Jennifer Moser, Microsoft SQL Server Senior Marketing Manager and PASS Director, recently talked with PASS Marketing Vice President Thomas LaRock about the upcoming virtual launch event of SQL Server 2012 on March 7, 2012.

Thomas: I understand Microsoft is celebrating the launch of SQL Server 2012 with a Virtual Launch Event.  Why online?

Jennifer:  On March 7, 2012 we will be hosting the first ever online event to officially launch SQL Server 2012. We wanted a place where anyone, anywhere in the world could simply log-in and be a part of this exciting experience. There are so many reasons why hosting an online event made sense to us this year, but the biggest reason is that hosting a virtual launch event allows our customers to consume content at their own pace while still experiencing all the benefits of a live event.

Thomas:  Appreciate the focus on the international community.  What can we expect from this experience?  

Jennifer:  We are excited to have over 30 sessions that introduce customers to the new capabilities of SQL Server 2012. Attendees will hear from industry experts + Microsoft executives and be able to connect with peers from the #SQLFamily. We will also have an expo hall and networking lounge – just as you would have in a live event. One of our favorite features about launching SQL Server 2012 online is the community aspect. Attendees can connect, share, and learn from their peers all from the comfort of their own home or office. Customers can also win badges and hundreds of cool prizes throughout this virtual launch.

Thomas:  How is PASS participating in the SQL Server 2012 Virtual Launch Event?

Jennifer:  We are very excited to have PASS participate in the SQL Server 2012 Launch Event with a PASS booth in the expo hall area. PASS will have videos, links to content, and live chats with board members, local chapter leaders and PASS HQ. Part of the experience will include three live streaming keynote sessions in US, UK & EMEA, and Asia Pacific time zones to reach the maximum number of people. Our goal is to make the event as friendly to people across the globe as possible and we are especially excited to highlight regional & local PASS leaders throughout the experience.

Thomas:  Where do people go to register for the Virtual Launch Event?

Jennifer:  The SQL Server 2012 Virtual Launch Event registration has just gone live. Visit www.sqlserverlaunch.com and register today. We’re really excited see you all on March 7th to experience the SQL Server 2012 launch!
 

PASS is pleased to announce three new board members for the 2012/2013 term in what was a record-setting elections season. Adam Jorgensen of Pragmatic Works Consulting, Denise McInerney of Intuit, and Rob Farley of LobsterPot Solutions and a current International Advisor to the board were the top vote-getters in a competitive race for three open seats on the PASS Board of Directors.
 
The election proved that every vote counts, with only 68 votes separating the top three candidates and just 177 votes between third and fourth places:
 
1. Adam Jorgensen – 1,026
2. Denise McInerney – 990
3. Rob Farley – 958
4. Sri Sridharan – 781
5. Kendal Van Dyke – 762
6. Geoff Hiten – 526

A record 1,951 community members across 66 countries voted in the 2-week election, casting a total of 5,043 votes. That’s 867 more voters and 2,247 more votes than in 2010, and more than three times the number of voters who participated in 2009 (576). And for those who may think the election is decided in the first 2 days, 904 votes were cast in the first 2 days of voting and 832 in the last 2 days, with the candidate standings actually changing from the midpoint of the election to the final results.

Newly elected board members will officially begin serving their term on January 1, 2012. For more information about the candidates and the elections process, see the 2011 PASS Elections site.

Congratulations and thanks to all the candidates for an energetic and tightly fought race. And thanks to everyone who asked a question in the candidate forums, blogged and tweeted about the elections, and helped shape the future of PASS by voting.

As PASS continues to grow, it will need more and more great individuals to step up and lead. If you are interested in starting your own leadership journey, contact your local PASS Chapter or PASS HQ for opportunities to volunteer. After all, the 2012 elections will be here before you know it!

Jennifer Moser, Microsoft SQL Server Senior Marketing Manager recently spoke with PASS Marketing Vice President Rick Heiges about the latest release of Microsoft SQL Server 2012.

Jennifer: We’re happy to share that SQL Server 2012 RC is a production quality release providing:

• Greater availability. Deliver the required 9s and data protection with AlwaysOn, with added functionality over CTP3 that allows customers to experience multiple, readable secondaries for distributed scale of reporting and backup workloads and support for FileTable and FILESTREAM which brings first-class HA to complex data types.
  
