence tracks were what people were most looking forward to; the community was also divided 50/50 as to whether a NoSQL/Big Data track should be added.

A PDF of the survey results is available here.

Cross-posted from the BA Conference blog

As the new PASS Business Analytics Virtual Chapter prepares for its third meeting – a gentle, business-focused introduction to Big Data – you can catch up on February’s presentations and plan to make this free training part of your monthly schedule.

Stacia Misner will take the VC’s webcast stage March 14 for “A Big Data Primer” (noon ET/16:00 GMT) to demystify Big Data, look at its implications for traditional data warehousing and reporting, and explore the technology and skill sets you need to successfully implement a Big Data strategy.

“This is going to be a great real-world session,” notes VC leader Melissa Demsak. “You’ll definitely leave with some inspiration and practical steps for tackling your first Big Data project.”

With a mission to provide quality virtual training to business analysts, BA/BI practitioners and architects, and data scientists, the VC’s focus is on creating a community for shared learning and enabling the creation of world-class business analytics solutions based on the Microsoft platform, Melissa explains.

“Our topics will naturally intersect with those presented by several of our sister VCs – Business Intelligence, Big Data, Data Architecture, and Master Data/Data Quality – but we’ll be covering them from an analytics perspective,” she adds. “We’ll also include non-Microsoft solutions and topics outside the traditional SQL Server and BI community, such as data visualization, analytics, and data science.”

The BA VC meetings, scheduled for the second and/or fourth Thursday of every month, will all be recorded and archived for on-demand viewing. Recordings of the group’s first two meetings – Mark Tabladillo’s “A Case for Business Analytics Learning” and Chris Webb’s “What’s New for BI in Excel 2013” – will be available soon.

You can become a member of the BA VC by simply clicking Join next to Business Analytics in the list of VCs on the PASS Virtual Chapters page. “We'll keep you posted of all upcoming meetings, learning opportunities, and the latest and greatest information from Microsoft,” Melissa says. “We also have a special $200 discount code for the PASS Business Analytics Conference coming up in April – if you haven't signed up yet, just use the code BAC941VC when you register for some nice savings."

Interested in speaking at an upcoming BA VC webinar? Email your ideas to passbavc@sqlpass.org, and make sure you follow the VC on Twitter at @passbavc.

It’s never too early to start thinking about PASS Summit. This year Charlotte, North Carolina – the home of NASCAR and an abundance of outdoor activities, a lively nightlife and restaurant scene, and a vibrant arts and cultural center – will welcome over 5,000 SQL Server and BI professionals for PASS Summit 2013.

The process is already underway to create the best lineup yet of world-class sessions and speakers. The Community Call for Speakers – your invitation to help shape and participate in the Summit 2013 program – is open until April 3. Thinking about submitting a session (or four)? Check out the FAQs and get started today.

Thank you to everyone who submitted responses for the PASS Summit 2013 Program Survey – we appreciate your feedback and ideas on the sessions and speakers you want to see. Members of the soon-to-be-announced volunteer Program Committee will be reviewing your responses as they work to build an educational program designed to meet the needs of today’s data pros. Congratulations to SQL Server DBA Dana Stevenson from California, who won a Microsoft Surface for her participation in the survey.

Full-day pre-conference sessions will kick off the event Oct. 14-15, with the main conference beginning with the evening Welcome Reception Oct. 15 and featuring over 190 sessions Oct. 16-18.

If you’re thinking about attending PASS Summit 2013 but haven’t registered yet, you can still take advantage of the discounted rate when you register by April 15. Already registered? Make sure you tell your friends that you’ll be at PASS Summit for the first time or as a proud alumni by adding an attendee Twibbon to your Twitter account.

See you in Charlotte!