(This is Round 5 of PASS's weekly round-up of SQLSaturday recaps. PASS community bloggers love their SQLSaturdays, and they love to tell everyone about their experiences, so who are we not to share that love?)

Only one PASS SQLSaturday was held in the past week, SQLSaturday #61 in Washington DC, but that doesn't mean we're short on blog posts! 

LAST WEEK IN SQLSATURDAY...

+ Kendra Little presented at SQLSaturday #61, Washington DC

+ Sandra Mueller presented at SQLSaturday #61, Washington DC

+ Ryan Rastedt attended SQLSaturday #61, Washington DC

COMING UP IN SQLSATURDAY...

2010's events are all done, but there are lots of SQLSaturdays coming up in 2011. If you're in the vicinity, don't miss SQLSaturday #62 in Tampa on Jan. 15 or SQLSaturday #57 in Houston on Jan. 29. PASS Director and speaker Andy Warren notes that SQLSaturday #62 is so popular that they've had to turn down speakers! 

And finally, Bob Pusateri announced that Chicago will be hosting SQLSaturday #67 on March 26.

IN OTHER NEWS...

SQLSaturday is a fantastic venue to hone your presentation skills. Brent Ozar blogged about these (and other) opportunities for up-and-coming speakers in 2011. 

For those about to host or thinking of hosting a SQLSaturday, you may be interested in Kathi Kellenberger's insightful interview with SQLSaturday #53 organizer, Bill Fellows. 

Before we go, we have to point you to this fantastic post by Wendy Pastrick. Wendy won the 2010 PASSion Award as PASS's most outstanding volunteer -- she blogs about how this came about and the role SQLSaturday played in her success. Congratulations again, Wendy! 

Want to attend a SQLSaturday? Check out the SQLSaturday website or "Upcoming In-Person Events" on the PASS Home page for upcoming dates near you.

Want to put on your own SQLSaturday? Click here to get started.

[cross-posted from Thomas LaRock's blog at thomaslarock.com]

While sitting at the WIT lunch during the PASS 2010 Summit it was mentioned that the percentage of woman MVPs overall was less than the percentage of WIT in general. With my thinking cap engaged I had a crazy idea: why not do the next 24 Hours of PASS and feature only women speakers, and do it in March ( which also happens to be women’s history month). I turned to the person sitting next to me on my right and asked a simple question: “Do you think I should do this?” That person was Jen McCown (blog | @midnightdba) who said “yes”, then paused to reflect, and then said “HELL, yes”.

I then went about engaging various members of the SQL Community to get some feedback on the idea. After about two weeks we had an outline for the next 24 HoP event and there was much rejoicing. But we have some other work to do first.

The current 24HoP structure doesn’t work anymore, it just isn’t transparent enough. Even as I put together the last event I knew that changes needed to be made. So here is what I would like to see done.

The call for abstracts has gone out already. (If you have an abstract in mind or have suggestions for specific speakers or topics, send us an email at 24hours@sqlpass.org. Deadline for abstract submission (max 250 words with a 125 word bio) is January 14.) That part was easy. The next part is not as easy: how do we get the Community involved in selecting the sessions and speakers?

Right now the 24 HoP Committee is actively working on how to implement this change. My current idea is to use UserVoice and have voting open for about a week after the deadline for abstracts is complete. What I would like to do is find a way to have people vote once for a list of speakers (with no mention of abstracts) and also for a list of abstracts (without knowing which speaker submitted the abstract). I feel that by doing so we would have an idea of not only who the Community wants to see speak, but what they want to hear. We would tally the two lists and come up with 28 speakers (24 and 4 alternates).

I will be the first to admit that I have no idea if this is the best way to get the Community Choice done, but it is the only idea we have on the table right now. And it is also the reason I am writing this blog post: if you have suggestions, please send them along. Drop us a note at 24hours@sqlpass.org and tell us your suggestion. The 24 HoP Committee will be spending the next four weeks trying to find a way to let the Community decide the sessions for the next 24 HoP and we don’t pretend to think we have all the right answers.

[cross-posted from Jeremiah Peschka's blog at facility9.com]

Last week, I sent an email to the PASS Board of Directors. It said, in short, that I was stepping down from my seat on the board. In fact, here’s the email:

A few months ago I made a huge change in my career and stepped out of my role as a production DBA and into a new career working with new databases. The more time I spend with these databases, the more I realize that they need an exciting, vibrant community like we have here in PASS. I want to help these communities grow and thrive, but there are only so many hours in the day. I have enjoyed the time that I’ve served on the PASS Board of Directors and I will continue to be involved in the community, but there are new communities that need what we have at PASS.

This has not been an easy decision to make, but I am stepping down from the PASS Board of Directors.

Just so you don’t think it sounds contrived, here it is again:

I love PASS and I love the SQL Server community. Being a part of PASS has given me a phenomenal sense of community. The SQL Server community has readily welcomed new members and new technologies and continues to grow the meaning of being a SQL Server professional. The community has embraced knowledge sharing in a way that many communities should envy. I keep learning so much every day from all of your blogs, presentations, books, and white papers.

And this is where things get difficult. I love what I’m doing with PASS, but I also love what I’m doing outside of SQL Server. There is a lot of knowledge there, but it’s silo’d and stuck in people’s heads. That knowledge needs to get out into the wild. One of the easiest ways to spread knowledge is to help it spread through communities. It’s difficult building a community from the ground up. Hell, maintaining an existing community is difficult. Doing both at the same time is impossible.

I asked myself how I could help when I started with PASS several years ago. I jumped in and started a chapter, then I took over a virtual chapter, and then I ran for the Board of Directors. Along the way, I met a ton of people who were kind, helpful, thoughtful, and more than ready to help out. As I slowly came to the realization that I couldn’t build a new community and grow an existing community at the same time, I also came to the realization that there were a lot of people ready to step up and help PASS grow.