•  Blazing-fast performance. More effectively govern performance in multi-tenancy environments like private cloud. Resource Governor enhancements include support for 64 resource pools, greater CPU usage control, and resource pool affinity for partitioning of physical resources and predictable resource allocation.
• Rapid data exploration. Empower end users with new insights through rapid data exploration and visualization. Discover new insights at the speed of thought with more feature/functionality in Power View, the highly interactive, familiar browser-based data exploration, visualization, and presentation experience for end users. 
• Credible, consistent data. In addition to CTP3 functionality delivered for Data Quality Services and Master Data Services, customers can better support heterogeneous data within Data Warehouses through new Change Data Capture (CDC) support for Oracle.
  
• Optimized productivity. Optimize IT and developer productivity across server and cloud with the new SQL Server Data Tools, a unified development experience for database and business intelligence projects, and cloud-ready capabilities within SQL Server Management Studio for snapshot backups to the Windows Azure Platform. Additionally, SQL Server 2012 offers a new version of Express – LocalDB. SQL Express LocalDB is a lightweight version of Express with all its programmability features, yet runs in user mode with a fast, zero-configuration installation and short list of pre-requisites. 

Download SQL Server 2012 RC today here: www.microsoft.com/sqlserver.

A week into campaigning and voting for three open seats on the PASS Board of Directors and PASS members are rocking the vote. It’s been great to see all the “I voted” messages on Twitter and the Elections Forums discussions on communications and transparency, PASS Summit locations, directors and pre-cons, and more. Thanks for getting involved!

Individual voting links have been emailed to all PASS members in good standing as of June 1, 2011. If you are eligible but did not receive a ballot, please contact PASS HQ.

Voting ends Dec. 20, so if you haven’t voted yet, there’s still time to learn more about the candidates and submit your choices. Visit the Candidate Campaign Space to learn more about the six candidates running for the 2-year Board terms:

• Adam Jorgensen
• Rob Farley
• Denise McInerney
• Geoff Hiten
• Kendal Van Dyke
• Sri Sridharan.

Even if you’re a more recent member of PASS, you too can have your say in this year’s elections. Go to the Candidate Forums to ask the candidates questions or simply have your say. Elections season is a great time for healthy debate on the future of PASS.

For more information about the elections, see the 2011 PASS Elections site. And watch the Dec. 28 Connector for elections results. Good luck to all the candidates, and happy voting!

By Allen Kinsel
(Reposted from Allen's blog)

Every year after the Summit the results of the thousands of evaluations are tabulated.  It seems every year the only question I hear after the summit is “when are the evaluations coming out?”  Well dear reader I’m happy to say, that day is today.  First id like to point out that this year we had well over 13000 unique session evaluations which is an increase of about 30% over 2010.

Online Evaluations produce unexpected results
One interesting thing I noticed in this years online evals was that we received evals for all sorts of “events” that happened at the Summit.  Normally, we only get them for sessions but because of the way the session scheduler was automated and integrated into the session eval forms, we actually received evals on many other events that took place at the summit other than regular sessions.  Receiving candid feedback on these events was quite refreshing and will be worked back into next years similar events.

Moving into the 21st century
This year since we offered online evaluations as well as paper evaluations I was interested to see what the turnout would be and while the amount of paper vs online evaluations entered was more lopsided towards paper than I’d have liked.  I believe that overall they were well used and next year we plan on only having online session evals.  I expect that if the room monitors push the online evals in the same manner they pushed the paper this year that we’ll get enough evals next year for this to be an effective option.  The real benefit other than costs of entering paper evals and killing trees is that if all of the evals come in a digital form I would see no reason that they shouldn’t be ready either real time or within a week or 2 from the end of the event but, Ill leave those details to next years Board member who's in charge of the Summit.  

Without Further ado, Here’s the link to the 2011 Summit top overall sessions.

The top sessions were calculated by averaging all of the evaluation answers then we excluded results if there were less than 20 evaluations or 20 attendees.

