September 2009
Chapter name Swiss PASS Chapter
Chapter leader Charley Hanania
Chapter website www.sqlpass.ch
When do you meet? 1st Tuesday of the Month
What's something exciting you did as a Chapter recently?
We give out a SQL Server 2008 Dev Edition to every new member, helped coordinate the European PASS Conference activities and have relaunched the Chapter through a new website and tendered a competition for our brilliant new Logo!
Future Meetings you would like to highlight.
We’ve got a great free full day event coming up on the 19th of September 2009 that we’ve organised. It’s a PASS Community Connections Event, and is called Swiss SQL Server Saturday. We’ve got an excellent bunch of Speakers from all around Europe to give 15 info packed sessions on Application Development including Silverlight and .Net, BI including Data Mining and Gemini and of course DB Administration including Sharepoint optimisation, Failover Clustering and Virtualization. www.sqlsaturday.ch for details and registration.
August 2009
Chapter name Auckland SQL Server User Group
Chapter leader Dave Dustin
Chapter website http://aucklandsql.com
When do you meet? There is so much interest they’re considering moving to 2 meetings a month
What's something exciting you did as a Chapter recently?
- 3 meetings in July, with one being Peter Ward. Attendance at each of these was 40+
- September, Greg Low is presenting
- October, organised for Brad McGehee to come visit the four New Zealand Chapters (Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch, Dunedin)
- Membership has grown from 5 in August 2008 to 170+ as at 1st Aug, 2009
July 2009
Chapter name: Ahmedabad SQL Server User Group
Chapter leader: Jacob Sebastian and Pinal Dave
Chapter website http://ahmedabad.sqlpass.org
How many members? 200
When do you meet? Every third Saturday of the month.
What's something exciting you did as a Chapter recently?
We recently organized TechEd on Road with half day SQL Server sessions and gathered over 200 attendees. People travelled as much as 500 miles to attend this event and it was a great success
June 2009
Chapter name Orlando SQL Server Users Group
Chapter leader Andy Warren
Chapter website www.opass.com
What's something exciting you did as a Chapter recently?
Our most recent meeting was May 12, 2009, and we had 23 attendees. We started off the evening with news of upcoming events (SQLSat Birmingham, SQLSat Pensacola, Day of DNN) and setting a date for our kickoff meeting for our next SQLSaturday Orlando (May 23 at Chipotle in Altamonte if you are in the area). From there we spent some time talking again about networking, and here is a quick result of the informal survey:
- Everyone present believed networking is useful
- Most rated their networks at less than 30, only a couple exceeded 100 - which led into the discussion of how we all define our networks a bit differently
- Almost everyone was on LinkedIn, though some weren't using it actively, and others weren't sure they were using it to best effect
- Most had tried Facebook, but the overall impression was that it wasn't suited for business, especially compared to LinkedIn
- No one using Plaxo, only a couple using Twitter, no one blogging
- Several belonged to networking groups
- Everyone said that they believed they could be better at networking and would enjoy the chance to learn
- One person attributed their current job to a connection that they had maintained via LinkedIn
We then spent about 15 minutes actually networking, with the goal that we had to meet three new people. You never know how that will work out, but instantly everyone jumped in and there was this terrific buzz in the room. I think part of it was setting the stage, might not have gone as well if we hadn't chatted about networking first. At about 5 minutes in I called out for everyone to meet their second person and everyone smoothly moved around. I made a couple introductions and tried to say hello to all the new attendees while it was going on, and then it was time for the third rotation. We had only one person who only met 2 people (I think due to the first two being interesting conversations) so we introduced him to a third person at the end. As I think about it more I think it's critical that we do set the stage to tell people that we are all going to do this for x minutes, pulls them into the game. From a user group perspective, I still believe the big win is to make it as much about networking and catching up with friends as it the technical presentation.
Read More on Andy Warren's Blog
Our next meeting will be from 6-8 pm on July 14, 2009, and will feature Chad Miller as our guest speaker and he will be discussing Powershell with SQL Server. Doors open at 5 pm and food will be provided. Meeting is open to anyone interested in SQL Server regardless of experience level. If you attended (or missed) the May 2009 meeting you can download the files from http://www.tangrainc.com/docs/PlanStability.zip
May 2009
Chapter name San Francisco SQL Server Group & Silicon Valley SQL Server User Group
Chapter leader Mark Ginnebaugh
Chapter website http://www.bayareasql.org
How many members? 250 Active, and a mailing list of 900.
