PASS Blog

2010 PASS Summit Online

As we get deeper into the logistics and planning process for 2010 PASS Summit, Craig Ellis  from PASS HQ sent out an email today asking if we wanted to plan broadcasting a live track at the summit for the community not in attendance. This was based on some feedback and suggestions we had received from a couple of board and community members. I have put the discussion in front of the board and also want to solicit your input. Some of the considerations the board will need to weigh include...

• What portion of the summit should be broadcast live - should we have a single room from where presentations are delivered to summit attendees and also broadcast live? What about keynotes ?
• What would the logistics need to be and can we sustain the logistics in the summit activities - this may include handling Q&A from the online audience, any other audience interaction and overall management.
• What is the additional cost of doing this? Is there also added bandwidth requirements on-site to permit this activity?
• Should we host a virtual vendor pavilion as well?
• How do we pay for the costs - can we make this offering cost neutral?
• What technology platform would best serve our needs?
• Should we charge for the virtual offering to stay cost neutral or keep it free to the community and find alternate ways to pay for it?

Please share your thoughts with the board through your comments here. If at a preliminary glance we feel that there is enough merit to have an online presence, then the next step will be to start evaluating some online platforms and also pros and cons along with costs. We will try and include some members from the community to help us with the platform evaluation.

Upcoming PASS Board Meeting Agenda

Next week, the PASS board will be meeting in Person in Miami for our in-face board meeting. Following are the major agenda items for discussion during that meeting - please note that some of the agenda items may change. I will attempt to regularly post results of the board meeting as well as ongoing discussions/decisions. I will try and keep an eye out for any comments you may post here.

Monday, March 22nd, 2010

Tuesday, March 23rd, 2010

Rushabh Mehta, President

Follow on to Summit location survey

Thanks to everyone who took the time to reply to the Summit location survey results blog post, blogged themselves, commented, tweeted, or otherwise shared their thoughts. I and the other members of the PASS Board value your feedback, whether you agree or disagree with the decision. We're listening - and reading - what you're saying and I wanted to follow up with a quick update.

HQ has been looking at mid-US and East Coast sites as part of its ongoing task to investigate potential Summit locations. We haven't historically announced locations, or even begun serious review, this far in advance but I've asked PASS HQ to continue its research into cities and venues for 2013 outside of Seattle. We'll keep you posted as we have more information.

All of us on the Board are passionate about Summit. We truly believe it's the best user conference in the world and are working hard to make sure it only gets better. And it's nothing without you - our amazing fellow SQL Server community members. Thanks again for your feedback, ideas, healthy debate, and respect you've all brought to the discussion.

-Rushabh

Rushabh Mehta, PASS President
 

Locating PASS Summit 2011 and 2012 - Connector Editorial by Rushabh

The PASS Summit location survey results came in a few weeks ago, and since then we've been analyzing the data, getting in costs from venues across the US, and reviewing with the PASS Board of Directors. You can find the results here.

At first glance, the results seem fairly clear: 81% of the 1,573 respondents want a PASS Summit on the East Coast at least every four years. When we look at responses from only 2008 and 2009 Summit attendees (our most successful ones by far), the number who want a future Summit outside of Seattle drops to 69%.

When we dig deeper though, other findings emerge. There is a disparity between wanting to have Summit on the East Coast and the desire to have access to plentiful, top-notch Microsoft resources at every PASS Summit. For all three questions pertaining to the importance of Microsoft resources, 69%- 84% of respondents maintain that having access to many, and varied, Microsoft resources is important to their Summit experience.

From these findings, we took two immediate actions:
 

1. PASS HQ undertook a full-scale research and budgeting exercise for venues and hotels through the convention bureaus in the following East Coast cities: Atlanta, Boston, Charlotte, Miami, Nashville, New Orleans, Orlando, and Washington, D.C.
2. The PASS Board of Directors conducted thorough discussions on the feasibility of a strong Microsoft showing in terms of presenters, experts, executives, and overall sponsorship support for a Summit outside of the Seattle area.

It took a while to gather and digest all the information, but here's what we discovered:
 

• We would not be able to achieve anywhere near the same level of support from Microsoft as we do when Summit is held in Seattle. We would lose out on at least 50% and likely 75% of Microsoft presenters, developers, and SQLCAT and CSS staff – all things a majority of survey respondents listed as important or very important.
• Based on Microsoft's release cycle history (major release cycles run approximately every 3 years, with minor ones often coming in between), 2011 or 2012 will likely be a launch year. It would be disappointing for the community to lose out on the advantages of being in Seattle during a potential release year.
• Seattle is a very cost-effective location for a conference the size and scope of Summit. We were surprised to find that most East Coast locations we considered would cost substantially more and would likely raise registration prices and negatively impact the budget available to many other PASS activities, including Chapter resources and online events. We should also point out that survey respondents listed the cost of moving Summit to the East Coast as the least important of four PASS priorities (others included: Chapter resources, events such as 24 Hours of PASS, and the PASS website).

So where does this leave us? The Board has decided to hold PASS Summit 2011 and PASS Summit 2012 in Seattle for the reasons listed above. It was difficult weighing all the different considerations for the benefit of the SQL Server community, and we really appreciate the input we received. We feel that continuing to host PASS Summit in Seattle – in order to access Microsoft resources and support and keep costs down for the organization and for the attendees – is the best decision for the community as a whole.

We are listening to all of you who desire more PASS presence on the East Coast, and are currently looking into holding a smaller conference there in the near future. We’ll share more information as it becomes available.
 

Rushabh Mehta
PASS President
 

PASS Location Survey Results

We're hearing what some of you are saying about PASS being slow to release the Summit location survey results and we are taking your concerns seriously. I hope this post helps provide some insight into our actions. We can, and will, improve the frequency and openness of our communications on issues of importance to our members in the future.

We know the process has seemed extraordinarily long to those not involved in the conversations. In hindsight, we should have released the survey info earlier instead of waiting until we had figured out our plan and conducted the research, which was prompted by the results.

We have always had plans to disclose the survey results to the community, but had decided to wait until we had weighed in on the results, did research, and met to discuss as a Board last week. Our next step is to issue the results and our decision for future Summit locations in this Wednesday's Connector newsletter - our usual and regular form of communication with our members.

Thanks for your patience and please stay tuned on Wednesday for the survey results and decisions!

- Rushabh Mehta, PASS President
 

Chapters Vision for 2010

It is March already, and I have been spending all my PASS time in 2010 talking to Chapter Leaders and Regional Mentors about what we are doing in the Chapters portfolio in 2010. Now I’d like to get a broader update out to the community about what we are doing and the exciting things we have planned.

Chapters Vision for 2010: 3 Key Goals
Since my time as a leader of Atlanta.mdf (Atlanta, Georgia’s PASS Chapter) and as one of the first PASS Regional Mentors, I’ve had a passion for working with local chapters. So serving as the director of Chapters (virtual and physical) for PASS is an honor and a real treat for me.

Under the leadership of Greg Low, Blythe Morrow, and the Chapters Committee over the past 2 years, we’ve experienced phenomenal growth in the number of PASS Chapters around the world. We had 205 Chapters in 50+ countries as of January 2010, which is a 57% growth compared to the same time last year. And thanks to Thomas LaRock’s work in helping transition our Special Interest Groups (SIGs) to Virtual Chapters last summer, we currently have seven Virtual Chapters and have witnessed a huge ramp-up in free virtual training from many of those groups.

While continuing to build on that momentum and growth in numbers for 2010, we also want to make sure that all our Chapters are healthy, active, and growing in value to meet the needs of their members. In that spirit, we have three over-arching goals this year: Sustainability, Infrastructure, and Increased Value Proposition.

Sustainability
Launching a Chapter and keeping it going—and going strong—is hard work. For new Chapters, we need to assure that they are set up properly and that they have the support and information they need to start off on the right foot and survive those crucial early months. Existing Chapters go through rough times, too—experiencing peaks and valleys. So we need to be there for them as well, whether they need resources to help grow programs even more or push past a membership plateau or whether they are facing serious problems.

Our sustainability strategy includes providing a rich set of resources, leveraging the wisdom of our experienced Chapter Leaders, Regional Mentors, other volunteers, and PASS headquarters (HQ) resources. How to successfully set up a Chapter, best practices for running and  growing a Chapter, resources for finding speakers and sponsors, and other intellectual property will be readily available online. Plus, we are strengthening our Regional Mentors Program even more, working through those key PASS ambassadors to provide key communications and support to chapters in their area and feed the needs and ideas of their Chapters back to PASS.

Infrastructure
A strong, effective infrastructure is essential for sustainability at the Chapter level. Both our people and our technology assets are critical infrastructure focus areas.  We are evaluating how to support and align our Regional Mentors to provide a more robust and scalable program that meets Chapter Leader and membership needs.

PASS HQ is expanding the team responsible for community-related support, so Blythe will not be constantly treading water trying to stay on top of it all by herself. In the area of technology, we have a few projects in the queue: We are on the verge of rolling out a sub-site on sqlpass.org that will be dedicated to Chapter Leaders, housing announcements, content/IP, and other resources all in one place. In late 2010 or 2011, we want to make Chapter webhosting more robust with added event management and membership email capabilities (announcements/newsletters). Internally, we will add infrastructure to transition to a Chapter management database (so we can get away from current tools like Google Docs).

Increased Value Proposition
Communicating and expanding the value that PASS brings to Chapters is critical for attracting new Chapters and for improving the quality and strength of all Chapters. The first step here is creating a comprehensive inventory of all the benefits we provide Chapters. That list currently includes the free webhosting I mentioned earlier, a Live Meeting and TechNet subscription from Microsoft UGSS, event sponsorship and program support, a free Chapter Leader registration to one PASS conference per year, access to the Chapter Leader Listserver, PASS Regional Mentor support, and more.

Through the Regional Mentors and a full set of helpful Chapter Welcome Kits and Resource Kits, we’ll communicate everything that’s available to our Chapters and how they can access those benefits. Then we’ll loop back with Chapters around the world to explore how PASS can continue to expand its value proposition.

Thanks for what's ahead...
It’s going to be an exciting year. We are trying to move a lot forward at once, and we are starting to gain momentum. I look forward to working side-by-side with our dedicated volunteers and PASS staff to support our Chapters as they serve the SQL Server technical community. Thanks to each of you for your work!

SQL Saturday #41 - Atlanta

From Stuart Ainsworth, SQL Saturday #41 Event leader:

SQLSaturday #41 is occurring on April 24, 2010 in Atlanta, GA; this is the third event hosted by AtlantaMDF (the Atlanta chapter of PASS), and I am so excited to be involved in the leadership of this event again.  This year we're doing things a little different, and we're trying to involve more of our membership in the planning of the event.  We've got a team of about 10 dedicated individuals working behind the scenes to get this event running; I'd love to name names, but I'm afraid I'll leave someone out, so I'll a wait a few days to post the complete list of organizers.  Keep checking the SQLSaturday site for details and news.

Couple of bullet points to consider:

1.  Registration is capped at 250 seats; last year, we sold out in a matter of hours, so PLEASE register now if you're interested in coming.

2.  The call for speakers is open until March 25, 2010; we'd like a mix of new and experienced speakers, so please sign up ASAP.  We plan on having a diverse schedule, covering database administration, development, BI, and career advancement.  Any topic dealing with SQL Server is welcome, so submit your sessions.  If you've got an idea for a topic, feel free to submit that as well.

3.  Finally, we're always looking for sponsors.  Confio has agreed to be our first gold sponsor for this event, but we'd love to introduce your company to our community.   Events like this are great for both sponsors and attendees, because it gives the attendees the opportunity to hear about solutions to their everyday problems.

Feel free to contact me directly if you'd like more information; I'll be happy to answer as best I can.

Stu

Stuart R Ainsworth
stuart@codegumbo.com

PASS acquires SQL Saturday

Hello Everyone,

It gives me tremendous pleasure to announce that the PASS Board of Directors recently voted to acquire the SQL Saturday Event brand and management. SQL Saturday is a very popular event brand started by Andy Warren, Steve Jones and Brian Knight in May 2007. Since then, over 28 events have occurred world-wide with an anticipated growth of 40-50 events over the next two years.

This great program is a gift to the PASS organization from Andy, Steve and Brian and gives PASS control over the SQL Saturday domain, events, as well as the event management tool put together with collective help from the SQL Server community. Over the coming weeks, we will transition the event program underneath the PASS Community Connection Events umbrella and provide SQL Saturday events the management infrastructure it needs. We are also working to integrate our events portfolio to support SQL Saturday financially at the same levels as our PASS Community Connection branded events. SQL Saturday event owners will not see major changes as a result of this transition, but can expect to receive higher level of engagement and support from the PASS management team.

I am also quite excited to be speaking at the next SQL Saturday event #33 which is being held in Charlotte, NC on the 6th of March. This will also be the first SQL Saturday under PASS management!

Rushabh Mehta
PASS President

PASS Connector Editorial for January 27 - by Christoph Stotz & Olaf Pietsch

When the German PASS Chapter was launched in 2004, the founding members decided to self-finance the organization by running a yearly deep-dive, volunteer-driven technical event. With only 37 members at the time, the plan seemed very ambitious. But since then, the German Chapter has grown to more than 1,900 members in over 12 cities running more than 100 regional meetings a year. And our annual PASS Camp continues to grow as well.

What are the keys to success for our regional event, and how can your chapter run its own effective regional conference? Here are 5 essential elements.

1. Line up the right speakers on the right topics: Content is the most important element of a successful event. For our 5th annual PASS Camp in Mettmann/Duesseldorf last week, we offered 23 hours of technical training across two BI tracks and one DBA track. And our event featured the following top speakers: Oliver Engels (CEO of oh22data AG), Markus Fischer (Microsoft), Charley Hanania (Quality Software Solutions), Sascha Lorenz (PSG GmbH), and PASS President Rushabh Mehta (Solid Quality Mentors). To find the right mix of session topics and speakers, poll your members to find out what they work with every day as well as what they are interested in learning more about. Remember: Most of the time, attendees’ bosses need to approve their registration, so make sure each presentation has a strong and immediate value proposition. But also try to be different than other typical training events—maybe by asking speakers to do hands-on sessions, for example.
    
2. Use your marketing channels: For a paid event, the size of your community determines the size of your event. You can typically expect to get 2% of your community to register for an event, so you’ll need to reach out to a lot of people to fill your seats. In addition to contacting your members through email marketing, make sure you post your event on the PASS Events page and take advantage of the PASS social networking sites on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook. Ask volunteers and speakers to blog about the event ahead of time. Also consider asking your local Microsoft field office, and other vendors your chapter might have relationships with, to help market your event.
    
3. Select dates that make it easy to attend: Timing is one of the most important elements of having a successful conference. Often, selecting the right dates for your event is a process of elimination. First, make sure you avoid public holidays. For a paid event, also avoid Fridays and weekends. Don’t schedule an event at the same time as other related industry events, such as SQL Server conferences and major tradeshows. And consider providing more value by starting early and finishing late in the day.
    
4. Pick an attractive location: Select a location that people would like to visit on their own or with family. And find comfortable space that is large enough to accommodate your group and that offers free, reliable Wi-Fi access. PASS Camp 2010 was an English/German mixed event, with attendees coming mainly from Germany, Switzerland, Austria, the Netherlands, and nearby English-speaking countries. We made sure our event site was easy to reach by car (with inexpensive parking available), train, plane, and public transportation.
    
5. Make it personal: Provide enough time and opportunities for attendees to network with each other. Consider contests or games that encourage attendees to talk to each other, or ask people to sit at a table where they don’t know anybody. Training is great, but gaining a new friend you can call when you have a question is invaluable.

Good luck with your next event, and let us know what has worked well for your group.

PASS Connector Editorial for January 13 - by Rushabh Mehta

Making 2010 a Year to Remember

2009 was a fantastic growth year for PASS. Our membership grew 51%, surpassing 50,000 registered members worldwide. And we saw a 57% growth in chapters, ending the year with 205 chapters in more than 50 countries.

Building on these and other successes, we have some lofty goals for 2010, in terms of growth as an organization and providing SQL Server readiness activities through online and offline events around the world. As I take the helm of PASS this month, I am very excited about the year ahead and building on 2009's growth.

This is a release year for SQL Server, with SQL Server 2008 R2 set for release in just a few months. Unlike normal mid-cycle releases, R2 will deliver exciting features, especially in the BI space with integration with SharePoint 2010 and Office 2010. I highlighted some of my favorite R2 features in the Database Applications and Trends article "BI in SQL Server 2008 R2: Empowering Business Users." I believe SQL Server 2008 R2 will be a game-changer in many ways, particularly for innovations in self-service BI capabilities and delivering true enterprise scale with the Parallel Data Warehouse.

Some companies are getting an early start implementing and taking advantage of these new innovations. And PASS will be on the front lines of delivering practical readiness information and guidance to the community so that you can make the right decisions for your organization and get up to speed on the latest skill sets in the industry.

We have strong leadership in place and an energized and amazing HQ team. We have strong partnerships with our founding members, Microsoft and CA, and solid support from the vendor community. And most important, we have a passionate community that is looking forward to making 2010 a year to remember. We're actively planning a number of exciting initiatives that will deliver solid value to our community; stay tuned to the Connector for some exciting announcements in 2010.