Also, if you were a speaker, You can log into the PASS Speaker portal site and get your full evaluation results (and the overall event scores) from the following link

http://www.sqlpass.org/summit/2011/Speakers/SpeakerPortal.aspx

Please join me again in congratulating all of the speakers from this years Summit, without them and their excellent contributions our community wouldnt be the same.

Edited-> I had the wrong filter criteria on our exclusion of sessions from the top list specification.  I stated we excluded if there were less than 10 evals and 10 attendees when the number was 15 each, I apologize for my fading memory.

By Sri Sridharan
(Reposted from Sri's SQL Rocks blog)

On behalf the NTSSUG Board and PASS, Erin Welker (Blog|Twitter) and I  are super excited to announce that the Call for Speakers for PASS SQLRally 2012 is now open.
 
As part of the Program Committee for SQLRally 2012, Erin and I have been working hard along with the PASS HQ team (Marcella, Anika, and Alison) for the last 8 weeks. We have made some minor tweaks from what happened in Orlando and hope this is received well by the community.

Key changes:
 
1. We will have sessions between 60-75min. How many of 60 and 75 min sessions is something that is still in the works. This was a big ask by many speakers in their feedback, and we are glad to do something about it.

2. Approximately 75% of the sessions will be selected by the Program Committee, and only 25% will be out for voting. We mainly did this is to make it simpler and easier from a process standpoint.
 
3. Finally, I know many of you personally asked me to allow 2011 Summit pre-con speakers to be allowed to speak at SQLRally 2012 – Dallas, and I was really hoping to be able to do something about it. As I came to understand during this process, one of the goals for SQLRally is to develop new speakers and specifically the pre-con speaker pool. I am not 100% sold with this approach since I could see myself go either way. At this point, this is a non-negotiable item to the host city. So, the rule to not allow a prior year Summit pre-con speaker to deliver a pre-con at SQLRally remains. We still encourage all Summit pre-con speakers to submit for regular sessions.

Hopefully the community likes the tweaks we have made in SQLRally Dallas 2012.
 

It's official – voting has started!

The future of PASS is in your hands. Voting and candidate campaigning for the 2011 PASS Board of Directors elections are now open and run through Dec. 20.

E-ballots have gone out this morning to all PASS members who joined on or before June 1, 2011. You can vote for up to three candidates for the 2012/2013 Board of Directors. Candidates for the open seats are:

Adam Jorgensen
Rob Farley
Denise McInerney
Geoff Hiten
Kendal Van Dyke
Sri Sridharan

Check out the Candidate Campaign Space for candidate bios and platforms, and make sure to visit the elections forums to see the candidates’ answers to community questions or to ask your own. We’ll also be updating the Discussion page with the latest elections blog posts, and you can follow and join in the discussion on Twitter using the #passvotes hashtag.

For more information about the elections, see the 2011 PASS Elections site. And watch the Dec. 28 PASS Connector newsletter for elections results.

Thanks for helping shape PASS’s future by participating in the elections process – and good luck to all the candidates!

The PASS Board of Directors has approved the Nomination Committee’s slate of candidates for the 2011 Board elections. Congratulations and good luck to the candidates:

• Adam Jorgensen
• Rob Farley
• Denise McInerney
• Geoff Hiten
• Kendal Van Dyke
• Sri Sridharan

Three Board seats are up for election for the 2012-2013 term. Voting and candidate campaigning will kick off Dec. 6. The Candidate Campaign space will go live the same day, letting you compare the candidates' qualifications, application answers, and campaign platforms. All members in good standing as of June 1 will receive an email containing their secure voting link, and ballots must be submitted by Dec. 20.

In the meantime:

• Learn more about the responsibilities of the PASS Board and what makes an ideal Director at the Elections website.
• Think about what you want to see in PASS’s future and begin the conversation with the candidates and fellow PASS members in the Elections forums.
• Watch the Discussion page for new election blogs.
• Follow and join the discussion on Twitter (#passvotes).

PASS is your organization – don’t miss this opportunity to help shape its future through the elections process. Your vote is your voice. Let your future leaders know what’s important to you – vote!
 

