(This is Round 11 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?)

PASS SQLSaturday continues to go from strength to strength. Several new events are either in the works or have already been officially announced.

Last weekend it was Cleveland's turn to host the party. According to Ian Hunter, Cleveland rocks - after this past Saturday, we're sure* he wrote the song in anticipation of SQLSaturday #60!

*Okay, maybe just pretty sure.

For those of you on Twitter, follow @sqlpass and make sure to check out the #sqlsat and #sqlsaturday hashtags to stay up to date. Besides attendance at free learning events, there are many speaking and sponsorship opportunities available.

LAST WEEK IN SQLSATURDAY...

+ Nancy Hidy helped organize SQLSaturday #57, Houston (and reflects on what she and her team could've done better)

+ Ryan Adams presented at SQLSaturday #57, Houston

+ Aaron Bertrand presented at SQLSaturday #60, Cleveland (and also made sure to put his presentation slide decks out there post haste)

+ Wes Brown presented at SQLSaturday #57, Houston

+ Jack Corbett presented at SQLSaturday #62, Tampa (quite a few weeks ago now, eh, Jack?)

+ Grant Fritchey (miraculously) presented at SQLSaturday #60, Cleveland (this is truly a crazy story - we're impressed!)

COMING UP IN SQLSATURDAY...

Like we said, there are still lots of SQLSaturdays to look forward to in February. On Feb. 12 it's being held in Colorado Springs. On Feb. 19 you can attend the event in Phoenix. On Feb. 26 it stops near PASS management HQ in Vancouver, Canada - if you've been to PASS Summit, there might be quite a few familiar faces around!

IN OTHER NEWS...

Have you thought about presenting but just weren't sure what's in it for you? If you have the urge to share your knowledge, Mike Walsh tells you why you should present (next week he'll tell you how). Don't forget, SQLSaturday is the perfect venue for you to launch a speaking career and hone your skills. And if you're already presenting at SQLSaturdays, franchise founder Steve Jones wants you to know that it's always a good idea to upload your decks early, as his own experience proves!

For those of you who are busy planning a SQLSaturday of your own, Malathi Mahadevan has some hot tips gleaned from lessons learned hosting the recent event in Louisville. She provides lots of great pointers, so make sure you check it out.

Finally, PASS Director Andy Warren recently blogged about his PASS-related work goals for 2011. He has quite a few targets dedicated to SQLSaturday. An interesting read!

Want to attend or speak at 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.

(This is Round 10 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?)

PASS SQLSaturdays are appearing like clockwork - there's one for every weekend through to Apr. 9 (except there's still no event on Mar. 12 - anyone want to grab that spot before time runs out? No pressure!).

Last weekend it was Houston's turn to bring together SQL devotees for a day's worth of free training and networking. Not surprisingly, those folks in Texas did not disappoint - SQLSaturday #57 was a rocking success!

(We'd like to add that we're very proud of ourselves for not using the phrase, "Houston, we have a problem!" anywhere in that introduction.)

For those of you on Twitter, follow @sqlpass and make sure to check out the #sqlsat and #sqlsaturday hashtags to stay up to date. Besides attendance at free learning events, there are many speaking and sponsorship opportunities available.

LAST WEEK IN SQLSATURDAY...

+ Nancy Hidy helped organize SQLSaturday #57, Houston

+ Eric Humphrey presented at SQLSaturday #57, Houston

+ Jen McCown presented at SQLSaturday #57, Houston

+ John Sterrett presented at SQLSaturday #57, Houston

+ The mysterious SQL Avenger attended SQLSaturday #57, Houston

+ Sri Sridharan attended SQLSaturday #57, Houston

COMING UP IN SQLSATURDAY...

Like we said, there are still lots of SQLSaturdays to look forward to in February. On Feb. 5, there's a SQLSaturday in Cleveland, on Feb. 12 it's being held in Colorado Springs, on Feb. 19 you can attend the event in Phoenix, and on Feb. 26 it stops near PASS management HQ in Vancouver, Canada.

IN OTHER NEWS...

The PASS Board's January in-face meeting concluded in Dallas on Jan. 21. SQLSaturday was on the agenda - PASS Director Andy Warren ruminates about the meeting on his blog.

And finally, we'd like to remind everyone just how excited we are about what SQLSaturday has in store for the rest of 2011. There are fantastic events all over North America to look forward to - you should check the schedule and make sure you register in a city near you. After all, it's free!

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 Andy Warren's blog at sqlandy.com]

This post is my thoughts on the Board meeting, and my views on related topics. I encourage you to read the minutes (not yet published) as the official documentation.

I flew into Dallas around noon on Wed, catching an early flight so I could get to The Joule hotel and spend a quiet few hours doing some prep for the meeting before the scheduled dinner with the Board. Cold when I arrived, maybe 45-50, enough to discourage me from much in the way of exploring beyond the Starbucks around the corner. Got a few things done, caught up on email and did some meeting preparation, and then back to the hotel to put stuff away prior to dinner. The hotel is one of those boutique type hotels, not the standard drywall and concrete, and with the one attribute I appreciate during travel, a great shower. Looking at lists prices it’s not cheap, but we ended up paying $169/night, a little higher than I’d like but in the range of acceptable for business travel.

Dinner was at the Iron Cactus immediately next door, fairly reasonably priced (my fajitas were $15) and where we had the strange experience of the waiter telling Tom LaRock to not to get the meatloaf. Good meal all in all. I spent some good time chatting with new Board members Allen Kinsel and Mark Ginnebaugh, and then Sri Sridharan from the North Dallas SQL Server User Group (NTSSUG)  joined as the end as well.