Rushabh Mehta
PASS President

PASS: Seattle vs. the East Coast

At the Summit this year we announced that the 2010 Summit would be in Seattle again.  This will mark the third year in a row in Seattle.  We’ve been in Seattle twice in a row before but never three times.  After we complete the 2010 Summit in Seattle, half of our Summit’s will have been held in Seattle. 2010 is a launch year for SQL Server so I think it’s good we’re there.

We don’t have a contract in place year for 2011 yet but we need to finalize one soon.  A number of people have asked why we’ve been in Seattle so long and why don’t we come back to the East Coast.  I wanted to get some thoughts down on things that impact our decision and see if we can get some feedback.  We’re also planning to send out a survey and find out what’s important to potential attendees.  Please note: These thoughts are the opinion of one Board member and don’t reflect the official position of PASS.  Hopefully this will give you some insight into how we think about this issue and you’ll better understand how we make decisions like this.

Travel
The obvious benefit to being on the east coast is that that travel is reduced for people in the Eastern and Central time zones.  Travel for anyone on the east coast to Seattle is a long trek across the country.  On the return there are rarely afternoon or evening flights except red-eyes.  Switching to a Tuesday through Thursday schedule may have helped a little.  The downside of that is reduced attendance at pre-conference and post-conference sessions or the same flight challenges if you want to attend one of those sessions.  Moving to the east coast inconveniences a different set of people.  There’s certainly an argument to be made that we should inconvenience everyone equally on a somewhere regular schedule.

Microsoft Support
We enjoy fantastic support from Microsoft when the Summit is in Seattle.  I don’t know much about their budget process but I’m guessing if we hold the event in other cities that their budget won’t magically increase.  That means the same amount of money would have to include travel expenses.  I see that impacting the following activities:

• Microsoft sends hundred’s of developers to the Summit.  These people spend time in the Ask the Experts area and answer questions about every aspect of SQL Server.  There just isn’t anywhere else that you can ask the people that wrote SQL Server itself how it works.  This is a very unique benefit of the Summit being in Seattle.  If we hold it elsewhere I’m guessing that hundred’s of developers becomes a dozen or so product or program managers. 
• This year CSS and SQLCAT cooperated to put on the SQL Clinic.  This is a great place to talk to Microsoft’s top support engineers and the people Microsoft sends out to work on their most interesting customer engagements.  Bob Ward wrote a great post detailing the types of questions they handled in the SQL Clinic.  My guess is that this program wouldn’t be hugely impacted by a move to the east coast.  Many of the CSS engineers come in from Dallas and the SQLCAT people come in from all over the world.  It would most likely still happen but just with fewer people.
• During the Summit Microsoft holds meeting with various groups in the SQL Server community including MVPs and Microsoft’s key customers.  There are people in the product team that just participate in these meetings and don’t stay for the rest of the Summit.  If we’re not in Seattle that becomes harder.  While that sounds like it only affects Microsoft it also affects PASS.  These meetings provide extra incentive for MVPs, key customers and other participants to attend the Summit.  These people are often speakers and volunteers and this gives them one more reason attend.  Anything that encourages our best volunteers and speakers to attend the Summit helps PASS.
• In Seattle Microsoft delivered 50-70 sessions.  I don’t remember the exact count but you get the idea.  For the most part these were each delivered by an expert in that area.  Speakers didn’t present in multiple areas.  If we move away from Seattle we reduce the number of speakers.  That means less variety and less focus on a particular subject.

Logistics
It really takes a team to put on a conference the size of the PASS Summit.  We work with a number of vendors for everything from event production to registration.  Over the last few years we’ve really figured out what works at the convention center.  Internet access was good this year.  Keynote productions were great.  The food worked well.  Registration worked well.  All the logistics went smoothly.  We know what rooms are good to put sessions in and which rooms are better for meetings.  We’ve also learned where to spend money and where not too.  If any of you have put on local events I’m sure there are things you spent money on that you wouldn’t repeat.  We’ve got most of those figured out at the Seattle convention center.  We don’t waste money on things that don’t add value.

In a new city we’re not going to do this well.  We’re going to have logistical challenges.  We’re going to spend too much (or not enough) on food.  We may have issues with wireless.  We might not get all the rooms right.  In short, there are lots of things that *could* go wrong and some probably will.

Costs
Holding the Summit in another city increases the costs for PASS.  All the items listed in the previous section will probably cause extra money to be spent.  Our headquarters is located in Vancouver.  It’s just a few hours to drive down to Seattle.  If we move to another city that will increase travel costs.  It will also increase shipping costs.  Right now we’re able to purchase items to Vancouver and drive them down.  We lose that ability when we move to another city.  Our headquarters typically does a number of site visits to potential sites and then to the final chosen site.  In Seattle we need fewer of these visits due to the familiarity with the facility.  Plus they’re cheap to conduct due to the proximity.  This is all money we’ll spend that can’t be spent on community. 

Seattle
Seattle is a good city for our conference.  It has lots of “stuff” downtown within walking distance of the convention center.   There are plenty of hotels nearby so we can negotiate reasonable prices.  These are all things we’ll look for in other cities but might have difficulty finding.

Our choices
We have a number of different choices.

1. Stay in Seattle for all our Summits.  This is the easiest, cheapest choice but may not be the best for all our members.  There are drawbacks to leaving Seattle.  Is the benefit of reduced travel enough to offset those?
2. Rotate out of Seattle every 3-4 years.  Hold the majority of our Summits in Seattle but enough on the east coast to keep members happy.
3. Hold a second, smaller event on the east coast in the spring.  This idea has been kicked around recently and has merit.  It also has drawbacks.  It bears all the increased costs and limited Microsoft support.  It would be smaller and have less networking opportunity.  It has the ability to reduce the size and impact of our main Summit.  Putting on a second event would increase the workload at HQ.  It does give people a choice on where they’d like to attend though.  The earliest we could do something like this would be 2011.

We’re going to send out a survey soon with some detailed questions around this.  Please be on the look out for this and take the time to respond to it.  If you have any thoughts you’d like to share please feel free to post them.

Bill Graziano

PASS Financial Update FY 2010 Nov-end - by Rushabh Mehta

We recently completed the reconciliation for the summit and I wanted to share the details with our members. If you recall from our 2010 budget that we published, we expected to end the year with a loss of ~$14,800. However, our revenues to date exceeded our budget by $ 134,000 and we expect to end our Fiscal year (Jul 1 - Jun 31) with net positive revenues of $155,000 over budget. Our expenses also increased, but not by that amount. As a result, our net income expectation for FY 2010 is $110,000! The board recently voted in a Budget exception of $50,000 for 2 in-face board meetings in the first half of 2010. This will reduce our profits by that amount. In this profit computation, we are not considering our European event profitability, but we expect it to be a financially positive event that will contribute to the bottom line of the organization.

Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions.

Assigning PASS Portfolios - Part 1 - by Rushabh Mehta

As most of you are aware, I was recently elected as the next President of PASS. One of my first duties as incoming President is to allocate portfolios. Traditionally, we have had a few portfolios (or programs) and board members get assigned to lead and drive much of what they do throughout the year. Some portfolio ownerships can be multi-year engagements as well. For example Greg Low managed the Chapter portfolio for 2 years and Lynda Rab has been managing the Educational Program portfolio that deals with pulling together and managing the summit program for multiple years. Portfolios certainly have their advantages - there is a clear owner that you can hold responsible and as Andy points out in his post, our budgets are created based on the concept of portfolios and so that portfolio owner is completely responsible for that portion of the budget (planning and managing).

Our traditional portfolios last year were…

• Global Chapters - Greg Low

• Educational Program - Lynda Rab

• Volunteers - Pat Wright

• Europe - Christoph Stotz

• Virtual Chapters - Tom LaRock

• Technology - Douglas McDowell

• Virtual Communities - Andy Warren
• Special Projects - Rick Heiges

The Special Projects portfolio was created a couple of years back to handle initiatives that did not cleanly fall in one of the canned portfolios. Our 24 Hours of PASS was an example of an initiative that was led under the Special Projects portfolio. The Executive Committee is responsible for managing the foundational services such as marketing, finance and resources that impact all portfolios and the organization.

The portfolio approach also has some downsides. Traditionally the board member in charge of a portfolio has full control over the direction of the portfolio. This meant that a new board member with a completely different vision could potentially steer the portfolio in a completely different direction than his/her predecessor. This of course can be good or bad. We do have some board level checks and balances to prevent that from happening, especially with drastic changes in direction. We hope that the community oversight will also help us catch that early on. Another downside to the portfolio approach is that while certain board members get the choice of portfolios that they are passionate about, most certainly other board members may get slotted into a portfolio that they don't much care about or are passionate about. It could mean that they get disillusioned or ignore the portfolio for the most part and just do the bare minimum. This impacts PASS.

This year, as I spoke to individual board members to get a feel for their interests, it became apparent to me that certain initiatives that they wanted to see at PASS had larger implications than a single portfolio. For example, the Speaker Bureau. This is a great initiative for Chapters. But, it is also something that would benefit Virtual Chapters and PASS Community Connections and other initiatives where Community Speakers participate. So, a board member responsible for thinking of this program or initiative without the confines of a portfolio will have a better chance of creating a program that works for the organization and not just a single portfolio. There would certainly be involvement from folks in individual portfolios as well to help with the right needs assessment and support execution.  Also, in my discussions, quite a few board members wanted to lead interesting initiatives that did not cleanly fall within existing or predefined portfolios.

When deciding how to best allocate portfolios/initiatives, I also had to ensure that existing portfolios and their ongoing needs as well as ongoing initiatives are continuing to be managed and there are clear owners. The process involved extensive discussions with individual board members, Judy Christianson who also acts as our Executive Director, the HQ team as well as the Executive Committee. We also have to have a clear vision of our priorities as an organization and our goals for next year to ensure that the assignments fall in line with our goals. I have to admit that at the onset, I thought that this would be a short easy process, but, the process has been more complex - probably due to us re-looking at how to allocate portfolios versus focus on initiatives. We may end up with the wrong answer, but in speaking with Andy about the change, he suggested that as long as we can review the process and portfolios at periodic intervals and be open to making changes, it's worth a try.

In a follow-up post, I will detail out the key goals, portfolios and initiatives as well as assignments. I am not ready to do that as yet before talking to each individual board member, outside of mentioning that Douglas McDowell is going to lead Strategic Chapters and Jeremiah Peschka will lead Educational Program. At present Andy Warren is going to start working on the much requested Speaker Bureau and continue to finish polishing the SQL Server Standard program so that it can continue to run smoothly without active board member involvement. Andy is also completing the PASS Online Store.

With the new structure, we will also have room for community leaders to take on initiatives. So, stay tuned for the same.

Allen Kinsel on the Summit Program Committee

Allen Kinsel (Blog/Twitter), PASS Summit 2009 Program Committee Manager and a 2009 PASSion Award winner, wrote a great blog post recently recognizing and thanking many of the wonderful volunteers on the Summit 2009 Program Committee. We second (and third and fourth!) the thanks, and want to add an additional thank you to Allen as well for his tireless dedication and hard work!

- PASS HQ

Volunteering: Giving the Gift of You

Volunteers are the lifeline of PASS. And as 2009 draws to a close, we want to express our heartfelt thanks to the thousands of people who prove the power of giving every day by volunteering their time and talents to PASS—from the local chapter level to regional and virtual events to the Board of Directors.

Volunteers run PASS, and the simplest actions make a difference. Every effort builds on another to create a valuable chapter meeting, an insightful SQL Server Standard article, a successful SQL Saturday, a phenomenal 24 Hours of PASS, and an unparalleled PASS Summit. And every task has its own gift for the giver: a new business contact or friend, greater confidence in speaking, a new outlet for sharing your knowledge and skills, tips for better meetings, more management experience, or fresh ideas you can apply to other areas of your work or personal life.

So all PASS wants this holiday season is you! How can you get involved—or more involved—in volunteering with PASS? First, check out the PASS Volunteers page for an overview of volunteer opportunities and the PASS Chapters page to find your local chapter or virtual chapters you may be interested in volunteering with. Then read the following blogs for inspiration and descriptions of various ways you can help support and grow the SQL Server community through PASS:

• "Volunteering with PASS," by Jeremiah Peschka
• "Why Do I Volunteer for PASS?"by Allen Kinsel
• "SQL University History Week III: The Future = You," by Jorge Segarra
  

Thanks, again, to the many passionate volunteers who power PASS. There would be no association without you.

Board Members at the 2009 PASS Summit in Seattle - by Rushabh Mehta

It feels like eternity, yet only 6 weeks back the PASS community came together in Seattle for yet another exciting summit. The educational content was cutting edge and the company comprised of who's who of the Microsoft SQL Server world. This year's summit certainly did not fail to excite and rejuvenate everyone who attended.

The PASS board and the terrific team at HQ worked extremely hard all year to build the community at large and support various community initiatives. The summit was a time for the entire team to reach into the community, to  receive input on how they had done so far and what they should do moving forward. Although the summit itself was demanding, it was also a time to celebrate successes.

As we went through the pictures from the summit, we found this collection of amazing pictures of our board members. We hope you enjoy them as well.

PASS Connector Editorial for December 16- by Andy Warren

It’s December already? 2009 seems to have gone by altogether too fast. As I had some time to reflect about the year, it’s been a mixed 12 months for me. I’ve accomplished most of my goals, missed a few, and endured the still slow economy.  Yet, somehow there’s that nagging feeling that I could have done more – ever feel like that?

I like goals rather than resolutions. Only one difference between them. There isn’t much accountability for resolutions! It’s easy to set goals; the hard part is setting goals that require you to work hard and stay focused but are also doable.  Set too many or set them too high, and you can end the year feeling like a loser. Set them too low, and you might end up feeling like you could have done more.

No easy answer for that problem, but this year I’m going to try to set goals 3 times a year. I think four months is long enough to accomplish something meaningful, and if a project needs to stretch over the year, I’ll just break it up into three phases. Hopefully with a lot of work that will have me thinking I did a much better job at the end of 2010!

So what goals should we set? This is where a couple hours in a quiet place will do you a lot of good as you think about this list as a starting point:

• Work – it pays the bills, maybe you want to shoot for a promotion, a pay raise, doing a pet project that will add value to the company, maybe finding a new job. Are you still challenged? Maybe the challenges just require you to look for them?
• Family – it’s why we work, so maybe you aim to spend more time with them, pre-pay their tuition, take a much dreamed of ‘real’ vacation.
• Personal & Professional Development – I see this as separate from work, it’s where you invest in YOU. Typically we see this as work related; learning a new skill/version/language, but it could also be taking a certification exam, loading up SQL 2008 R2, taking a class on managing or networking. But…it should also be about things that grow you – maybe you want to learn a new hobby, or get better at an existing one, or put more time into volunteering for something.

Got some goals? Right them down and put them some place you see every day. Try hard to achieve them, but just like with projects at work, sometimes you’re going to have to re-scope or cancel a goal. Writing it down is important; it can’t be a list in your head!

Hope you have a happy holiday season.

Andy

PASS Connector Editorial for December 2- by Andy Warren

Re-Launch of SQL Server Standard Magazine

Today we’re pleased to feature the first issue of the newly re-launched SQL Server Standard magazine. Those of you who have been PASS members for a while will remember that the Standard served as our flagship magazine for many years until we had to halt production due to rising print costs. It’s taken a while to get going again, but we’re now offering it again in a much streamlined PDF format – for free to our members!

I wrote in greater detail about the history and vision for the Standard in my blog, but the short story is that it should be a place for our members to showcase their skills and provide value to our members.

People often ask me how they can help PASS, so here’s a great example of how you can help:

• Download it, read it, and send us comments (forums for the issues are coming soon, for now you can send to me at andy.warren@sqlpass.org). Was it a good article? Is there an article you’d like to see written?
• Forward the PDF  to every SQL user you know with a short into, tell them why it’s worth a few minutes of their time
• Consider writing an article for us. You have to have some experience under your belt, but if you’re interested contact Grant Fritchey (grant.fritchey@sqlpass.org) to get the full scoop. If we accept your idea and you get it done, you’ll net a cool $500 – you’ll earn every penny of it!

Going forward we’ll call out new issues right here in the Connector. We’ll also evolve our formula as we learn more, with a hard focus on sustainability. If we get things going and we can do more, we will.

Andy Warren

PASS Connector Editorial for Nov. 18 - Summit Highlights

PASS Summit 2009 is now over but still looms large in my thoughts. What a terrific week. Attending the Summit is such an immersive experience: so many people to connect with, unfettered access to Microsoft, non-stop learning opportunities and such a great spirit of camaraderie that surrounds the conference. It makes it hard to get back to life in the office again.

This was, by all accounts, one of the best Summits in recent memory. There are so many highlights to share, but here are a few of the standouts.

We had over 3000 total registrations—2232 attendees and 807 pre/post-con attendees. That’s only a 9% drop from our record year in 2008. Given the economy and how other conferences have experienced 30% to 40% drops, I’m really impressed. Our community obviously sees an incredible amount of value in PASS and the Summit.