Knowing that so many of you care and want to help made it a lot easier to come to this decision. I know that no matter what, there are a lot of people who will steer PASS and help it grow.

PASS showed me a wonderful community and I want to share that community with other people. I’m not running away and I’m not leaving, I’m just spreading the love around.

[cross-posted from Thomas LaRock's blog at thomaslarock.com]

I could not have said this better myself:

http://weblogs.sqlteam.com/denisem/archive/2011/01/04/a-seat-at-the-24-hours-of-pass-table.aspx 

Denise was able to summarize everything we are trying to accomplish with the next 24 HOP event. If you have not yet submitted your abstract you should consider doing so, and before the deadline of next Friday.

[cross-posted from Andy Warren's blog at sqlandy.com]

Last week I wrote about my goals for last year and some frustration at having to make some trade offs during the year, and as I write this I find that I’m struggling to define my goals. Some of that is goal backlash, but I think more it’s a lot of ideas in my head and a sense of not quite knowing which path to take.

Some things I know so far:

• I want to stop working at all on weekends other than a few SQLSaturday’s. It’s wearing me down, and family needs more time.
• I need some time playing on a team again. Four years working solo has me craving, at least for now, going after shared goals.
• I’ve been gradually moving to reduce my time teaching, and that feels right. I like sharing and the excitement of opening doors for students, but it’s not enough. I need interesting problems to solve.
• I need to decide in the next few months if I’ll run for one of the VP positions at PASS this fall. Tough call.
• I need to change how and how much time I invest in PASS. That’s not a sign of a lessening in commitment, just a realization that it’s time to move past heroics and make the next stage work.
• I’d like to put some time back into my schedule for mentoring and coaching new speakers and bloggers.
• I want to spend more time in the Florida technical community, in part to strengthen my network and in part to reduce my travel time while still participating.
• I’d like to get better at writing, but that’s a vague goal that needs some work.

That’s a start, and next week I’ll write more. I think my theme for this year is setting goals for things I want to do rather than things I should do. Not sure if that’s selfish, realistic, or maybe both, but feels like the right path for right now.

Dear PASS Community,

I am sad to announce that the PASS Board of Directors has officially accepted the resignations of Brian Moran and Jeremiah Peschka. Each is stepping down for personal reasons unrelated to his involvement with PASS. Both Brian and Jeremiah have been instrumental in the growth and success of PASS and will be missed on the Board. We wish them the best of luck in their future endeavors.

On a positive note, I am happy to formally introduce two fantastic replacements for the vacated positions. The Board of Directors has approved the appointments of Mark Ginnebaugh, President of DesignMind in San Francisco, and Geoff Hiten, Principal Consultant with Intellinet in Atlanta, each to serve a term of one year on the Board. Geoff and Mark were both on the electoral slate in 2010 – more information about the outstanding qualities they bring to the organization can be found on the 2010 PASS Election site.

Please join us in congratulating Geoff and Mark on their appointments and welcoming them to the PASS Board of Directors!

Rushabh Mehta
PASS President

[cross-posted from Allen Kinsel's Blog at allenkinsel.com]

The results are in!!!

After tabulating over ten thousand distinct session evaluations for the 2010 PASS Summit we are pleased to release the top 10 sessions overall and the top 5 sessions per track.

Getting these session results generated and out to the speakers in a timely manner is always challenging.  After taking until the second week of January 2010 to return Speaker Evaluations for the 2009 Summit we put in sweeping changes to prevent that from happening again in 2010.

Fortunately we were very successful in getting the data, We (Community Volunteers) designed and built a database to house the eval info, and designed a system that could be used to enter the evaluations quickly during and shortly after the Summit.  This was a resounding success.  Unfortunately where we fell short was in executing on delivering the data to the speakers and the community.  When we designed these systems, the process to send out the evaluations wasnt really discussed, or possibly just wasnt finished (the perils of distributing work include less insight into exact issues).  Either way, I wound up in the 23rd hour reworking last years SSIS package to fit the new database schema.

Success

We delivered Speaker evaluations to the speakers a full 3 weeks earlier than last year.  This included additional info about overall speaker scores that we had never provided in the past.  I realize a success to me (3 weeks sooner) is still a failure to others (4 weeks after the summit to get the data to the speakers)  We're going to be working on improving this for next years summit but for now, Ill take the wins where I can get them!

Failure

Getting the top 10 sessions posted has taken an extra 3 weeks.  I take full responsibility on this one.  I had the data on my laptop for the entire time, at first it was the holidays, then it was something shiny, after that I kept running into issues trying to make queries that werent just usable for this years summit, but would be able to generate similar results for any event we enter into this database.  In the end though, I have a set of queries for this process that will be reused.

Future

This database/process was one of the projects a large group of OUTSTANDING Community members chipped in and worked on under the umbrella of the program committee in 2010.  I have big plans to round up another set of volunteers and put a web based front end on the db and push its use out to all SQL events that would like to use it.  The information that we're gathering will be invaluable to both the speakers and to the community in the future.


http://www.sqlpass.org/events/bestofpasssummit2010.aspx

For those who don't know, the PASS Board of Directors is currently gathering at the Radiant Salon in Dallas, TX, for an in-face meeting of the Board. Items on the agenda include the organization's international event strategy, Summit planning for 2011 and 2013, a number of critical amendments to the Bylaws, and the vision, scope, and long-term goals of PASS. 

The itinerary is posted below - minutes from this meeting will be posted in early February. 

PASS BOARD MEETING AGENDA 

Thursday, January 20th, 2011 

Friday, January 21st, 2011 

Feel free to leave comments here or on Twitter for any of the Directors or for the Board at large.

Cheers!