We spent a good chunk of Thursday looking at our global strategy, thinking about how we will grow and support SQLSaturday and SQLRally so that we can do some early sizing on the FY 2012 budget. Global growth brings complexity. An example is the SQLSaturday site is set up to manage money in dollars. Another is that if we move money across borders there may be tax implications on both sides. The next step is to learn some lessons by doing one or two, with our next step a SQLSaturday in Portugal, and then potentially a SQLRally in Sweden by the end of the year. We’ve also identified what we would like to have in time and resources, HQ will take that back and start looking at how to re-slice our current resource allocation to see if we want to do is possible.

We also talked about site selection for 2013. As I ‘m sure you know we’ve been in Seattle for a while and will be through 2012. Typically we sign contracts for space 2-3 years in advance, it’s the only way to be sure the space will be available within the date range we use for the Summit. Several months ago we built a list of around a dozen candidate cities. HQ has since done some research to help us understand what is available and the rough prices. At this meeting our task was to narrow the list to 3-4 cities. HQ will then send a formal RFP to those and we’ll start into the bake-off that should end with a site and a contract in March/April this year.

The list of cities is something we don’t publish in the minutes, and while we will announce when we sign the contract, we most likely will follow our previous pattern of not announcing the location until the end of the 2012 Summit. The rationale for this is that if people thinking about attending 2012 see that 2013 will be closer or in a more interesting location that they will defer attending for a year. From a pure business perspective maybe that makes sense, but I think it serves our members poorly. I see nothing wrong with letting them know 1-2 years out our plans. If they prefer to wait a year to save on travel, or to travel to a city they would like to visit, that’s good for them and ultimately good for PASS. I think it evens out year over year. More on this in a post later this week.

At 4:45 we started the journey across town to the monthly meeting of NTSSUG at the Microsoft office. Tom LaRock and I rode with Mark Sousa, Mark driving an F-150 he rented (only in Texas, right?), I was the navigator and Tom did the color commentary. We were worried about traffic and being late, but we arrived early and had a chance to mingle with the chapter members. We did a quick introduction of the Board, and then settled in to watch Sean McCown do a very nice hour class (part 1 of 6) on backup and restore strategy. That opening class has become part of their strategy to draw people in and it’s been effective. That was followed by Tom doing his presentation on wait states and queues.

After that we went to Red, Hot, and Blue for some ok barbecue, with a good handful of the chapter members joining us for discussion. It was cold out, had me wishing for home! We finished dinner about 10 pm and I called it a day when we got back to the hotel.

Friday morning we worked on our business plan and a “who we are” document, both are things I expect to see published in the next 30 days. The business plan was something that was largely done a year ago, but it didn’t quite make it out the door. Who we are, you might think, is something we should already know. 2 years ago PASS was the Summit and Chapters, today it’s the Summit, Chapters, Virtual Chapters (though to be fair we had them as SIG’s, but not very successful in my view), 24 Hours of PASS, SQLSaturday, and SQLRally (a work in progress to be fair, but still a big growth item). That’s a lot of change to absorb, and we’ve done it unevenly in places. That’s not unexpected or bad, it just means that we need to step back from growth mode and make sure we’re doing a good job and allocating appropriate time and resources to each area (which could mean adding more, or reducing).

We also need to make sure that you know what we see as our mission and where we’re spending time and money. My view is that we’re on step two of three or four on the path to being a “true” professional association. I don’t say that to dismiss our accomplishments or the work of our staff or volunteers. We’ve grown and matured, perhaps in more ways that we communicate. Yet many wish for PASS to be more. The hard part is that a full shared vision of “more” hasn’t evolved yet. At the heart of it is what we might do for members directly. Right now we have a strategy that is largely indirect – we build events, we facilitate, we connect, but we don’t a lot in the way of things that you can point to and say “my PASS membership means this and from I receive this and this and this”. I like our current strategy, I think it’s realistic, it’s functional, but it’s not sexy, and it’s still hard to explain to what I call the DBA in the back of the room, who says “why should I join?”. We can do more, I think a lot more, but the first step is to consolidate and make sure we do the things we do well. While we’re doing that we can be talking about what that next phase looks like that we might start 12-18 months from now.

On the time and money, Bill Graziano will be publishing more on that soon. We publish our budget, which has both too much and too little detail at times. We want to do more to show you how we apply resources to our various goals, and we want to make very clear what we contribute to things outside the Summit. I’ll write more in the next couple months to dig into what I get for resources for SQLRally and SQLSaturday.

We’ve been working on some revisions to the by-laws for several months and those should be published for review in the next week or so. Some of it is clean up and clarifying, making it very clear on things like term limits. We’ve removed the officer nomination committee which in the past nominated a “slate” that the Board would vote up or down, and instead it will be direct selection by the Board. We debated extensively moving to one year terms for officers. Not a one year limit, but a one year term. This is something I really believe in, I think it allows our Directors to step into a role and apply max energy. We’ll be publishing them for comment shortly, and I may add additional comments when we do.

Friday night I was lucky enough to have Tim Mitchell and Ryan Adams join me for dinner. Tim and I go back to SQLSaturday #3 and we just didn’t get much time to talk on Thursday, so it was nice to find some time in the week to talk more. Allen Kinsel was there, along with Mark Ginnebaugh and Bill Graziano. I was a spectator for part of it, listening to Bill chat with Tim and Ryan about chapters, and not for the first time wished we all talked more and more often.

Saturday morning I was up at 5 am for the taxi ride to the airport and the morning flight to Orlando, glad to be home.

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!

[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.