The networking opportunities available at Summit were plentiful–and it sounds like lots of people took advantage of them. Over 70 people attended the Don Gabor networking workshop, including myself. I’m hoping most attendees accessed the available Microsoft resources: the CSS and SQLCAT teams were out in full force as well as the “Ask the Experts” folks. Birds-of-a-Feather/WIT/Chapter luncheons, the Exhibit Hall, the receptions, coffee breaks, etc., were also prime opportunities to meet new people.

Social media also took center stage at this year’s event. Representatives at our blogger table worked fast and furious to share their keynote musings through Twitter. Many others tweeted and blogged and shared their pictures of the conference as well—thank you! Not only did attendees get to share their experiences, but it helped non-attendees feel like they were participating in the Summit too.

And if the #sqlpass chatter was any indication, David DeWitt’s keynote on Day 3 was hands down the favorite of the conference. We’ll do our best to bring him back for next year.

With over 160 sessions to choose from, content was king at Summit. In fact, there were so many great sessions that most people had a tough time choosing which ones to go to. That’s why we have the conference DVD available for sale–so you can catch up on the sessions you may have missed. You can also download the session presentations from the LiveSummit site here.

A particular highlight of the week for me was the tribute to Immediate Past President Kevin Kline, who is leaving the board of directors and received a special Lifetime Achievement PASSion award to a standing ovation. In PASS's 10 years of existence, the organization has never known a time when Kevin Kline wasn't on the board of directors. PASS President Wayne Snyder’s heartfelt dedication of Kevin’s award was moving. Well deserved, Kevin.

Congratulations as well to all our great volunteers who put in long hours before and during Summit to make it a big success.

A special shout out to all our sponsors; PASS Summit would not be possible without the support of Microsoft, DELL, EMC, Expressor, HP, VMWare, Idera, and CA as well as our media partners and over 35  exhibitors. And Microsoft, we’d sure love another Gameworks party again next year—thanks for a fun night.

And last but not least, thanks to all of you in the community who attended and participated in PASS Summit 2009. We look forward to seeing you again next year!
 

Andy Warren

Interact with the PASS Board at the Summit

This blog post comes from an email I sent to the Board about this.  I left in some of the thoughts around it in addition to just what we’re doing.  Plus we’re still working out some details.  But here's what we know...

This year at the Summit we want to give the community a chance to ask questions of the Board and provide feedback.  We also want to capture any suggestions people have.

First, The PASS Board of Directors will hold an open Q&A session Wednesday from 4:30PM until 6:15PM.  It will be in room 6E.  This overlaps with the last session but also runs 15 minutes past the end of the last spotlight.  This means that everyone should be able to attend for at least 15 minutes if they’d like.  There just aren’t any other scheduling options except before the keynotes.  Hopefully not too many of you will be double-booked.

We’ll try to record it.  Depends on what A/V is already in the room and what costs are.  I’m leaning toward spending the cash but we’ll see.  Cameras are welcome.  Everyone in the community is welcome to record it, stream it, whatever.  We’ll definitely take good notes.  We expect people to come and go during this.  If we get the same question three times that’s fine.

The session will probably be moderated.  All the Board members will be answering questions.  In cases where there are a variety of Board opinions on issues we’ll make sure everyone gets a chance to answer or ruminate.  I think we’ll get very few questions in areas where PASS has an official policy so it will mostly be Board member’s opinions.  We expect the community to drive the topics and we just make sure everyone gets heard.

Second, we’ve asked each Board member to spend one (or maybe even two hours) in the PASS Booth.  We’re hoping to list all the Board members and their schedule during Wayne’s keynote.  If not, they will be posted in the PASS Booth. This will give people a chance to speak with the Board in a relaxed setting and answer questions about PASS. 

Finally, we’re going to have a suggestion box at the booth.  Yes, pen and paper.  Old school I know.  We looked into an email alias.  The only downside right now is that we don’t have a good process on the other end of that to deal with the feedback we get.  HQ is completely swamped getting ready for Summit and doesn’t have any extra time at Summit.  I don’t want us in a position of accepting suggestions we can’t process or even respond to.

Whatever we have in the box by Wednesday we’ll go through at the Q&A -- time permitting.  We can probably find a volunteer to sort them for us.  Any received after Wednesday will be processed by HQ when they get back up to speed following Summit.  I expect we’ll get quite a few about Summit logistics.  We’ll just have to see if we have time to address those.  Otherwise the HQ logistics group can look through them as they have time.  This is a stop gap measure for this Summit only.  The post-Summit survey that goes out will also be a way to capture Summit specific feedback.

Going forward we’ll either setup an email alias or forums.  I’m leaning toward forums but we’ll have to see what works logistically.  Brent Ozar made some good comments about that the other day.  That gives people a way to give feedback on ideas and add more information.  And a way for the community to give feedback on the fly on various ideas.  We’ll see if we can keep up with them :)  It also gives us a way to ask them questions.  That’s an area we’ve been sorely lacking (or at least I have). 

See you all soon!

-Bill

Please welcome the new PASS Executive Committee

The PASS Board of Directors today approved its new Executive Committee for the 2010-2011 term. The new ExeCo is:

President -- Rushabh Mehta
Executive Vice President (Finance) -- Bill Graziano
Vice President (Marketing) -- Rick Heiges

Due to widespread interest in greater transparency and communications between PASS leadership and the community, 2009 featured a departure from previous appointment processes.  Unlike years past, candidates -- all current elected members of the Board -- nominated themselves for the open position of Vice President (Marketing), traditionally the most junior role on the Executive Committee.  There were three candidates for the position of Vice President (Marketing).  The candidacy for the other two positions, President and Executive Vice President (Finance), followed the Board's established precedent of ascension, with Rushabh Mehta moving from Executive VP to President, and Bill Graziano moving from VP-Marketing to Executive VP.

In keeping with the Bylaws, the Officer Appointment Committee (OffCom) was formed to guide the process.  This "OffCom", chaired by IPP Kevin Kline and consisting of Rushabh Mehta (EVP), Bill Graziano (VP-Marketing), and Judy Christianson (Executive Director at PASS Headquarters), interviewed each candidate at length.  Following these interviews, the entire Board of Directors met with the individual candidates for a Q&A.  Based on these interviews and discussions, the OffCom then recommended an Executive slate to the Board and put it to an official vote.  The Board approved this slate.

Congratulations to the new ExeCo, and good luck!

PASS Connector Editorial for October 21- by Andy Warren

Hi All,

I’m starting to get ready for the Summit, making sure I can find my jacket (I don’t use it much in Florida!) and have plenty of business cards. And as much as I enjoy the technical stuff, it’s really the people part that makes it something to look forward to - literally hundreds of friends and acquaintances built over 10 years in the SQL business. Being a DBA often means working solo, so it’s nice to be among those that share the challenges and passions. Say hello if you see me!

On the topic of friends and networking, join me at our 2 hour networking seminar on Monday with author Don Gabor.  I think it’s going to be a lot of fun and you get an autographed book too.

We’ll be on break during the Summit, and return with the next issue of the Connector on Nov 16th. See you then!

Andy

THE RESULTS ARE IN

As Chair of the Nominations Committee, I would like to congratulate our new board members for the 2010/2011 term. Brian Moran, Managing Partner for Solid Quality Mentors, and Jeremiah Peschka, PASS Group and Chapter Leader, will be joining the PASS Board of Directors, while Thomas LaRock continues his board service for a new term.

In total, 578 community members cast votes for up to three board candidates. Brian and Thomas garnered 423 and 419 votes, respectively. Jeremiah received 313 votes, and Matt Morollo received 253 votes.

Newly elected board members will have an introductory meeting with the current Board of Directors at PASS Summit 2009. They will officially begin serving their term on January 1, 2010. For more information about the elections process, see the Elections 2009 page.

Thanks to all the applicants and candidates in this year's elections, as well as the dedicated PASS community for being so invested in the process. Your involvement will ensure that PASS continues to go from strength to strength. Congratulations again to our new Directors-at-Large!

Sessions for New BI Pros at PASS Summit

If you are new to BI, I would also encourage you to attend the pre-conference seminar Building a Microsoft Data Warehousing Platform by SQL Server MVP and BI expert and author Brian Knight. (For a preview of what Brian is covering in his seminar, check out his PASS Summit Q&A “Delivering Value with Agile Data Warehouse Development” and his 24 Hours of PASS Session Recording.

In addition, don’t miss Erik Veerman’s Friday post-con seminar Jump-start to Data Warehouse Data Modeling and Architecture. You can get a preview of Erik’s seminar by watching his 24 Hours of PASS Session Recording.

And if you’re interested in learning about delivering BI to end users, make sure these 6 sessions are on your agenda:

PASS Connector Editorial for October 7- by Andy Warren

Meet the PASS Board Candidates

Just one topic this week – elections! If you haven’t seen the announcement already, we’ve posted the slate of candidates for the 2009 PASS Board of Directors election. Here are the four candidates running for the three available seats:

• Brian Moran
• Jeremiah Peschka
• Matt Morollo
• Thomas LaRock

You can read details about each candidate as well as how the elections process works. Our nomination committee was led by Immediate Past President Kevin Kline and consisted of Judy Christianson (Executive Director), Rushabh Mehta (VP Finance), Allen Kinsel, and Brian Knight. They reviewed 11 applications, interviewed seven nominees, and selected the final four candidates to compete for three vacant seats on the Board of Directors for the 2010-2011 term.
If you were a member of PASS before May 2009, you should have received an email from PASS asking you to complete a qualification survey as a pre-requisite to voting this year.You can also vote if you registered for PASS Summit 2009 by October 8. Voting will run October 14-20, with eligible voters receivinge a link to their 2009 ballot. 

Winners will be announced before PASS Summit this year, leveling the playing field for those unable to attend and campaign and giving the Board time to work with the new members to ensure a smooth transition in January.

Please take the time to research the candidates, read their blogs, and vote carefully for the three best candidates  to represent you on the Board.

PASS Summit Sessions for New DBAs

I was recently asked if I thought the PASS Summit was appropriate for new database administrators.  My answer was a resounding YES!  But I wanted to add some specific reasons.  If I was a new DBA here are the 12 sessions I’d try to attend at PASS:

Proactive DBA: Manage SQL Server Better
Ross LoForte (Microsoft Corp.)

The Ultimate Free SQL Server Toolkit
Kevin Kline (Quest Software)

DRP101: Learn The Difference Between Your Log And Your Cluster
Brent Ozar (Quest Software)

Practical Performance Monitoring and Troubleshooting for the graduated beginner but not yet expert.
Joe Yong (Scalability Experts)

Securing and Hardening a SQL Server Implementation - Notes from the Field
Ross Mistry (Convergent Computing)

Insight into Indexes
Gail Shaw (XpertEase)

SQL Server Execution Plans From Compilation To Caching To Reuse
Maciej Pilecki (Project Botticelli Ltd.)

DBAs Behaving Badly... Worst Practices for Database Administrators
Rod Colledge (Independant Consultant)

Storage for the DBA
Denny Cherry (Awareness Technologies)

Understanding Logging and Recovery in SQL Server
Paul Randal (SQLskills.com)

SQL Server 2008 Manageability Features
Peter Ward (WARDY IT Solutions)

Troubleshooting applications accessing SQL Server
Abirami Iyer (Microsoft CSS)
Lakshmi Jonnakuti (Microsoft CSS)

There’s a little bit of everything thrown in.  You’ll learn about backup, security, disaster recovery and performance.  I threw in Kevin Kline’s session on free tools which will help with all of those. 

There are also some pre-conference sessions that are appropriate for new DBAs.  Either one of the following sessions on Monday would be helpful:

Care and Feeding of the Transaction Log (DBA Track)
Kalen Delaney (SQLearning)
Speaker Q&A: The Biggest Transaction Log Myth

SQL Server 2005/2008: Indexing for Performance (DBA Track)
Kimberly Tripp (SQLskills.com)
Paul Randal (SQLskills.com)

Friday also brings two great choices:

Practical Performance Monitoring and Troubleshooting (DBA Track)
Andrew Kelly (Solid Quality Mentors)
Speaker Q&A: Wait Stats Can't Wait

Disaster Recovery: Tips, Tricks, and Techniques (DBA Track)
Paul Randal (SQLskills.com)
Kimberly Tripp (SQLskills.com)

In addition I think one of the biggest benefits of PASS is the people you’ll meet.  You’ll find people like yourself in all these sessions.  Knowing other new DBAs that you can share problems and solutions with is very valuable.  Many of the people I ask for help with problems today are people I met through PASS.

I’d also encourage you to buy the Summit DVD.  The price is very reasonable and you’ll get access to the other 150+ sessions that you didn’t have time to attend.

Bill Graziano

PASS Logreader Awards Announced!

There’s nothing like a good contest to make things interesting, so we’ve put together the first ever PASS Logreader Awards to recognize the best and most interesting bloggers in our community. Bloggers will have the opportunity to submit their best posts in up to two categories by Oct 15th, and then we’ll announce the winners at the PASS Summit. Here are three different views of the contest, each contains directions on how to participate:

http://www.sqlservercentral.com/blogs/andy_warren/archive/2009/10/06/a-contest-for-bloggers-the-2009-pass-logreader-awards.aspx

http://www.brentozar.com/archive/2009/10/announcing-the-pass-log-reader-awards/

http://facility9.com/2009/10/06/the-first-ever-log-reader-awards

Andy Warrren

PASS Connector Editorial for September 23- by Andy Warren

It’s the busy time of year here at PASS. We just wrapped our first (but not last!) 24 Hours of PASS virtual conference, the nominating committee is working on the slate of candidates for the Board of Directors, the officer nomination committee is working on recommendations for the officer candidates for this year, and of course PASS Summit is only a few weeks away now. We’re also coming up on the annual election, always a busy and interesting time for PASS.

Changing topics, I’d like to challenge you to participate more in your local chapter. That doesn’t mean you have to go to every meeting, but at least go to enough that you recognize the regulars. Maybe earn some karma by volunteering to show up early to set up the room, or take on a bigger role by taking ownership of finding speakers or sponsors, but go.

Chapters aren’t just technology, they are people, and that’s usually what makes it fun and interesting. It’s also important to the health and success of a good chapter to have good attendance relative to the size of the area. For example, here in Florida, the Space Coast group averages 10-12 attendees. I consider that very good considering it’s a small town. In Tampa, they average 40-50 attendees, not bad at all for a much larger city.

You add value by just attending. Somewhere behind the scenes someone has sent the emails, set up the room, found the speaker, and paid for the pizza. And all they hope for is a good meeting with good attendance. You can go to learn something or to meet people, and just by being there, do something positive. Not sure I said that well, but hopefully it gets you thinking.

PASS Connector Editorial for September 9- by Andy Warren

I recently had the opportunity to attend the Jacksonville Code Camp, a great event with 8 tracks and 460 attendees! As you can guess from the title the focus is developers, but developers do some data access and so there was one SQL track – the main reason I attended. As I sat through some of the SQL presentations (all well attended) what struck me is how much of a gap remains between developers and DBAs.

Some of that gap is the nature of the way we train developers and DBAs – on the job.  That’s a practical strategy, but it also means that our early views of how the world should be are shaped incidentally. If the first job a developer has is for a company that doesn’t have a DBA and doesn’t do a lot of data access, it’s easy for them to see data access as something less than interesting. Or if the first job is with a company with a really tough DBA, they may see DBAs as an obstacle rather than a helpful team member.

Some of the gap is responsibility. DBAs feel the weight of down time, data loss, security breaches in a way that few developers do. It’s not that developers don’t care, but they have the insulation of QA, testing, and not having access to production.

Some of the gap is the way we’ve divided up the teams. Having DBAs and developers on different teams makes a lot of sense for many reasons; separation of duties for SOX, cross training with others will similar skills, etc. The separate teams aren’t innately bad, but in practice they present another hurdle to communication.
Over time all of those things and more have created a real divide. I don’t know that we can fix it in one editorial, but here are some ideas for you to think about:

Developers

• Remember that data is the life blood of the business and DBAs are tasked with keeping it safe – understanding that point of view will help you bridge many gaps
• Good design and data access does matter regardless of the number of planned users. Doing it well doesn’t take much more time than not
• Treat your DBA as a valued consultant. You’ll get better results if you show them the problem than if you give them the solution

DBAs

• We can’t afford to be road blocks for the sake of ideals. Time to market demands often force businesses to take short cuts. Help them make smart choices about where to short cut and where to invest a bit more effort
• Don’t expect developers to be SQL experts! They should write their own procs and more, but don’t expect them to design a solid indexing strategy for you
• Get in the game early. Start sitting in on the planning meetings with developers so that you can offer some sage advice when the cost of change is low. Remember the first point – sometimes corners will have be cut, be flexible and show them the pitfalls as you see them

I think there some things PASS can do to make the developer/DBA relationship work better, but ultimately it comes down to people – an analog solution to be sure. If you think about it, it’s really more than being a good DBA or good developer, it’s about being a good team player and a good employee. Try to worry less about your concerns and focus on helping other people get stuff done. Someone has to go first – why not you?