When do you meet? Monthly at the San Francisco Microsoft Office, and at the Mountain View Microsoft Campus.
What's something exciting you did as a Chapter recently?
Living in the Bay Area, we are so fortunate to have so many top SQL Server authors and MVPs speaking at our meetings. Some of the speakers we've heard from recently include Paul Bertucci, Kevin Kline, Brad McGehee, Denise McInerney, Burzin Patel, John R. Hanson, and Ross Mistry. In April, "Think Like A Hacker" drew a big crowd. Our attendance grew steadily in 2008b and 2009. We usually have 50 attendees at each meeting.
Thanks to Microsoft, we now have enough sponsorship that our meetings are now free.
Upcoming meetings will include Christian Wade of EMC, Peter Myers of Solid Quality Myers, Christa Stelzmuller of MySpace, and Elizabeth Diamond of DesignMind. Some of the topics we'll cover are Business Inteligence, Scaling for Stable and Rapid Growth, Currency Conversion, Data Mining, and Data Warehousing.
April 2009
Chapter name Louisville SQL Server Group
Chapter leader Malathi Mahadevan
Chapter website http://louisville.sqlpass.org
How many members? 45
When do you meet? Once a month at the Presbyterian Church, normally at noon. Schedule may vary due to speaker and room availability.
What's something exciting you did as a Chapter recently?
In March, MVP Derek Comingore delivered an excellent presentation on SSRS 2008 to a full house of over 40 attendees. From April to July, we're excited to present an ongoing series on SSIS by MVP Dave Fackler. A very popular speaker at PASS, Dave has been a huge supporter and very valuable resource for our user group. Despite his constantly busy schedule, Dave is always available for talks to the local user community on the latest BI topics, and his talks are exceptionally well received.
Special thanks to Idera - who sponsor our lunches and send goodies - frequent speakers: MVP Dave Fackler, MVP Derek Comingore, Sarah Barela and Ryan Jones of MaximumASP; and our meeting room sponsor, Presbyterian Church, USA.
March 2009
Chapter name Hampton Roads SQL Server Group
Chapter leader Susan Lennon
Chapter website http://www.hrssug.org/default.aspx
How many members? 35
When do you meet? Third Thursday of each month at 6:30 pm
What's something exciting you did as a Chapter recently?
The Hampton Roads SQL Server User Group has really made the transition from a struggling group to a thriving community and has recently expanded to include SharePoint. The Region has grown from nothing (2 people/ meeting) to 30-35 people and a thriving professional community. Susan has hung in there through an exceptionally long start-up period.
Their March Meeting will feature Mark Eichenberger from Microsoft. Mark will be talking about how to get more out of SharePoint My Sites and also Content Publishing sites.
February 2009
Chapter name Southern New England SQL Server Users Group (SNESSUG)
Chapter leader Grant Fritchey
Chapter website www.snessug.com
How many members? 140
When do you meet? Second Wednesday of each month
What's something exciting you did as a Chapter recently?
We teamed up with Adam Machanic of the New England SQL Server Users Group (nesql.org) to put on the New England Data Camp v1.0. Adam did 90% of the work but we pitched in. Two volunteers from our group helped Adam put on the event where we had 18 sessions with 16 speakers, including MVPs such as Adam Machanic, Andrew Novick, and Aaron Bertrand. The event was sponsored by PASS as a Community Connection event. 185 people attended and everything went off without a hitch.
January 2009
Chapter name Pensacola SQL Server Users Group
Chapter leader Karla Remail
Chapter website www.pensacolasql.com and pensacola.sqlpass.org
How many members? 35
When do you meet? monthly
What's something exciting you did as a Chapter recently?
We started up in June this year and already have a steady growing membership, and a regular average attendance of 35 at each monthly meeting. We have brought in several MVP guest speakers and have one of our own Chapter Board members who is an author and regualr speaker as well, Rodney Landrum. Rodney has just been nominated as a Microsoft MVP. We hosted the MSDN Tiki Hut Roadshow November 13th, and had the largest attendance for the Florida portion of the roadshow. We have been very fortunate to also have TEK Systems sponsor each monthly meeting with food and a venue for the evening (and we're not talking pizza here folks!...good food at the historic Seville Quarter - Rosie O' Grady's). Next year is looking very promising, already lined up guest speakers for the first quarter, and it looks like we have a venue to host our very own SQL Saturday here in Pensacola!