Thanks to all PASS Summit 2011 attendees who filled out their post-event survey, and congratulations to Linda Zhang, who won the drawing for a free registration to PASS Summit 2012!

The survey results are out, and for the second year in a row, 99% of respondents said they would recommend PASS Summit to other SQL Server professionals. Ninety-six percent said the conference met or exceeded their expectations. Survey results showed that the most important aspects of Summit were the session topics, access to SQL Server experts, and quality Community speakers.

Attendees rated the following aspects of Summit as good or excellent:

• Quality of Community and Microsoft speakers
• Mobile Guide App and Session Scheduler
•  Microsoft Product Demonstration Kiosk in the Exhibit Hall
• Women in Technology and Birds of a Feather luncheons
•  Exhibit Hall

And those who participated in the First-timers program gave high marks to the:

• Welcome Reception entrance
• First Timer Orientation with Rick Heiges
• Speed Networking session with Don Gabor
•  Pre-Summit Communication with their Big Brother/ Sister

Summit’s networking events, including the Welcome and Exhibitor Receptions and Community Appreciation Party, were well attended and successful in connecting the SQL Server Community, with 82% of survey takers saying they met people to connect with after the event.

Common feedback on ways to improve Summit included:

• Better Wi-Fi
• Access to power strips, especially on pre-con days
• Snacks during breaks
• Improved room planning and scheduling for less crowded sessions
• Having presentation decks available for download before sessions

Overall, the survey results placed PASS Summit 2011 as one of the most successful Summits ever. As one survey respondent noted, “I was feeling burned out on my career, and this trip to the Summit completely rejuvenated me and reminded me why I got into this field in the first place. The speakers were top notch, and the event was very well planned, organized, and executed. I'll be there next year regardless if the company pays or I pay from my own pocket. Great job!”

With 250 chapters and counting, PASS is serious about its commitment to global growth. We are excited that members of the SQL Server community from far and wide can connect, share and learn in their own region! In November alone, 8 new chapters were created:

•    Himalayan SQL Server User Group, Nepal (Leader: Shree Khanal)
•    SQLPASS Egypt (Leader: Wagdy Ishac)
•    Cambridgeshire SQL Server User Group, UK (Leader: Mark Broadbent)
•    Montreal BI User Group, Canada (Leader: Dwayne Pindling)
•    St. Louis BI Users Group, US (Leader: Phil Milner)
•    Chicago BI User Group, US (Leader: Emre Motan)
•    Quad Cities PASS, Iowa, US (Leader: Sheila Acker)
•    New London SQL Server User Group, US (Leader: Victor Pavlovit)

November also saw the addition of 3 Regional Mentors recently appointed, for the US Northeast (Steve Hughes), US Southwest (Phil Robinson) and Western Canada (Colin Stasiuk). Find out more about Steve, Phil, and Colin from PASS Director Mark Ginnebaugh’s recent blog post.

To facilitate chapter development, educational webcasts geared towards chapter leaders are available for streaming from the Chapter Resources page (PASS login required to access).  Recent webcasts include:
•    Using Dot Net Nuke Websites with Mike Lawell
•    Making Your Chapter Legal While Removing Stress with Arnie Rowland

Lastly, SQLSaturday keeps on growing with new events popping up all over the world. New SQLSaturdays are added all the time so be sure to keep tabs on the SQLSaturday event calendar for one near you!

Recently added:
•    SQLSaturday#113, Indonesia, Dec 10, 2011
•    SQLSaturday#108, Redmond, Feb 25, 2012
•    SQLSaturday#109, Silicon Valley, Mar 3, 2012
•    SQLSaturday#110, Tampa, Mar 10, 2012
•    SQLSaturday#114, Vancouver, Mar 17, 2012
•    SQLSaturday#115, Portugal, Mar 17, 2012
•    SQLSaturday#107, Houston, Apr 12, 2012
•    SQLSaturday#111, Atlanta, Apr 14, 2012
•    SQLSaturday#112, Birmingham, May 12, 2012
•    SQLSaturday#106, Puerto Rico, May 26, 2012

If you have any questions or comments about chapters, regional mentors, or SQLSaturday events, please contact PASS Community Evangelist Karla Landrum.