PASS Connector Editorial for August 26- by Andy Warren

PASS Connector Editorial for August 12- by Andy Warren

PASS Connector Editorial for July 29 - by Andy Warren

How good are you at meeting new people at a user group meeting or conference? Do you remember names? Do you follow up, or do you wind up discarding the business cards without looking at them? Do you wish you were better at networking?

This year at PASS Summit, we're trying to do more than just have “networking events”. For the first time we have real training available to help you learn to network. Noted author Don Gabor will be presenting a 2-hour seminar the afternoon of Nov 2 where you may not learn it all, but you'll get a good start! The $60 seminar includes a signed copy of his book. Go to the seminar, learn some skills, and then move right into the opening night reception to give them a try in the real world.

You might go because you need to grow your networking skills, but the seminar also represents a great networking opportunity itself. Author and speaker Grant Fritchey will be there and blogged about why he plans to attend. So did PASS board member Tom LaRock. Summit speaker Kendal Van Dyke and PASS volunteer Jack Corbett will be attending. Past President Kevin Kline will be there and so will Steve Jones from SQLServerCentral.com.  I’ll be attending and blogged about why as well.

We’re going to try for a group photo of all 100 attendees together, and invite them all to join an attendee only LinkedIn group to make sure everyone has a chance to decide who they want to meet and has a way to save the connections they make.

Networking is a vital career skill. It doesn’t mean you need a job or have something to sell, often having that connection means you can help someone else, often in unexpected ways. More practically, attending an event like the PASS Summit is a lot more fun when you connect with people.

Have a question about the networking seminar, the PASS Summit, or PASS in general? Email me at andy.warren@sqlpass.org and we’ll get you an answer.

PASS Bylaws Updated for 2009

Last week PASS voted to update the bylaws by which we govern ourselves.  Changing the bylaws requires a two-thirds vote of the Board of Directors.  This is the first bylaw update since I started on the Board in 2006.  This update was focused on members and elections.  You can find our bylaws on the Governance page of our web site (http://www.sqlpass.org/AboutPASS/Governance.aspx).

Our previous bylaws defined various classes of members including paid and free.  They only gave voting rights to paying members.  As part of the Summit registration process all Summit attendees automatically became paying members.  Once the Board eliminated the paying membership we were left with only Summit attendees voting in elections.  This didn’t match our stated goal of making PASS more than a Summit.

The new bylaws define a “member in good standing”.  The specific definition of this is not in the bylaws however.  We expect this definition to grow as we create better ways of interacting with the community.  A separate document will be approved by the Board and published that defines who can vote in the upcoming election.  We expect this will be the basis for future elections as well.  As the committee creates this document they are trying to balance broad inclusion with limiting to people that are invested in the organization.  Our overall goal is that the population of people that can vote grows beyond what it has been.  Hopefully this will keep us from updating the bylaws in the future if we add new classes of members.

We also worked on the sections around elections.  We added more structure to the Nominations Committee and the process for selecting the head of the committee. This is the process that Directors at Large go through to be elected to the Board.

The President, Executive Vice President and Vice President of Marketing make up the Executive Committee (or ExecCo) along with the Executive Director and the Immediate Past President.  These people are defined as the Officers of PASS and “exercise the authority of the Board between meetings”.

In the past it had been somewhat opaque how the candidates were selected to run for the officer positions.  The bylaws now define an Officer Appointment Committee that is separate from the Nominations Committee.  This group determines the slate of officer candidates from those people currently serving on the Board.  This group is presented to the Board and approved by Board vote.  Our goal here was to make explicit how these roles were filled in practice.

I encourage you to take a look at the bylaws.  They are rules that govern how PASS is run in our mission to serve the SQL Server community.

Bill Graziano
Vice President of Marketing

PASS Connector Editorial for July 15 - by Andy Warren

Hello,

As we approach PASS Summit in November, we also approach the time when we’ll be having our annual election and I want to share some information about what’s involved and how you can participate.

The process starts with a nominating committee headed by Immediate Past President Kevin Kline. Kevin will select committee members and together they make a recommendation to the Board of Directors about the officers (President, Vice President of Finance, and Vice President of Marketing) for the next two year term. Officers must be current Board members and the slate is voted on by the Board. The new officers will be announced at the Summit.

The next step is to open nominations for positions on the Board of Directors. We’ll provide full details when that begins, but in the past it has consisted of completing a written application followed by at least one phone interview. The nominating committee then recommends to the Board a slate of candidates for the November election.

Speaking from my own six months of experience on the Board of Directors it’s a serious commitment. Expect to spend 2-5 hours per week on PASS business, and to attend as many as three in person meetings that will last two full days each. It may change, but many of our meetings are held in Seattle which added two full days of travel for those of us on the East coast.

Start thinking about the election. Maybe you’re ready to increase your participation, or maybe you know someone who would be a good candidate. In an upcoming editorial we’ll talk more about the nominating process and the election process.

Andy Warren

PASS Update #11 - Networking Seminar at PASS Summit

PASS Connector Editorial for July 1 - by Andy Warren

Just as the last issue of the Connector was ready to send we announced the full schedule for the 2009 PASS Summit. In this issue I want to focus on a topic that I think is of critical importance to PASS (and a personal cause) – bringing in new talent each year. If you look at the schedule you’ll see a Who’s Who of people in the SQL Server world, and that is good. Good because they have a lot to share, and good because they find the Summit to be an event worth their time. It’s definitely good for attendees.
 
So why do we need new talent? I can think of a few interesting reasons: 

• We need a ‘next generation’ of speakers for when the current ones retire
• We need new ideas and new approaches – and new passion
• It makes speaking slots competitive – only so many seats on the island
• It’s the right thing to do. Good organizations constantly look for those with potential and offer them the opportunity to grow – but they have to do the work

I asked PASS HQ to send me a list of first time Summit speakers and it turns out 13 of the 85 distinct speakers are on the list. I’ve linked to their blog where I could find one:

Denny Cherry
Glenn Berry
Jacob Sebastian
Jamon Bowen
John Paul Cook
Jonathan Kehayias
Kendal Van Dyke
Kevin Guinn
Michelle Ufford
Ravindra Gurram
Rob Garrison
Rod Colledge
Trevor Barkhouse

Remember, these aren’t first time speakers or newbie DBA’s – they’ve all been using and talking about SQL Server for a while. Read some of their blogs, or search for them and see what you find. I think you’ll see that those listed above are another 12 good reasons to attend the Summit this year.

In the next issue we’ll look at the upcoming PASS elections. Until then, if you have questions about PASS, please email me at andy.warren@sqlpass.org. 

Still more TBTILAPS entries

Ok, the acronym is a little unwieldy.  The entries are still coming in for The Best Thing I Learned at PASS Summit (TBTILAPS) contest.  I know Fridays can be kind of slow so I suggest you take some time and enter our contest. It’s either that or rewrite that horrible stored procedure you’ve been meaning to get to. 

Here are some snippets from some of our recent entries:

• Grant Fritchey writes “I’ve attended technical sessions that blew my socks off and made me twitch in my seat, fighting the urge to start writing TSQL code, immediately.”  And that isn’t even the best thing he learned!  You can read the full post on his blog.
• Brian L. wrote about choosing “sessions that had ‘lessons learned’ or ‘capitalizing on’ to benefit from others’ experience in MS SQL 2008. Sometimes the lesson taught was what Microsoft had learned to improve their process. These breakout sessions helped to meet my goal of learning what is new in SQL 2008.”  He also wrote about the Summit DVDs saying “The recordings of the conference sessions which I purchased have been extremely beneficial. Not only can I 'refresh' my memory about the sessions I attended, but I can also see what I missed and hope to learn at future Summits. With PASS, it’s 'What you See is What you Get!'".  Don’t forget that when you register you can purchase a set of DVDs with the recordings of all the sessions for $95.  After the Summit the price goes up.
• Thomas L. stopped by the CSS First-Aid Station to ask about a problem he was having.  “The PASS First-Aid station had a Sr. Escalation Engineer with Cluster Environments. The gentleman had done a cluster presentation at PASS2007 I attended, so this was a good start.  He started by explaining in detail about a Cluster Environment. The tip that helped us was Possible Owners on a cluster resource.  This is where the SP & Hot Fix installation program determines what servers to update.  Again, our company sponsored trip to PASS pays off. One thing I have discovered about going to a conference is always come back with something valuable for management. Instead of attending the 'here is what’s new' sessions, I have become determined to learn 1-2 more valuable tools for what we are doing today.”  The CSS First-Aid station is staffed by Microsoft’s top support engineers.  Stop by and ask them your hardest questions!
• K. Brian Kelley writes in his blog about a session from the late Ken Henderson that helped him solve a problem a couple of years later.  The one thing that jumped out at me was in the discussion he and Steve Jones had in the comments section of this blog post.  Brian wrote “Also, it got me away for a week to really focus on SQL Server.”  I find the that’s true also.  Getting away in a place where I can think about SQL Server but not be at work makes all kinds of interesting ideas pop into my head.  I usually come back with a big list of things I want to work on.
• Simon D. writes “At the 2008 PASS conference in Seattle, I learned that a DBA’s most valuable resource is the SQL Server community. The engagement of the community at PASS transformed my problems to projects, and my tools to solutions.”  He concludes with “Impromptu sessions with peers at PASS … helped bring my project to production. My superiors at work couldn’t have been more impressed that I had accomplished so much in such a short time-frame, at such a low cost.” Simon hits on one of our key goals for this competition: helping you cost-justify the Summit.  Hopefully stories like this will convince management that PASS is an investment rather than an expense.

The contest runs through Tuesday, July 1st.  We’ve received some great responses so far.  Since we’re giving away prizes to the top ten entries you’ve got a great chance to win!

-Bill Graziano
PASS Board of Directors – VP Marketing

PASS Connector Editorial for June 17 - by Andy Warren

Before we launch into the big news of the week I’d like to remind everyone that our schedule for the 2009 Summit has changed from previous years – Monday will be pre-conference sessions, the main conference will be Tuesday through Thursday, and then we will have a day of post conference sessions on Friday.

Last week we announced 23 spotlight sessions, awarded to speakers that have previously presented one more sessions at the Summit and received excellent evaluations. You can click here for the full list, but I thought I’d demonstrate the kind of speakers the Summit attracts by listing their names here – I suspect you’ll recognize many of them!

Itzik Ben-Gan, Grant Fritchey, Klaus Aschenbrenner, Peter DeBetta, Paul Nielsen, Greg Low, Erin Welker, Brian Knight, Erik Veerman, Andy Leonard, Warren Thornthwaite, Joe Yong, Kimberly Tripp, Maciej Pilecki, Paul Randal, Peter Ward, Adam Machanic, Thomas Grohser, Gail Shaw, Kalen Delaney, Andrew Kelly, Joe Webb, and our own President, Wayne Snyder. 

We’ve also announced the pre-conference and post-conference sessions as well as a special 2 hour networking (as in people) class on Monday by author Don Gabor.

So click on the links and start thinking about attending! As always, if you have any questions about PASS, please email me at andy.warren@sqlpass.org.

"The Best Thing I Learned at PASS Summit" Contest is now on Facebook

Check out our new Facebook fan page for our "The Best Thing I Learned at PASS" Contest. Visit the page to join discussions, receive updates, and have a legitimate excuse to be on Facebook during work hours.

Remember, the contest closes at midnight on June 30, 2009. You could win free registration or free hotel at PASS Summit so make sure you enter! For more info on the contest, visit the PASS Summit Contest page.

ENTRIES up to June 15 (Part 2 of 2)

ENTRY #6

I went to my first Professional Association for SQL Server Summit in 2007. I’d gone to a few local SQL gatherings, talked to other area DBAs, and worked on some pretty cool projects. I really liked what I was doing, and I thought I was doing a decent job. I knew I wasn’t a rocket scientist, but I kept the trains running on time.

At the PASS Summit, though, it was as if a giant light bulb clicked on above my head.

I learned that the stuff you really need to know isn’t in Books Online.

You wanna learn the stuff that makes your server fly, the stuff that saves your rear when the database is suspect, the stuff that makes you look like a genius amongst your peers, the stuff that makes the developers’ eyes get big, the stuff that makes you wave your hands in the air and shout “I’M KING OF THE WORLD, FOR TINYINT VALUES OF WORLD!”

Everybody knows the stuff in Books Online – that stuff ain’t enough. You wanna learn the secret tips, the undocumented goodies, the up-up-down-down-left-right-left-right-B-A cheat codes. They say there’s no /faster switch for SQL Server, and they’re wrong. The SQL Server world is chock full of sorta-kinda-barely-official things that don’t get enough press, yet make a very real performance difference. The classic example from last year was Jimmy May’s session on partition alignment.

- by Brent Ozar
- blog post here


ENTRY #7

I attended my first PASS summit in 2006 and remember the experience as one that shaped my career as a DBA. I was new to SQL 2005 and my company tasked me with security and performance.

I remember meeting SQL MVP Erland Sommarskog in one of the all day pre-con security sessions asking some very good questions about the new security features in SQL 2005 to one of the Microsoft developers who wrote much of the security for SQL 2005. There is nothing like learning real-time with a dialog between a MVP and the developer who wrote the tool. This experienced helped me to secure our web hosting environment.

We had just migrated to SQL 2005 and were seeing blocking on a SPID labeled -4. So, I asked Bob Ward who happened to be manning the CSS area. The question even stumped him, but not for long with his resources back at Microsoft, he gave me his email and said he would look into it. After short email dialog he found that TEMPDB was having contention problems, so we increased the number of files and upgraded to latest cumulative patch and all was good.

Nothing like getting tons of information to help you with your job, getting free support help from CSS, and meeting tons of people in your line of work struggling with exact same thing as you!

- by Chuck Lathrope
- blog post here


ENTRY #8

I attended my first PASS Summit in 2004. I also attended a pre-conference (pre-con) led by Kalen Delaney. It was awesome! Kalen's pre-con focused on performance tuning, and I learned a lot about both SQL Server 2000 and SQL Server 2005.

The most important thing I learned was: I was not alone! There's a whole lot of us out there, lurking in corner and basement cubicles, automating process monitors, reviewing job logs.

I learned most database professionals are "accidental DBAs" - most of us didn't ever plan to enter the field. We decided to do database work sometime after starting in IT, or (like me) were standing closest to the server when a database position became available.

In short, I discovered I was part of a community.

And so it has remained the past five years - I am part of a community.

That's the cool part of PASS for me. At the Summit, I get to see folks I haven't seen for a year. I learn as much at the events and networking with new and old friends as I do during the sessions.

And that's saying something - the sessions are awesome!

- by Andy Leonard
- blog post here


ENTRY #9

Let’s start at the beginning. I wanted to learn more about SQL Server, and found a local User Group, and attended.

After a few meetings, I got to know a few people, including the President. Having these contacts, and being able to ask questions of these local ‘knowledge stores’ when I needed help was priceless. If the story ended there, it would already be a success story. I had networked and learned. I was a better DBA for it.

But that’s not the end. The President told me that I should go to PASS. Since I trusted him already, I went. My family came with me to Florida, and went to DisneyWorld, as I went to PASS. I remember being alone with people all around me. But I soon noticed tons of people, just like me, wanting to learn. During the conference, I saw a few people that I knew, and recognized some names from books I had read. Soon, I realized that all the people attending and speaking, were just like me. This is the 1st great thing that I learned; there are no experts that are better than me, they are people just like me, they just learned this stuff earlier. Now they are sharing with the rest of us. I too can learn what they know. The quantity of knowledge and contacts I have gained because I attended PASS cannot be measured. And that’s why we are all here at PASS. To learn and to network.

- by Tjay Belt
- blog post here


(Thoughts? Comments? Suggestions? Memories? Go to our Facebook discussion! http://tinyurl.com/passdiscuss)

ENTRIES up to June 15 (Part 1 of 2)

ENTRY #1

In 2007, I attended a session on security debugging taught by Ruslan Ovechkin. This class, which I had to cut short because of my flight home, made a big difference on my job.

I work as the lead DBA for a product development team. Our application was repeatedly throwing login errors when trying to connect to SQL Server. Specifically, errors 18452 and 18456. Prior to the Summit, I had been researching these errors in vain on the web. So when I saw this session on the Summit agenda I decided to attend.

Ruslan was a very efficient presenter, and he got right to the point. Eight slides into his PowerPoint presentation, he gave us a list of the common states that throw Error 18456. Right away, I knew that our problem was with our SQL Server service accounts, so I knew what I had to do when I came home.

That wasn't all. He laid out detailed instructions about the various security caches in SQL Server and showed us how to navigate and query them. He also gave us an application to assist with security debugging.

I got a lot out of this session, even considering that I couldn't stay until the end. I still keep the presentation on my workstation since it's a great reference in and of itself and also provides links to the SQL Server security blogs. My team also benefitted, since I was able to educate our developers about the nuances of SQL Server security.

- by Ken Powers


ENTRY #2

I went to my first PASS Summit many many months ago in November of 2008. I didn’t know many people in the SQL Server community, but I knew a few people. Throughout the PASS Summit, I spent time getting to know people. I met a lot of great people at the Summit and I’ve stayed in touch and become friends with many of them.

But, the best thing I learned at PASS was that there’s always something to learn from everyone. We’re all part of a community and we get better by learning from each other.

- by Jeremiah Peschka
- blog post here


ENTRY #3

I attended my first PASS conference in 2007 in Denver and I didn't know exactly what to expect. I signed up for the two pre-sessions prior to the conference and was able to sit through a full day training session with Itzik Ben-Gan the first day and Kalen Delaney on the second. Needles to say, I learned more about T-SQL and SQL Internals in two days than I thought was humanly possible. Just when I thought my brain couldn't hold anymore, I went to several sessions the next three days listening to some of the best minds in the business speak about any SQL topic you can imagine. I think this is one of the areas that make attending the PASS Summit invaluable (it spawns ideas that you can take with you and apply in your environment). You may not remember everything from every presentation, but you can remember enough to know that you need to research a little more on certain topics when you get back to work. But, I think the best thing I took away from the PASS Summit was not something I learned; it was motivation. We tend to get stuck in our daily routines and every now and then we need something like the PASS Summit to recharge our batteries and rejuvenate our outlook on our jobs. When you combine all this with the great networking opportunities and after parties the PASS Summit is one of the best SQL events that you'll ever attend.

- by Ken Simmons
- blog post here


ENTRY #4

The best thing I learned at PASS 2008 was in regards to the SQL Server Upgrade Assistant. I wasn't alone in the people that didn't know this tool existed. When the presenter asked for the hands of those who had used or knew of the tool, not many were raised. I knew of and had used the SQL Server Upgrade Advisor before, but this tool was the real deal and helped us get approval sign offs in record times. This tool saved my organization SAIC a great deal of time an effort in staging and testing for our upgrades from SQL Server 2000 to SQL Server 2005. We plan to make use of the tool again when we go from SQL Server 2005 to SQL Server 2008 sometime in the future.

- by Rob Spellman
- blog post here


ENTRY #5

I attended my first PASS Conference in 2007 and was blown away. The presentations were so amazing and insightful; I practically begged my boss to allow me to attend the 2008 Conference. The most valuable thing I learned from both of these conferences is that there is no replacement for networking with your peers and being able to communicate situations and solutions to each other. After the 2007 Conference, I rushed back to the office to begin sharing all that I had learned. I stressed to my teammates that we needed to get more active in the PASS community as there was an extremely broad base of people that were always more than willing to help answer questions and offer advice when needed.

I took PASS as an opportunity to be able to meet some of the people I only had been able to read their blog posts or articles in SQL Server Magazine. I was going to get a chance listen and learn from people like Kalen Delaney, Itzik Ben-Gan and Kevin Kline. Not to say that the technical aspect of it all wasn’t amazing and it sounds a little corny but for me it was the people at PASS that made it worth it for me. I would never trade the experience of going to PASS and I encourage everyone to try their hardest to go!

- by Sheldon M. Williams


(Thoughts? Comments? Suggestions? Memories? Go to our Facebook discussion! http://tinyurl.com/passdiscuss)

And now for something completely different... like our leading ENTRIES!

This year's maiden PASS Summit contest is shifting into full gear this week. There are two weeks left to get YOUR entry in. It's only 250 words. What have you got to lose?

If you're not sure how to go about it, here are our leading entries so far. Feel free to comment here or visit our Facebook page to join in on the discussion!

As Monty Python said, "And now for something completely different..."

What have you learned at the PASS Summit?

In many of the PASS Conferences I’ve attended I can usually point to one thing I learned that was the most valuable.  Usually this was enough to justify the cost of the entire conference.  I learned something that would save me so much time or money it would “pay” for the conference.  This made it pretty easy for me to justify to myself (or my boss) that it was money well spent.  Here's my story...

Quite a few years back I was sitting in a session on performance tuning.  The speaker demonstrated a little utility named Read80Trace that I’d never seen before.  At the time I was working to improve performance on a client’s database server.  This mostly involved hearing anecdotal stories about what was slow and running Profiler to catch queries with long durations, high reads or high CPU usage.  We were making progress but nothing dramatic.  Profiler was only catching those queries that rarely ran but where huge consumers of resources.  I could make those faster but it didn’t have that much of an impact on overall performance.

Read80Trace would capture all the activity and group identical statements together.  I could see in aggregate what was consuming the most disk and the most CPU.  We spent a week working through those queries and stored procedures.  Many weren’t very slow individually but would run 5,000 times an hour.  Even a small improvement helped.  We spent a week working on it – mostly adding indexes and occasionally rewriting queries.  After a week we’d cut our disk and CPU usage in half and eliminated the need to buy a new high-end server.  

Read80Trace completely changed my approach to performance tuning and has helped every client since then.  I liked the tool so much I wrote my own version of it when Microsoft didn’t release the 2005 version in a timely manner.  And that is the Best Thing I Learned at PASS.

PASS would like to get more stories like this.  I know they’re out there.  I’ve heard many of them in the years I’ve been attending the conference.  Tell the story of what you learned and how it helped you.  We’re running a contest through July 1st to capture these stories.  Post your entry on your blog and email us the link.  If you don’t have a blog, just email us your entry.

We’re limiting entries to 250 words or less.  Mine clocked in at a svelte 244 words.  Of course, I’m not eligible to win since I’m on the Board but our volunteers are and so is most everyone reading this.  We’re giving away a number of prizes for this including a free registration or paying your hotel costs.  And if you win one of these prizes you can give it to someone else.  (The rules as published while I’m writing this say that you can’t transfer your prize to another winner.  That’s being updated and should be corrected by the end of the day.)  

We want to take these stories and add them to our ROI page.  We think that having concrete examples of how people get value from the conference will help justify it in these tough economic times.  We’re giving away ten prizes that include the free registration/hotel, free pre-conference session and free set of our DVDs from last year.

Take a second and write something up.  Tell us the Best Thing you Learned at PASS.

PASS Connector Editorial for June 3 - by Andy Warren

I was browsing through the list of SQL 2008 books today to find one to feature in this issue of the Connector and Pro SQL Server 2008 Analytics: Delivering Sales and Marketing Dashboards caught my eye. There’s no doubt that ‘dashboards’ are a hot commodity these days and while some of that might just be the buzzword of the quarter, there’s also a real need to provide information to business users in a way that people understand.

Often we call that reporting, and the presumption is that reporting is easy, if anything figuring out the query for the report is the hard part. There are definitely reports that work just fine in the plain tabular format, but it’s interesting how displaying the data the right way can lead to a better or faster understanding of what the data means. For example, during the months prior to our European Summit we received a weekly report that was a graph showing the year over year trend along with lines indicating major milestones on each timeline making it very easy to understand.  For the 2009 Summit we get a similar report but in tabular format. It’s the same data, just not as easy to understand.

Business intelligence isn’t just reporting, there is definitely a lot to it and as I assess my own skills I see that without more knowledge of both SSIS and SSAS I’m limiting the solutions I propose – the old saying about when all you have is a hammer all the problems look like nails applies all too well.

Changing topics, I saw that Board member Greg Low just sent out his monthly email to our chapter leaders and included this time is something we’re calling the ‘chapter deck’, a short Powerpoint slide deck that has news and other information from PASS.  Our hope is that this becomes both a tool that is useful and time saving for the chapter leader, but also another way to communicate our messages to prospective members. If you attend a chapter meeting and see it used, let us know what you think!

Have a question about PASS? Email me at andy.warren@sqlpass.org.

PASS Connector Editorial for May 20 - by Andy Warren

PASS Update #10

PASS Update #9

Time has flown by since my last update, busy time at work and struggling to get that done and find a few hours for PASS too. Here's a short version of what I've been working on lately:

• Added the Top 10 List page and have some starter lists from Jessica Moss, Grant Fritchey, and Jack Corbett. Can I talk any of you into adding your own list? Interesting way to help people get started on a topic.
• Added the online communities page as a starting point for trying to show that PASS is only a portion of the online community, and that we celebrate the other communities that contribute so much.
• We've got the SQL history page almost done, our MS contact Roni K went and took some pictures of the trophy case with all the various SQL boxes so we'd have some artwork for it, and we've got links to some other nice resources too.
• PASS Blog directory has been updated a few times. Note, one glaring weak spot is we're not checking blogs listed in PASSPort yet.
• Tim Mitchell has completed the code to let us review and filter all the posts made to all the feeds in the Blog Directory, now we're trying to get it tested and deployed - not a small thing, since our move to DNN last year we don't quite have a testing environment ready. Worst case we'll host externally for a while until that gets resolved.
• Final drafts of our SQL MVP and certification pages are under review. My fault for them taking longer than they should have, Chuck and John had them in on time and I didn't have a copy editor lined up. Hoping we finish these up sometime this week.
• We've changed our process a little so that the Connector editorial is also posted to the PASS blog, allowing anyone with comments to easily participate, and I'm also cross posting to my blog. Going forward we'll continue that, and also ask for permission to repost (or at least link) to blog posts by board members/active volunteers that fit into the PASS blog. The intent there is that the PASS blog is about PASS and it's a less formal way to provide news to members.
• I've checked in several times with big kahuna Wayne Snyder about my progess, and it's always useful to remember - especially in distributed environments - that spending 10-15 minutes just chatting with the boss is pretty valuable on both sides. Wayne expects people to do things and ask for help if needed, but it's always going to be a struggle to keep up with everyone, so pushing information to him is pretty useful
• We just had our April board meeting via conference call, and the major topic of discussion was budgeting. Budgets (the act of figuring one out and living with it) are always hard, and in our case we'll be meeting in May to set a budget based on income we'll earn in Nov. That's always a guess of sorts, so right now we're adjusting our FY 2009 budget to try to down to a balanced budget. In practice we're within about 2% or so of balanced, and that's not a huge variance. It's quite a discussion to have, debating whether to cut core expenses (which you'll need next FY) or just trim anything close to a nice to have. I was pleased to see all participated in the discussion and while we didn't all exactly agree, no one was against trying to get as close as possible to balanced. Nothing to worry about here, this is typical stuff for any business, and we're actively managing it.
• You've probably seen the news that MS canceled their 2009 BI conference, and PASS Summit 2009 is one of their recommendations for those that had planned to attend. It happened at a weird time for us, near the end of the call for speakers, so we ended up extending the call for speakers without a good message about why (to give those speakers time to cross over). We'll try to get a more thorough message out sometime this week or next, just had to do the best we could!
• For my work I'm trying to better utilize our full time staff, especially Sanj (who does the Connector and more for me!) and Blythe (helps with Chapters and SIGs) and the trick is figuring out what to give them and what to ask for help for from volunteers. I've been trying to call in once a week to check on them and get them to give me feedback on my ideas, and I think that helps all around
• Tom Larock has done some nice posts lately about his PASS involvement, and I hope that continues. More info, more translucency - all good stuff for us in the long run.
• I'll post more on this separately soon, but I'm working on a Connector editorial about the upcoming elections. Before I write that, I'd appreciate any and all input from those that participated (or chose not) in last years election.
• We'll be meeting in Seattle in May for an in person board meeting, and I'm looking forward to the meeting (if not the trip). Our main focus will the FY 2010 budget, but we've also gotten to know each other better and how things work, I'm hoping we can really start to work together as a group. Next post I'll have a draft of my Q2 goals up for discussion.

There's probably more than that. I had a couple slow weeks with only a few hours, one week where I worked Sun on "real" work so I could Mon on PASS stuff, and that ended up taking most of Tuesday too. I'm trying to move back out of tactical work now that I have a little better idea of how things work, but there's still plenty of work to do.

As always, if you have a question or comment, post it or email it to andy.warren@sqlpass.org and I'll try to get you an answer.

PASS Connector Editorial for May 6 - by Andy Warren

As you read this I’ll be attending my second in person board meeting for PASS, and with luck I’ll be enjoying it! As I write this on May 1st I’m looking forward to the meeting because while I certainly haven’t learned it all, I’m at that 90 day mark where you start to have a pretty good idea of who does what, what needs to be done, and can begin making deeper contributions. As always we have a lot of stuff to discuss, ranging from plans for the next quarter to setting the budget for FY 2010 which begins July 1st. I’ve already submitted a preliminary budget for next year, but it will be interesting to see how that gets folded into the final budget. I’ll try to share more details about the entire meeting in a blog post and/or here in the Connector.

Changing topics, a question surfaced on Twitter about transferring registrations for the Summit. Great question, because many companies have things come up as well as staffing changes that might prevent the original registrant from attending. The good news is that you can change registration at no cost! We also have a pretty fair cancellation policy and I encourage you to visit the Summit web site for the details.

And finally, I’d like some feedback about what your thoughts and expectations are with regards to networking at the event. Would you attend a one or two hour class on networking if we could find a way to do that? Would you find some simple coaching guides in your event bag useful? Or are there some specific people you would really like to meet at the event? Post a comment on our blog, or just email me at andy.warren@sqlpass.org.

PASS Europe 2009

Our European SQL Server Conference kicked off yesterday with pre-conference sessions by Bob Ward, Allan Mitchell and Chris Webb.  The event is in Dusseldorf, Germany again this year.  Our attendance is up 35% from last year to over 250 attendees.  Today was the first full day of sessions and the rooms were packed!  The program committee did a fantastic job choosing speakers this year.  Tonight is our social event at a local restaurant.

I'll leave you with a few pictures from the event.  You can view all of them on our Flickr stream.  I do have to say Rushabh looks great with hair doesn't he?

-Bill Graziano

PASS Connector Editorial for April 22 - by Andy Warren

Mixing BI and OLTP at the Summit

PASS is deep in the planning cycle for our SQL Server Conference. One of the key decisions we have to make is how much content to allocate to business intelligence and how much to OLTP. In order to make that decision we look at a number of data points. Among these are a survey we recently completed, registration details from previous years, registration details so far this year and actual session attendance information from prior years. Adding to the challenge is Microsoft's decision not to have a business intelligence conference this year and their desire to use PASS as one of their conferences to reach business intelligence professionals.

This year we split the Business Intelligence track in two. This will in some ways mirror the split on the OLTP side between the Application Development track and the DBA track. We think it will help us better target sessions to business intelligence professionals. We also increased the total number of sessions at the conference to 168. Making the whole pie bigger is an easy way to make sure all our attendees are happy with the type of sessions we have available.

Where does that leave the DBA? What are we doing for the person that writes complex T-SQL stored procedures to process business transactions? Or spends their days managing instances? I want you to take away two key points here. First, we're going to have more OLTP sessions than we've ever had before. Second, the combination of the Application Development track and DBA track is now larger than the entire conference was in 2006. I think that's a pretty amazing accomplishment!

Even doing that for the OLTP community we aren't short changing business intelligence. We've increased the BI sessions nearly 60% over last year. If you're a business intelligence professional you'll have your choice of multiple sessions at every slot during the conference.

Allocating sessions is a difficult task. Lynda and the rest of the program committee have done a great job supporting our growing BI community and our established OLTP community. We think our overall mix of roughly two-thirds OLTP and one-third BI will meet the needs of our conference attendees.

Micrsosoft BI conference cancellation

For the last few years Microsoft has hosted a business intelligence conference in the fall. This year they decided not to have a conference. You can read the announcement on their web site.  PASS remains committed to providing a strong line up of business intelligence sessions at PASS Summit Unite 2009 in November.  PASS has taken a number of steps in response to this situation:

• We previously increased the number of sessions at the Summit. The PASS Summit will have a strong session line up for both business intelligence and OLTP.
• We split the business intelligence track into two tracks.  This will help us focus on the tasks required build and manage business intelligence solutions.
• We extended the call for speakers by two weeks.  If you planned on speaking at the MS BI Conference we want to give you plenty of time to submit an abstract to the PASS Summit.
• Our Summit is a great mix of community and Microsoft sessions.  We continue to work closely with Microsoft to make sure you get the best sessions possible.

Don't forget that April is the last month to receive the discounted rate of $1,195.  The rates go up on May 1st -- three short weeks away.

- Bill Graziano

PASS Connector for April 8 Available for Download

The latest issue of the PASS Connector e-newsletter can be downloaded here.

PASS Connector Editorial for April 8 - by Andy Warren

Hello Everyone,

What does a professional organization do? What should members expect from their professional association? Those are good questions, though not easy to answer. Twenty years ago one of the big reasons to join associations was for the benefits large organizations could negotiate – now there are very few that are large enough to beat the discounts available via various web sites and searches. For those of that use SQL Server we don’t have the same licensing requirements that doctors and attorneys do, so that model doesn’t quite fit us either.

I’ve thought about it a lot and while I don’t have all the answers, here is what I have come up with so far:

• PASS should focus on career development, networking, and some aspects of professional development
• PASS should speak out about matters of interest to our members – best practices, features for the next version, bugs that need to be fixed, and more
• PASS should be the place where we send those considering a career as a SQL Server professional to understand the options and the career path
• PASS should be more than just DBA’s, we have to include those that work on the BI side of things, and we should encourage developers to participate in some way too
• PASS should help employers and managers understand the particular needs, demands, and stresses of our profession, how it affects them and how it affects us
• PASS should continue to host the annual Summit as the premier learning and training opportunity for those of in the SQL Server business
• PASS should be a equal player in the larger world of SQL communities and events – we’ll seek to be the best we can be at our mission and we’ll let them be the best they can be at theirs, and we’ll embrace any site/event that provides learning opportunities to our members
• PASS should be keeping our members informed about news and events of interest – you may find it in other places, but we’ll make sure it’s visible here
• PASS should encourage those that want to take the next step and provide opportunities for volunteers to participate, and to speak at our local chapters, regional events, and the Summit – and provide training and guidance to help them succeed

We would like to hear from you! Do you like that list, have an idea for something that can be added or removed? At the end of the day we want being a member of PASS to be more than just good karma; we want you to be a member because we’re providing value to you. I’ll hope you post to our blog your ideas, but as always you can reach me directly at andy.warren@sqlpass.org.

Andy

Interview with Blythe Morrow at PASS Headquarters

Although I (Thomas La Rock) have been on the PASS Board of Directors since January, for some reason I have not blogged much about the experience to date. No, I do not know why, but I hope to change that, starting now. In addition to having some type of regular posting giving updates on some of the behind the scenes activities, I want to start including some interviews with members of the Board and PASS HQ.

And…for my first act…we have the wonderful Blythe Morrow. Blythe works for Christianson & Company Event Management Ltd. in Vancouver, BC. C&C is the management company that helps to run PASS, and is what is meant whenever you hear someone say “PASS HQ”. I thought it would be great for people to understand more about all the work that happens behind the scenes every day, and Blythe was happy to participate in an email exchange that I could post in an interview style.

SB: You work for PASS HQ in Vancouver, what is your role there?

BM: My current title is PASS Community Coordinator, I would like to tell you about a day in the life for me (on a Monday). I get into the office a little bit before 9:00am PST. Keep in mind that it’s lunch time on the East Coast, so my mailbox is normally teeming with messages from chapter leaders who are requesting eblasts or who are telling me great events they are putting on in their area. I reply to any chapter requests, process all chapter agreements and then have my lunch while I read the many SQL Community blogs I follow.

In the afternoon I touch base with any committees we have developing resources for the community, whether it be Speaker Resources, Chapter Kits, Online Maintenance, or SIG Live Meeting support. I write processes, help Board members, and connect the right people together within our community.

Mondays are my favourite days because the entire C&C team makes time to sit together and give updates on all of the aspects of PASS. I hear about the Summit logistics from Judy and Kate, Advertising from Craig, Program from Marcella, IT from David, and Marketing from Sanj.

SB: Wow, that is a lot of activity, especially for a Monday. How many people are involved in working for PASS HQ from C&C?

BM: That is definitely an interesting question. We have 10 full time individuals fully committed to the PASS organization with additional consultants who fill the management requirements throughout the year for Marketing, Sponsor & Expo Sales, Registration and on-site Summit Operations – the consultant roles are fully supported from an operational aspect by our fulltime employees - it is this grouping that makes up the team called PASS HQ.

SB: How long have you been with C&C?

BM: It will be my one year anniversary on July 21st.

SB: What do you like most about working with the PASS Community?

BM: I really like the often virtual aspect to this community. The longer I work in the field, the more I realize that this community makes friends regardless of geographic location. We Tweet, we Facebook, we connect on Linkedin, we read and comment on blogs, and join webinars; then we all come together once a year at the Summit and get that very precious face time. It’s a beautiful thing.

SB: Have you ever worked with a similar community before, in either size or in terms of technical focus?

BM: Before I came to PASS I did work in Community Relations for a large retail outlet. I wouldn’t say they were the same size, but they were expanding at a very fast rate similar to PASS. I am happy to be working in Community Relations for a technical community. It definitely seems much more suited to me, and allows me to keep my finger on the pulse of a larger industry.

SB: Where do you think PASS needs the most help?

BM: This is a tough question. I would like us to be a little bit more creative in reaching and professionally developing our members. Over the summer, PASS members should see some great speaker developer resources and technical articles. I think that is a step in the right direction, and PASS’ global community will benefit from that.

SB: If someone reading this wanted to get started helping out with PASS, what would be their first step? Should we tell them to contact you?

BM: Yes! All volunteer and chapter requests come through me. Depending on what you would like to do (start a Special Interest Group, Affiliate your User Group as a chapter, volunteer on a Committee) the process might be different, but I can help you every step of the way.

If you want to know more about PASS in general, you can visit the website at http://sqlpass.org.

Conference Registration for Speakers

You may have already registered for the PASS Summit, or will be doing so soon to take advantage of the early bird discount. What happens if you submit a session that gets accepted?

If you have submitted abstracts for consideration, and have already registered for the Summit, and then are later confirmed as a Speaker, your registration will be reimbursed.

PASS Update #8

Last week I was in Seattle, so I decided to stay an extra day and drive up to Vancouver to meet with the staff at PASS HQ on Thursday. I met up with Bill Graziano & Rushabh Mehta on Wed afternoon and we finally started the drive up about 6:30 pm. Fairly uneventful drive up, though not as nice as I had hoped because we were driving after dark, missing the scenic view. We talked a little about PASS, but nothing serious, just relaxing after a busy first part of the week. About 9 pm we hit the Customs checkpoint, and then the fun began. They were somewhat confused by us because; we all work for different companies, we were leaving Canada on different days in different ways (2 by plane, me driving back), and we didn't have the address of the office handy (we were just headed for the hotel that night). They have us park and we go inside to stand in line, after about 30 minutes finally asked to provide our documents and tell our story again. Finally they decided we were either no risk or too dumb to be a risk, and let us proceed after about a 45 minute delay.

Our hotel was in downtown Vancouver, and took a while to get there, lot's of stop lights. Nice area though, and nice view. I think the thing we all noticed is there are lots of condominium towers and lots of Asian restaurants (at least compared to where we're all from). I was up early the next morning and went over to the hotel restaurant for breakfast, only after eating did I find out out was a $25 breakfast and no, it wasn't that good (and I won't bill that to PASS, I should have asked first). We left a little later than planned because one of my travel companions was late (it wasn't Bill), and we stopped at McDonalds by PASS HQ for coffee - not recommended, made from concentrate and truly bad.

Our office is nice, not extravagant, just enough for what we need and in a location I suspect is reasonably priced. We had an agenda set up, but that was soon off track and both Bill and Rushabh had to dive into VP stuff (that's "very portant" I think), so we reconfigured and I spent most of the morning talking to Craig and Sanj about advertising, the PASS Connector, and related items. Sanj is my support line, and it was good to spend time just talking with her and understanding how things worked. For example, one thing I didn't know was that after she builds the Connector each week, she currently sends to David (our IT guy) to convert it to HTML. Obviously not the most efficient plan, so we'll get someone to spend some time with her to show her how HTML works and let her own the entire process. Lots of little discoveries like that only happen when you have time to just talk, and one of many that made the trip worthwhile for me.

We went across the street for lunch and I was disappointed to learn that Vancouveriates (ians?) don't seem to appreciate really iced tea. The restaurant staff tried making some from English breakfast tea, but I don't see how the English drink that stuff for breakfast, much less lunch!

After lunch we finally got everyone back on track, and spent some time working on the staffing diagram. A big challenge is to align tasks with Directors to the extent possible, but staff usually works across Directors and also on the Summit, so this was a chance to review what had been developed over the past two years and look for gaps. For me it was clear that there were a few things that made sense to move to Sanj, and that will probably happen over the next couple months as we migrate those. Overall it was a bit amazing to see how much stuff goes on, especially with regards to the Summit. I'll see if we can get the Visio diagram posted when it finishes up the review process.

From there we talked about a lot of smaller stuff; our content strategy and how it relates to SIGs, how to make the elections run smoother this year and how to grow/find great candidates, marketing strategy around Summit generated content, and more. I'll have to omit a lot of the details for now because much of it needs to filter back to the Board, but it was a solid 3-1/2 hours of work, and again proves my contention that if you want to get creative work done, you have to put people in a room and just see what happens - nothing else works as good.

We ended our meeting at about 5:30 and headed back to the hotel, meeting up with Judy, Craig, Blythe, and Kate for dinner at 7 pm and talked some about PASS, real estate in US/Canada, state of the economy, and some plain old small talk. It was cold by the time we left for the hotel at 9 pm - I was ready for head for home! My drive back through Customs on Friday was painless, and the direct flight to Orlando from Seattle was ok, about as good as 6 hours on a plane is likely to be flying coach.

I've made a note to write more about our HQ office and staff sometime in then next couple months. Interesting story to tell, and they play a vital link in providing continuity as board members come and go.

PASS Update #7

A very short update this week, the minutes of the January 2009 board meeting have been posted. Going forward we've set a goal of having them online within 2 weeks of the meeting, so I'm hoping we have the minutes of the February 2009 meeting posted soon. If you have any questions, please post below and I'll work on getting you answers.

I've also added a couple new volunteers to the team. Steve Jones is already looking at our LinkedIn presence (here's our group) and trying to figure out how to best support it. Neal Waterstreet is waiting on an assignment (soon!).

Less done this past week than I'd hoped, had to spend time at work/home to prep for being out of the office for a week. I'm visiting PASS HQ on Thursday to spend a day with our full time staff, learning more about what they do, talking about my goals so far, and in general trying to get closer to understanding what work is best done by staff and what work is best done by volunteers within the task areas I manage. To explain on that a little, using full time staff gives us reliability and repeatability, but with a real cost. Using volunteers is a way to reduce our cost, but sometimes at the risk of lower repeatability. Ideally we balance and re-balance, using volunteers in particular when deep knowledge of our profession is required.

PASS Update #6

It's been pretty busy since my last post. Just in one week I had at least 12 hours devoted to PASS activities, and I'll share details of some of that here. To start with, I was able to mark another of my Q1 goals complete as Sanj from PASS HQ was able to update the web site with the missing issues of the Connector (and will maintain it going forward). It's not a huge item, but I believe in consistency and in making as much PASS material as possible available via the web for search engines to find - and the occasional new member may enjoy digging through some of the history.

I've received a handful of additional blogs to list, and still watching for more, though I'll say it's challenging with a list of almost 200 to ask myself "do we already have that one" when I'm reading them!

Grant Fritchey has sent me another revision of his page for sqlpass.org that covers all of the SQL Server online communities. It's another sign post page, one that will be of particular interest to those new in our profession. Look for that to be online in the next week and I'll add a short post when it's live.

I spent a lot of time this week working out task details for the volunteers that work with me; giving them what I hope is a good overview of what I had in mind, then letting them run with it and see what develops. To the end I'm trying to leverage our relationship with Microsoft, already I've gotten John Magnabosco connected with two members of the SQL certification team as he builds out some certification content, I have a call next week to talk with MS about how we can jointly produce technical content just for PASS, and I had a call with MS this week to talk about how we might aggregate MS news & high interest items related to SQL.

We also had a board meeting via phone, and that is definitely a different sort of meeting than the one we had in January. Scheduled for an hour, the format of this meeting is to raise topics that need a vote or significant input, or to just update the board on key items. I actually had nothing on the agenda this time and really we didn't discuss much that was exciting. One thing I expected but didn't see was progress reports from each board member. I think it would be valuable to get a pre-call paragraph or two about what was going on, because we tend to churn away in our own silos. At the same time I'm reluctant to advocate adding another task to everyone's list, I expect Wayne has a pretty good view of how each person is tracking on their goals and that's really the biggest thing. Probably the biggest thing going on internally is the European PASS Summit, schedule is set and things are moving along. I don't have plans to attend (just too far!), but I think it is important that PASS be more than a North American focused organization.

We still don't have the minutes of the January 2009 board online, somewhat to my frustration. I think we're close to having that done, and going forward our goal is to have them available 2 weeks after the meeting.

We have two big challenges coming; the SQL Server Standard relaunch plan, and trying to get our content strategy written down and implemented. I imagine you have a rough idea of what's involved in writing/editing/publishing solid articles, but on the larger content side trying to figure who owns pages, who can update them & how often, what is valid and what isn't - just not a small process. As I've gotten deeper into it I see it will have to be an iterative approach, we're going to start with a couple day effort to realign some menu items and put up some new content pages. We're using DNN, but many of you probably feel the same pain around Sharepoint. At the end it's not so much about who can/can't as it consistency in messaging.

Got a question about PASS, my efforts, or ? Comment below, or contact me andy dot warren at sqlpass.org.

PASS Update #5 (Blogger's Please Read)

We'll be announcing this on the main www.sqlpass.org site and the PASS blog over the next day or two, but the first major revision of the blog directory has been posted. We had many people email us their blog info, some sent OPML containing their feeds, and then we spent more time just doing searches and seeing what we could find. The result was a list of close to 190 blogs that seem to be SQL centric, and most have posts within the past 6 months (our window for listing). For lack of a better plan we've just listed them alphabetically by the name of the blogger. We're missing a couple of links that we'll get patched up in the next day or so. We've also included a complete OPML file of the same listing so that you can load into the reader of your choice.

I've been monitoring the complete list over the past few days and I was definitely missing a few interesting bloggers - this is probably twice again the size of my personal feed list prior to the update. We're hoping that PASS members will enjoy the chance to discover blogs that they might not otherwise find.

If you're a blogger (or just happen to read one not on the list) and not on the list, please just drop me a note andy.warren at sqlpass.org, and we'll get it updated. Note that it's just a directory, no syndication.

This is my team's first deliverable for PASS and while it's not a huge thing, it's a service that makes sense for PASS to provide and one that we hope the entire SQL community will find useful. Let me know what you think.

PASS Update #4

Last week I posted Update #3 that discussed my first board meeting, but I didn't have time to cover my goals, so I 'll do that and add some other minor items as well.

Defining first quarter goals was a challenge; needed something doable, didn't (and don't) quite understand all the pieces and players yet, and adjusting to a revised portfolio with essentially no history. Here's what I proposed to the Board:

• Add pages for PASS history (of the organization), SQL history, certification, MVP's, SQL Communities, and the SQL Server Standard (for back issues) to sqlpass.org
• Update the blog directory with as many SQL bloggers as possible, which leads to Q2 goal
• Get content for the SQL Server Standard in the pipeline with a goal of publishing 3 articles each in Q3/Q4 (and hopefully arriving at 6 per quarter in 2010)
• Get missing back issues of the Connector online
• Standardize reporting on Connector and sqlpass.org and report to the Board monthly
• Identify volunteers to support those goals'
• Update PASS blog with some content every two weeks

Since then, I've added one goal:

• Write a comprehensive guide to content for sqlpass.org, PASS Connector, PASS hosted web sites. Right now we haven't firmly set rules for what kind of content goes on what page, when to use what logo, how often, who updates, etc.

And I've got a few other things in early stages that I'll save until I know for sure what I want do do!

I've identified some volunteers and we're working on getting tasks assigned - I think I've got an extraordinary group (seriously - look at the list), now it's up to me to give them the right work to do and let them do it!

• Brian Kelley
• Grant Fritchey
• John Magnabosco
• Tim Mitchell
• Tim Ford
• John Allman
• Jessica Moss
• Jack Corbett
• Brad McGehee
• Scott Klein
• Chuck Heinzelman

I'm also having to work on delegating. I'm not bad at it, but I'm used to relying on volunteers for shorter and more tactical tasks on game day as it were, now I have to look for people to take on a wider range of tasks. I'm reluctant so far to publicly list tasks assigned to a specific volunteer, but eventually it might be a good idea. For now the plan is that if a volunteer gets something done expect me to publicize it here (or on the PASS blog), and if something doesn't get done - I didn't manage to completion and I'll have to own that.

Speaking of volunteers - if at some point you volunteered to join my Merry Men (um, People) and I've excluded you, it wasn't deliberate. Drop me an email and I'll do my best to find something that fits your talents and time.

So aside from goals, it's been a struggle to keep pace with the email. I'm expected to contribute to conversations that may not involve my assignments, so I'm spending time looking at 2008 Summit survey results, thoughts from Tom Larock on SIG's, marketing plans for PASS Europe, and more. Plus...lots of back office stuff. For example, this week I've had a call with HQ to review advertising plans and rates, email about whether we should form more direct partnerships with other SQL sites (deferred), email how to best work with MS content producers to find a win-win, and more. I'd guess I'm spending about an hour a day on routine stuff, plus some driving time and etc just thinking on stuff when I'm not really working. I'm hoping that by Q2 I can decrease the daily time to about 30 minutes and spend a few good quality hours each weekend, but will have to see.

I have a trip scheduled to Seattle for the first week of March, so I decided to stay over an extra day and drive to the PASS HQ office in Vancouver. I wish I could stay longer, but hoping one good day will give me a better idea of the skills, challenges, and roles that our full time staff play, and try to get a few things done while I'm there as well.

Thoughts, comments, and questions are welcome, may take me a day or to reply depending on my work schedule.

PASS Update #3

It's been busy since my last update, lots of stuff to work on! I probably won't get it all in one post, but I'll try to hit the highlights. The main event over the past two weeks was my first board meeting in Seattle.

I arrived Monday afternoon and shared a taxi to the hotel with Kevin Kline. Kevin is a nice guy and has been with PASS since the beginning, and has the distinction of being the only two term President so far. He was kind enough to share some advice about how I might work on getting my ideas to succeed, and in general just talked about how things had been versus where they were going. Good conversation.

I had the chance after arrival to spend some time with Greg Low who heads up the PASS Chapters. Greg has done some great work on growing the number of chapters, and we talked about how/when to try to start translating our content into other languages. I'm sure most of you understand the challenges involved in that effort, but it's something that needs to happen...at some point. Deciding when is the challenge. We also talked the challenges of supporting community events with limited funding; Greg worrying that groups will be upset if they don't get funding, me believing that PASS can at least provide moral support (morale too!) and should do so. More on this in a bit.

Most of us were there for dinner Mon night and we talked shop some, but not entirely. Low key, and I called it a night about 9 pm so as not to be too tired for the first session on Tues. Tuesday we started at 7 am with a meeting with President Wayne Synder as he talked about the role of the Board, and our specific responsibilities, and our legal obligations (something to think about, we're ultimately accountable for both money and for things that go wrong). After that we had some opening stuff from Wayne about setting goals and meeting our goals - board members are volunteers, but clearly they have to shoulder more accountability for meeting goals than most. I thought he did a good job of stating his case, and won a little more respect from me by starting it by admitting there were areas where he had fallen short. I thought it was honest, fair, and a great way to level set.

Next up was a financial briefing. Some of that falls into the realm of confidential (you'll see it all in the once a year financial statement so don't worry), but it was part of the annual mid year course correction that is done once the final numbers from the Summit are done. For this year we're going to fall slightly short of our original 2009 budget, but each Director will be making some adjustments in spend to bring the difference back to zero. It's definitely a complicated process, as we're already accruing money and expects for FY 2010 and finance has to keep it all straight. Overall it was a good presentation, the current fiscal picture is sound, and the big challenge is to set a realistic budget for FY 2010 - something we'll complete at our May meeting.

We spent some time reviewing our mission statement, goals, etc - and while we made some progress, it felt incomplete. I think it's a good exercise because each year we have new board members and they need to understand/share the vision. But...we'll come back to this, because we weren't done yet!

From there we want into presentations by board members about their goals for the next 90 days. Bill Graziano started off by covering Marketing, which is primarily Summit marketing but includes general efforts as well. Nothing big to report here yet, they are forming plans for the Summit and seem to be in good shape to leverage what they learned in 2008.

Next up was Greg on Chapters, and his focus was technology needs (so that chapters are fully integrated into the main site & membership list), building regional mentors and sharing those lessons (he's had nice success outside the US), and working on a virtual speaker bureau (mostly technology).

Rick Heiges was next, his portfolio is PASS Community Connection, but he also currently handles MVP relations. Note that I'm going to try to state the following fairly, but realize I have some bias due to my involvement with SQLSaturday, and I abstained from the discussion of Community Connection related plans. We have a couple events in the works, but we're missing infrastructure to support it, and also some concerns at HQ (warranted I think) about the admin side if they really start to take off. Definitely needs technology assistance, but we won't know what we can get done over the next few months until Douglas McDowell gets up to speed this week and then we can fight for priorities. On the MVP side PASS hasn't done the greatest job in the past working with MVP's, and perhaps vice versa. Rick talked about needing to get information out to MVP's earlier about the Summit and in general engaging with them - all good stuff it seemed to me.

It was my turn next, and I ran longer than my allowed 30 minutes (not on purpose). There's a lot to do as far as content and communities, and I needed buy in from the board before starting some of those efforts. I'll have another post next week that goes into more detail, but a quick summary is that we're going to return to publishing the SQL Server Standard as PDF only, we're going to add some key pages to sqlpass.org that have been missing, and we're going to work hard to help our members connect with content - especially from blogs. A key point of my strategy is to do the things we're good at, and not try to duplicate the work of other sites that are good at what they do.

We took a break then, but in truth it was really just moving the meeting to a less formal setting in the lounge area until dinner, and then on through dinner. I had a chance to meet some of the staff at PASS HQ and they really impressed me. They want to work and win, and they know that they need help and input to get there from the Board. It's hard to convey here, but I know that they'll go where I need them to go, just a matter of setting direction. Lots of good sidebars during this time, and I kept coming back to wondering what questions I didn't know to ask. It's literally a new job, and I don't have a day to waste understanding how things work, what needs attention, etc, etc.

On Wed we started out by working on our goals some more, and what on Tues seemed not like the best use of time really grew into something interesting. One part that was very good is that PASS has altered it's view on community events to support any SQL event - regardless of label - to the extent that it can. The other part that went back to my talk on Tues was that we've come to a firmer vision of the role of PASS and how it relates to other communities. I don't know that we have in a couple sentences yet, but the essence is; we will embrace those that support SQL Server, and we're going to use our voice to positively impact our profession.

We had a short presentation from Tom Larock about SIG's, and the big change there is his focus on treating SIG's as virtual/online chapters. I think he has some info on his blog and I expect more soon, but I think just refining the vision may give the SIG's a chance to succeed to a greater extent than they have in the past.

Douglas McDowell in at PASS HQ this week catching up on where we stand on technology. Not everything is about technology, but clearly there are places where PASS - like any other business - needs to make investments to grow and sustain. His role is coordinator and project manager; make sure we don't duplicate efforts, that projects fit within the scope of what we can do, and then help board members get it done. Note that in FY 2010 each board member will have funds allocated for technology, they can use those as needed with Douglas providing support. I don't envy him the challenge, but I think he can really help us move forward.

Pat Wright didn't get to present his goals for volunteers due to time constraints, but he's got a good v1 strategy for making sure that all our volunteers are treated well and more importantly, that we find tasks to fit their skills and available time.

We wrapped up Wed by having dinner and bowling with some people from Microsoft, and we spent a lot more time talking than bowling - well worth the time, and then we met up again after that and worked until 11 pm (again) on firming up ideas for the next quarter.

It was an intense 2.5 days for me. Parts of the meeting were a little bit blah, but I'm hard to please at times. I definitely see that the integration of new board members needs more attention to reduce the get up to speed time. I also see that for PASS, now is the time. We've had some small but measurable successes, we need to build on that and earn our place. There aren't many things PASS can do that you (or I) will say "wow", but I think the cumulative impact in the next year can be pretty good - if we execute. I left the meeting excited about working on my part of things, and really looking forward to the next meeting - hoping that I can say all my goals are accomplished and that the rest of the board can say the same.

I found the meeting to be positive and I'm making an effort to highlight that, but it doesn't mean I don't see some weak areas. Some of that is lack of direction, some of it lack of accountability, some of it that working with just volunteers is hard. I'm going to press the other board members to publish their goals and then we can all see what is being done or not done. Being less than perfect doesn't mean we don't have good people - I didn't see anyone there that I didn't want to work with or that I thought didn't care about the success of PASS.

I hope I didn't ramble too much. When the minutes come out I'll get a link posted in an update to the blog, and next week I'll tell you about my goals. Until then, I invite your comments, questions, and suggestions.

Book Reviews - Worthwhile?

Lately I've been thinking (again) about books and book reviews, mostly because I'm looking to see if it makes sense for PASS to continue doing them. I hope you'll drop me a comment or two at the end.

I think Amazon has a pretty good system of reviews in that they get enough of them per book that you can get past the one guy who loves/hates the book for whatever reason. I typically read a few reviews before buying unless I know Im going to buy the book anyway. Mostly the reviews are right, but there are still times when I liked a book more or less than I thought I would based on the review. Not perfect, but useful.

For the most part those views only help me once I'm looking for a book based on a few keywords - do I buy this one or that one? But what about the book I didn't know about? Big Brown for example. The harder part is discovery, and that's where I think reviews can highlight something I wouldn't know about otherwise.

I used Big Brown as a recent example, and I also recently reviewed a book from Michael Coles on Full Text Search. Maybe a few of you discovered those books here? Even if you didn't decide to buy, maybe those are topics you hadn't thought about yet? I bet even if you read my notes you were at least tempted to read the Amazon reviews? Nothing wrong with that.

Would it be just as interesting to just feature a new SQL book each week with the standard ad copy to with it? Kind of like the word of the day? Or how about a running list of books I own? Or no longer own!

Why do I care? No, I'm not writing a book! I think that Books Online is a useful resource, as are sites like SSC and MSSQLTips.com, but sometimes you need the deeper/longer learning that comes from a book (or a class, but often that's a different focus). I want book authors to keep writing (not a huge profit margin for most) and I want to spot books that I might not yet know I want to read.

Do you like book reviews? Do you often buy based on them? What makes a good review? Are there other approaches that make more sense?

PASS Update #2

PASS Update #1

PASS Connector for March 25 Available for Download

Hi All,

The latest issue of the PASS Connector can be downloaded via this link. All other past issues can be found in the Newsletter Archive.

Happy Reading.

PASS Connector Editorial for March 25, 2009 - by Andy Warren

Hello Everyone,

There’s 2 big pieces of news at PASS this week: the launch of the PASS Summit website, and the call for speakers for PASS Summit 2009, which is open through midnight, April 10, 2009. We’re looking for speakers to bring value and diversity to what we believe is the best SQL Server event in the country! Do you have some hard won experience you want to share? Or maybe you have a colleague that is really good and ready to take the next step? Submitting an abstract only takes a few minutes and if it’s accepted, the speaker earns free admittance to the main conference and the opportunity to add ‘national speaker’ to their resume – not a small thing.

Last year we had about 400 abstracts selected and room for just over a 100 presentations, fair warning that the competition is fierce! I don’t participate in the selection process, but based on my previous experience if you want to maximize your chances of success you should:

• Submit  abstracts on topics you’re absolutely passionate about
• Put a lot of effort into the title and description of the abstract – make it sound interesting to attendees

It takes some time after the call for speakers closes to build the final schedule and let everyone know the results. Imagine having 400 presentations and being tasked with building a schedule that has content for beginner to expert level attendees, a mix of topics from SSIS to Performance Tuning to CLR to Spatial Indexes, a mix of experienced speakers with some new ones – and while doing that look at the PASSPort of every person that submits an abstract to determine if they have enough experience to justify selecting them. I don’t envy Director Lynda Rab and her team of volunteers that task!

Speaking of the 2009 Summit, it’s a good time to start working on your plans to attend. Registration is open and if you register by May 1 it’s only $1395. I know I said only, but if you wait to register you’ll spend $1795 – by doing it now you save $400 and you could use that $400 to cover a good chunk of the travel expenses. It may sound like a sales pitch – and I suppose it is to a degree – but I’ve been to the PASS Summit every year since 2000 and I’ve always found it to be worth the investment of time and money.

Have a question about the call for speakers?  Email elena.sebastiano@sqlpass.org. Any other questions on the Summit or PASS in general? Post a question to the PASS blog or just email me at andy.warren@sqlpass.org.

PASS Summit Unite 2009 site launched

We just launched the web site for our SQL Server conference this November.  There are some exicting changes this year:

• We've added more technical sessions bringing our total to 168.  The call for speakers is open until April 10th if you're interested in speaking.
• We're increasing our focus on business intelligence and data warehousing.  We're doing this by adding additional sessions and expanding the scope of what we're covering. 
• The conference now runs from Tuesday through Thursday with pre-conference sessions on Monday and post-conference sessions on Friday.  This should help attendees schedule travel more effeciently.
• This year we're putting a big focus on ROI.  We want to help you better utilize your database resources.   And that starts with this conference.  We're offering more sessions for less money this year.  We also have information on the site to help you get approval to attend the conference.

We'll be back with more information later.  Until then don't forget our discounted registration rates available until May 1st.  I hope to see you all at the conference.

Bill Graziano

Musings on Steve Jones' Presentation on Building your Brand

Hello everyone.

It was a very exciting morning for me today. I woke up, put on some great music, got in my car, and drove to work nice and early so I could make a big cup of coffee to get mentally prepared for the Charlotte SQL Server User Group Meeting. Steve Jones was presenting on building your brand.

I really enjoy when Peter Shire and his group have these great virtual lunch Chapter Meetings because they not only bring in fantastic speakers like Steve Jones of SQL Server Central, but they also pull together some great SQL Server community folk. It's always nice to hear familiar voices. I was even more excited about this meeting because Steve was presenting on social marking and blogging, something I use frequently here at PASS.

Before I came to PASS, social networking was simply something I started doing to keep in contact with people I had met traveling. It wasn't until I joined PASS that I realized how important it can be to any professional community. I remember Tjay Belt asking me at the Summit if I was on Twitter. I thought it sounded fun, so I joined. I was astonished to find that by the end of the Summit I had over 100 people following me. What a great way to get the word out about the PASS Community.

Steve's presentation was very valuable because he not only outlined how to use social networking tools to enhance professional resumes, but he also gave great tips of how to manage your image by not mixing personal and professional topics in similar social networking platforms.

All of this 'reputation management' speak got me thinking about the last time I googled myself because I hadn't in a while (I have a pretty unique name). It was quite interesting what I found on the first page:

1. Of course all of the Blog posts I have written here

2. My Facebook Page

3. My Facbook Page (different link, same page)

4. My Linkedin Page

5. A page listing me as running for the Students' Union long ago

6. My Twitter information listed on SQLserverpedia under PASS

7. Jeremiah Peschka's Blog Post about the PASS Chapter SIG

8. My placing for the 1997 Alberta Canada final kayaing time trials.

Steve also outlined why blogs can be a great way of chronicling your career as long as you are consistent in your posts. I have to agree with him there. There is no better way to learn than to teach. Great advice.

It was a pleasure to sit in on this meeting. If you're interested in building your modern resume or establishing an online brand, I suggest checking out Steve's Blog on the Modern Resume. It contains some great white marbles of social networking wisdom.

All the best!

Blythe Morrow

PASS Community Coordinator

Andy's Editorial: Bi-weekly update

Greetings,

PASS Chapters reach 150 Milestone

Hello everyone, your friendly neighbourhood Community Coordinator here.

We have been incredibly busy here at PASS HQ in 2009. The most momumentus occasion that I would like to report to you is that PASS Chapters have now exceeded 150 (155 to be exact)! In the past two months we have added our first chapter in Afria (West Sengal),  Nepal (Kathmandu), Sri Lanka (Columbus),  and Saudi Arabia (Eastern Province). We're all so proud at the Chapter community and those who made it what it is today. It's tough to imagine that in July we had only 80 chapters, and now we have almost doubled in size!

And with the increase in Chapters, we have also had a substantial increase in the number of resources available world wide. The most exciting of these is the Community Connection Sponsorship Program that is available to Chapters who want to put on an event. They recieve both financial and logistical help from PASS: something we haven't been able to give before. For more information, click here http://www.sqlpass.org/Events/CommunityConnection.aspx

In addition to support for events, PASS Chapters are also now recieving four mail outs a year, marketing materials, enhanced regional Mentor support, Live Meeting accounts/instruction, and webhosting.

We're all so excited here at PASS for the overwhelming response to our new initiates. Stay tuned, more to come.

Blythe Morrow

PASS Community Coordinator

PASS Blog Directory Updated

Today we posted a major revision to our blog directory, growing from about 40 blogs to more than 180. It's a great way to discover new blogs and if you want to try them all, just grab the OPML file that is linked on the top of the page. Please let us know of any blogs we missed, we tried hard to find as many as we could! We're going to recheck the list periodically to make sure the links are valid and we'll be posting updates in a way that makes it easy for you to find changes.

More notes about the update via this post from Andy Warren, Director of Virtual Communities.

Let us know what you think!

A Chapter Committee and a SQL tree!

Seasons' Greetings!

With the momentum of the SQL PASS Summit finally winding down, and all the reconciliations made, the folks here at PASS HQ are still working furiously to get everything ready for 2009. Over in the Community Department we realized there were quite a few people who were just too excited about the Chapter Progam not to be involved, so PASS HQ Community, under the direction of PASS Director Greg Low, really wanted the program to be lead and supported by SQL community leaders. We chose people who have intimate knowledge of the SQL Server community, making sure we had representation from all over the world.  

I'd like to just shout out to the following people who have come on board to share their SQL Community expertise. Thank you so much for volunteering your time!

Brad Mcgehee (Hawaii)
Peter Ward (Australia)
Adrian Engelbrecht (New Zealand)
Nathan Pitcher (New Zealand)
Rob Hawthorne (New Zealand)
Jeremiah Peschka (Midwest US)
Charley Hanania (Switzerland)
Andrew Karcher (Pacific Northwest US)
Ron Talmage (Pacific Northwest US)
Felix Quevedo (Honduras)
Troy Shuh
Joe Lax (East Coast US)
John Allman (Midwest US)
Pat Wright (Pacific Northwest)

Also, In the last couple months we set up a special committee that will work on expanding PASS into Asian markets under our newest Regional Mentor, Sujata Mehta. We are so excited to have these three on board, and really look forward to the great things they are going to do for the PASS organization. They are as follows:
Sujata Mehta
Malathi Mahadevan
Jacob Sebastian

And that is the Community update from PASS HQ. Happy holidays!!!

Blythe Morrow
Community Coordinator
PASS HQ

SQL 2008 on San: Mike Ruthruff and Prem Mehra Repeats

Earlier today I mentioned that this session was full - and it is... However Lynda Rab has spoken with Mike Ruthruff and Prem Mehra - they have graciosly agreed to do a repeat of this session. It will be on Friday, November 21, @ 2:30 - 3:45 pm in Room 6E.

Thanks so much doing the repeat...

PASS Summit 2008 Wednesday Keynote

This morning the first day keynote for the PASS conference began at 8:30.  Before I introduced our speaker Ted Kummert, I announced some growth numbers for this year. This has been the biggest growth year in PASS history - by all measures. While there has been growth in all areas, right now I'll mention the Summit growth. The total number of delegates there is, at this moment is 2464, which is an astounding 62% growth over last year. Add to that the influence of the down economy when many conferences are seeing drastic reductions in attendance - PASS is growing by leaps and bounds. Truly amazing in this economy.

I just heard that Mike Ruthruff and Prem Mehra's first session this morning filled up 20 minutes before the session began.  That's a record also.  With 150 sessions, if you attend during each time slot, you'll only get to see about 8% of the sessions. Don't worry,  summit delegates will be able to see Prem's session, plus all of the other recorded sessions  as soon as they are posted.

Ted Kummert talked about the future of SQL, and spent time on Kilimanjaro. We saw high scalability demonstrations where a single data warehouse query was spread across 192 processors, searching through a 1 trillion row fact table, using commodity hardware.  We're going places!!!!

PASS Summit 2008 Update: T – 3 days (Behind the scenes)

Preparations for the 2008 Summit are in full swing. It was amazing to also see the change in Seattle weather from being dull, rainy and cold to being sunny and absolutely delightful. It felt like a Seattle summer day! Last night for dinner, I got a chance to meet with Kate, Blythe, Nic and Craig from the PASS team that came in early to oversee on-site preparations. We went out for dinner at one of my favorite downtown Seattle joints – Wild Ginger at the corner of 3rd Ave and Union St. The food was absolutely delightful and it was great to meet some of the team members face-to-face for the first time after having communicated over email, phone and IM for the longest time. Here are some of us (minus our gracious photographer Craig) after dinner heading back to the hotel…

SQL Server Heroes Unite

You probably already know all about the theme that we have for the upcoming PASS Summit - next week! This is our first true summit with a unique theme. The theme will be a prominent part of the Summit experience. I quickly wanted to give you a sneak peek at the registration area that will welcome attendees to the summit. Expect a Heroes welcome and see you at the summit next week.

Getting ready for a great PASS Summit

Of late, I have been witnessing an absolutely un-precedented flurry of activities at PASS HQ, signaling the arrival of the Summit. All the months of planning, preparation, conference calls, pouring over budgets and late nights all lead to what will be the largest and best SQL Server Event in PASS history! I cannot share the numbers just yet - you will probably need to wait to witness it first hand at the summit or read my blog posting during the summit :) I am getting in on Saturday and my calendar has already been filling up. I have heard from so many of you who are attending the summit - I can hardly wait to meet you!

There are just so many exciting things planned for the summit. All the way from all the new announcements that PASS will make at the summit (hint: some are related to technology!), to things we intend to do during the summit to enhance summit goers experience. You are sure to witness a new PASS! Oh - don't forget to wake up early on Thursday morning and get to the keynote in time - least you miss my debut on the big stage! I am still debating on whether I will keep my beard or shave it for the keynote! http://picasaweb.google.com/v.renuka/SQLSATURDAYEventPictures#5256669173615220882 - what do you think?

I also just completed my slides for a case study that I am presenting during Erik Veerman's keynote on Designing, Planning, and Tuning a Scalable BI Solution. I will be talking about a scale-out SSIS solution that I built at Microsoft recently.The session I am most looking forward to, is the volunteer session on Tuesday morning. This is an opportunity to get valuable input from all the wonderful and dedicated PASS volunteers to help drive the direction of PASS. I also heard through the grapevines that the SIG Bowl preparations are going very well. You will have to be at the welcome reception to be part of the action. I have thoroughly enjoyed the SIG bowl in the past. I am sure that you have heard of the Thursday evening Heroes party - I was reviewing some of the plans for that event and I must say - I am very excited and looking forward to it. Don't miss it.

Talking of activities, we will also have elections happening at the summit for open board positions. Look out for your ballot in your email. I assure you that this election process is much less stressful than the recent presidential elections - unless of course the candidates try to BLOCK the others - but then I am sure that our SQL experts know how to deal with it! 

Oh - another bit of news - PASS recently hired a full-time IT  person - David Yang and Monday was his first day! His first task - ... oh I can't tell you just yet. Stay tuned...

Summit Celebration Event: The Details Are In!

It's with great excitement that the PASS team, along with Microsoft, have been planning the a celebration event in appreciation of PASS members, partners, and the SQL Server community-at-large at PASS Community Summit 2008 on Thursday, November 20.

Officially branded as our SQL Server Heroes Unite event, we're transforming a section of the convention center in Seattle into a Rock Party Hall where you can show off your Guitar Hero and Rock Band skills, and maybe even end up in the final SQL Server Hero showdown! Microsoft’s very own Flock of SQLs band will play classic rock sets to keep the party going and lucky members of the crowd can join the band on stage for a truly interactive jam session. You also have an opportunity to tap into your ‘inner rocker’ as you visit the tattoo parlor stations and take your picture with a Harley Davidson. 

Rounding out the celebration, try your hand at our casino tables where there will be no shortage of action and prizes to be won.

It's our way of saying thanks for being such an important part of the SQL Server community.

• When: Thursday, November 20, 6:00 pm - 9:00 pm
• Where: Hall 6ABC, Washington State Convention and Trade Center
• Who: The SQL Server Heroes Unite Event is free to registered full-conference attendees

DBA SIG is looking for volunteers!

Hello everyone

We here at PASS want to make sure that everyone in the SQL Server community has the opportunity to roll up their sleeves and get involved. The DBA SIG is looking for volunteers to do a variety of tasks. This is a great introduction to volunteering with PASS. The opportunities are as follows:

Short-term commitments

   1. Write an article on a DBA-related topic for our web site

   2. Give a live meeting presentation

Long-term commitments

   1. Recruit presenters and content generators

   2. Manage content review and posting to the web site

   3. General web-site maintenance (Dot-Net-Nuke)

   4. Facilitate live meeting event logistics

Please contact Sharon Dooley at DBAvolunteer@sqlpass.org if you’re interested in any of these volunteer opportunities.

Thanks and happy volunteering!

Blythe Morrow

Community Coordinator - PASS HQ

When will users upgrade to SQL Server 2008?

I'm endlessly asked about when I think users will make the upgrade to SQL Server 2008. In conjunction with PASS, I've recently written an article for Database Trends and Applications that answers that. You can read it here: http://www.dbta.com/e-edition/Sept08/3-contributed_article_low.html

I hope you find it useful.

The value of good education during tough economic times

Winds of Change

Welcome to the new site! The site is part of a large transformation that PASS undertook just over 2 years back to change the way in which we facilitate sharing of thoughts, ideas and support among the community. Since the first conference in 1998, the PASS summit has been the largest global summit put together by the community to facilitate high quality education and networking. Many many members of the SQL Server community have contributed to our successes and ultimately, you, the community are the benefactors of the efforts of your peers. PASS now has a robust and a rapidly growing network of chapters around the world and is now poised to support a lot more educational events in your local communities.

Our new website now allows PASS to be a true year-round community to connect people from different parts of the globe to benefit from each others knowledge, ideas and experience. This is our first major release and we are looking forward to putting more tools at your disposal that will allow you to get information and share knowledge.

So, check out everything that we have already posted on the site including many of the articles that were published in SQL Server Standard managazine, read and contribute to our Wiki White Papers and also check out PASSTips. There are also over 200 hours of recorded summit sessions posted on this site under Summit On Demand that you can access.

One of the biggest changes we have made at PASS with the launch of the new site, is suspending paid membership so that we can allow the entire community to participate in sharing knowledge. I encourage you to start participating in the site, write articles and submit recorded PASSTips, check out the different events happening across our community as well as provide us feedback on new features and changes you would like to see on this site to better support you in using Microsoft SQL Server. Keep returning back to the site to see new information and functionality that will continue to be released and also please encourage your collegues to sign up for their free membership to your organization.

Test-driving SQL Server 2008 features

Over the past few months, in partnership with MaximumASP and DELL, PASS has provided a public beta environment that has allowed thousands of people from the community to try out features of the latest SQL Server 2008 CTP's in a secure online environment without the overhead of creating personal environments to test drive these features. This beta site also has the advantage of staying updated with the latest versions of the product and is currently using the RTM build of SQL Server.

If you have not already tried SQL Server 2008 features, I encourage you to visit http://www.sqlserverbeta.com and try out SQL Server 2008 features for free. On the site, you will also find valuable resources that allow you to learn how to use some of those new features.

SQL Server Beta is one of the many free resources that PASS is committed to providing to the SQL Server community.

Something to Look Forward to: A Unique SQL Server Conference

A short while back Mosha wrote an interesting blog entry putting together a comparison between the upcoming MS BI conference and the 2008 PASS Summit. This comparison was based on the information that was publicly available at the time.  It got me thinking about the upcoming 2008 PASS Summit and the attendee experience planned. I realize that there is a lot of the summit experience that is still under planning or not fully confirmed and so, not communicated out. So, I am going to try in this blog.

When I look at my own reasons for attending conferences in the past, 3 things come to mind - Networking, experience and education, in that order, although, I can see why most companies tend to decide on which conference to send employees to based on mainly the education aspect of a conference. So, I will talk about that aspect of the PASS summit first.

The Education

The PASS summit has over 150 deep technical session (including 14 deep dive pre-conference seminars) dedicated to SQL Server. There is something (or a lot) for everyone to learn. You will have a chance to learn from the experience of your peers in the community based on real facts and implementations – not the marketing spin. You will learn what works and what doesn’t work in a real-life implementation and you will learn best-practices. No other conference can claim to offer that depth of technical training. The summit also features a complete track (12 sessions) dedicated to best practices and implementation that is being delivered by the SQL CAT team. The PASS summit is also quite unique from any other conference that you may attend, in the diversity of speakers. Most other conferences generally have just a few expert speakers delivering multiple sessions. PASS has, at last count, 104 speakers delivering over 150 sessions! These speakers are not only industry experts and Microsoft product group members, but also our peers who have learnt in the trenches and are willing to share their experiences. This is one summit where you can come in and not only learn from others, but share your own experiences.

Speaking of education, the PASS summit also features a Lounge which will contain a theater where experts will conduct chalk-talks in an interactive environment. Additionally, there will be hands-on labs where you will be able to learn how to use new features in SQL Server 2008, including Business Intelligence.

All this great educational opportunity at the PASS summit certainly begs the question for Business Intelligence professionals about which conference to attend. If Mosha’s full day pre-conference session on Deep dive into MDX is not enough of a reason to attend the PASS summit, you should make PASS your summit choice if you are a BI professional that interacts with the SQL Server product stack or manages and administers Business Intelligence components in your organization. Some of the sessions we have include “Building a 100TB+ Scientific Data Warehouse” by Michael Thomassy, “Collecting Analysis Services Performance Data by using Management Data Warehouse, SQL Profiler, and AS DMVs in SSAS 2008” by Carl Rabeler, “Integrating Predictive Analysis throughout the Data Lifecycle” by Donald Farmer and “High Performance Data Warehouses in SQL Server 2008” by Erin Welker. I have in the past 2 weeks spoken to a number of Business Intelligence professionals and colleagues and a large number of them are planning on attending the PASS summit and many have also indicated interest in Mosha’s pre conference seminar! So, register before space fills up.

The Experience

This is the official Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Re-Launch Event! A target attendance of over 3000 professionals makes the upcoming PASS summit the largest global gathering of SQL Server professionals under one roof and a high-energy event you wouldn’t want to miss. Attendees will include a few hundred members of the SQL Server product development team from Microsoft who will not only be interacting and speaking with attendees, but also attending the sessions and in some cases providing perspective on the design aspects of certain features. More importantly they will be listening to your experiences and pain points so that they can enhance the product.

Also attending will be top experts from the community including SQL Server MVP’s who will be delighted to spend time answering your technical questions and helping solve those problems that have been plaguing you, at our Ask the Experts lounge. In fact, I am sure that many of your favorite bloggers will be at the summit looking forward to meeting you in person. One of the frequent feedbacks we have received from attendees in the past is that a few minutes of face-to-face time with one of the experts helping them solve their persistent problems have paid for the summit costs many times over. How’s that for value! We are also expecting over 200 Microsoft employees who design, build and manage SQL Server solutions and databases within Microsoft. So, this is an opportunity to find out how they “eat their own dog food”!

Speaking of designing, building and managing solutions and databases, the summit will also feature the largest gathering of vendors dedicated to making products and solutions that allow you to extend your investments in the SQL Server product. You can learn about all these different (and some new) offerings and also compare them under one roof! One of our Platinum Sponsor this year is DELL and I am certain that you will hear about some of their Database solutions for SQL Server. This year, PASS will also (potentially) feature a new and exciting Lounge experience which I cannot talk about yet as details are not finalized – but you can expect to hear about it soon. You surely don’t want to miss finding out all about them!

Part of the summit experience also includes discounted onsite certification exams where you can get certified in SQL Server 2008 product, participate in Microsoft focus groups and buy books at a discount from the book store.

There will also be some very exciting announcements from Microsoft during keynotes featuring top Microsoft SQL Server Management executives, Ted Kummert, Tom Casey and David DeWitt. Ted will provide a sneak peek at the future of SQL Server and Microsoft’s data platform and discuss the latest release of Microsoft SQL Server 2008 and new technologies debuting in the short-term, as well as reveal plans for long-term technology developments that will change the data platform landscape. Tom will discuss the overall strategy, design, development and delivery of the Microsoft business intelligence platform with SQL Server 2008 and beyond, while David is expected to discuss his vision for the evolution of the database and Microsoft’s role in changing the face of data management.

For many of us, who are managing mission critical systems back at work, being disconnected from the office is not an option, the venue features a number of internet stations and free wireless connectivity throughout the summit venue so that you can check on your emails and the health of your servers while on-site.

This PASS summit also provides you some opportunity for relaxation and fun. Starting from our Heroes Unite theme, which will enhance your onsite experience, to the parties that we have planned for you (the Welcome reception on Tuesday, Expo Hall reception on Wednesday and a “signature” evening event on Thursday that you don’t want to miss), you are sure to have a blast! We are also hosting the SQL Heroes contest that you have an opportunity to participate in. Additionally, there might be opportunities to attend other vendor sponsored parties. Be sure to walk through the Expo hall and talk to vendors to find out more.

The Networking

Now, this is why I attend the PASS summit. This is my opportunity to get to meet and know my peers and make friends, getting to know people who I can reach out to long after the summit. PASS is where I first met Kevin Kline, Wayne Snyder, Peter DeBetta, Fernando Guerrero, Kirk Haselden and a host of other community leaders who I now consider good friends. These networking opportunities are everywhere at the PASS summit starting from the welcome reception and stretching all throughout the summit, whether at the Lounge, trade-show floor, at one of the various parties or just out in the halls. I encourage all of you to take maximum advantage of this great opportunity to get to know your peers.

It all adds up to real Value!

The education and experience I described above is just a small part of the overall summit experience. The value that this summit provides you reaches far beyond the on-site experience. For example, many of the break-out sessions are recorded and available to all attendees online after the summit. This allows you to review those sessions that you could not personally attend because of the sheer amount of session choices in each time slot. You also have the opportunity to purchase a DVD of the sessions so that you can watch it at your leisure. Many of our speakers are also readily accessible to you. So, you can contact them with specific questions on their sessions even after the summit.

You should register now to reserve your seat at the summit before it potentially sells out due to on-site capacity constraints this year. To make your registration even more valuable, you should be able to find discount codes on some of the community sites that you regularly visit, like SQLBlog.com or SQLTeam.com. Check this link to find even more valuable discount offers from Solid Quality Mentors that you can take advantage of. They will certainly extend the value of your registration $’s.

I would love to hear from you, if you are planning to attend. If you are a speaker or an MVP, please consider writing a short blog about what you are planning on speaking about at PASS or what you are most looking forward to at the PASS Summit.

Consider this your call to action to register now! And oh – be sure to make on-site plans ahead of time using our online scheduler (going live in a couple of weeks) to make the most of your summit experience. See you in Seattle this November!

Welcome to the New PASS website

The new PASS website is finally here, albeit in BETA format for now. We’re really proud of this initial effort and would love your feedback on what you see so far. I absolutely recommend you look through our wiki white paper section – it’s a great knowledge sharing medium that showcases white papers authored by many members of the SQL Server community and even allows you to create your own wiki white paper.

The PASSTips section is also highly worthy a perusal even if you’ve just got a few minutes. Here we’re highlighting recordings of great SQL Server tips and tricks that can be used to enhance your everyday work life. You can also be the star of your own show and submit your own PASSTip if the mood strikes.

The goal of this new site is to foster an even greater sense of community for PASS members. This is the true difference between PASS and other user groups – allowing you to connect, share and learn from your peers in either a virtual or face-to-face environment. Do you think we’re succeeding on this front? Please let us through all the various feedback forms peppered throughout the site.

Keep in mind, this is only the start. The website is only going to get better and better as we add more functionality like PASSPorts which will allow members to share information about themselves and connect with other members; forums for live discussions on various topics; and so much more. Stay tuned!

PASS Marketing Team