Allen Kinsel - SQL DBA » Ramblings

The long evolution of the PASS Program Committee

Allen Kinsel — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 21:50:28 +0000

It all had to begin somewhere

I joined the Program Committee in late 2006; I spent the first 2 years working on the DBA track teams selecting abstracts. I have spent a good deal of time working on the technology (vendors) of the Summit (the software we use to manage speakers, room assignments, itinerary planner, etc.). After going through several demo's and actually attempting to use two different software packages, I started pushing for PASS to build our own software. We are paying a (small) fortune for what we use now, the only reason I can figure is that its much more robust than what we need for PASS. Last year I worked with PASSHQ to put together a project plan for PASS to build a new technology platform to manage the Summit. This year David with PASS HQ has started delivering on parts of the software. Once this is in place and we're not changing software every year/other year, we should be able to focus more on the process, and less on the new software.

Prior to last year, Pre/post conference sessions (AKA precons) and Spotlight sessions were 100% invite only, and the guidelines for who was allowed to present these sessions was never published outside of the committee. Beginning with last year, we worked to publish guidelines for who was eligible to present precon sessions. In publishing the requirements list for who could present an all day precon session we opened up the call for precons to include anyone who met the requirements. At the same time we opened up spotlight invitations to competition, where we invited more speakers than we had slots for in hopes of raising the caliber of these sessions. We also began using an easy to understand formula for who gets invited to present spotlight sessions.

In this same time frame we reached out to many experts and asked for help developing a speaker resource page. Prior to this there was no real information on PASS's website documenting what it takes to write good abstracts, or get selected as a speaker. We have pulled together quite a few resources to help develop speakers, including webcasts and sample abstracts, etc.

Growing bigger better speakers

I have blogged quite a bit about growing the pool of speakers and we have made some very good steps in the right direction in this space. There were two fundamental changes I worked into the program committee. The first was adding a «speaker bureau» option to the speakers contract. This will allow PASS (where the speakers agreed) to hand off speaker info and abstracts to the local chapters that the speakers are near, which will hopefully facilitate some interaction between the chapter leaders and some local aspiring speakers they may not know about. There is still work to do to build and enrich the process around this sharing of information back out to the chapters but the first (most important) step has been taken. I also worked it into the summit speaker contracts that we would release aggregate scores to the other speakers presenting so they could know where they stood compared to their peers. This was decided as a good first step in open conversations generated by the discussion in this post

Lots of internal Changes

This year a few things changed internally within the program committee, I separated the BI tracks review teams to match the fact that we now have 2 BI tracks, I also added an extra person to the DBA track team because, well, their workload increases every year and they could use some additional help. I created a true team of 3 to review precons and spotlights instead of the mgmt group doing that work. But, by far for me the largest change was getting Lori Edwards involved in the leadership of the program committee. Initially the idea was for her to get a team of task based volunteers who could work on some of the extra technology that the Program committee needed in order to work more effectively. The first thing I handed her was to take the monstrosity of an excel spreadsheet I had containing every speakers session evaluation since 2005 (when I first got a copy) and make it into a proper database, and get some reporting from it. After some discussions, we decided to build this as a system to hold ALL speaker evals for PASS or SQL Saturday, or actually ANY SQL presentation, the idea is when its finished if you have a speaker at any SQL event you can accept online evaluations and the speakers will get better feedback in one place. In addition, the organizers of PASS events will have better information as well. This task is still in process, but the first deliverable was a standard report of speakers and their evaluation scores and this was available for this years Program committee. Somewhere along the way, Lori became more and more involved with all of the bits and pieces of what it takes to run the program committee. Her involvement in these things has enabled me to reach out and not just do the same old thing for the Summit this year.

More evolution

This year I continued to push to evolve the program committee in several ways. One of the changes most visible to PASS membership was the Community Choice Sessions. Like all great ideas I'm not exactly sure where this idea was born, but I worked with people across the PASS organization to get this done. I wrote about the process a couple of times as it was coming into being. After involving over 1100 members, I would say this was a great success for PASS, myself and the Program group.

We are planning on taking the evaluation system that Lori and her team are working on and put it into use for the first time at this years Summit. In doing so we have planned to offer a new type of session that I've written about before. This will be what we're tentatively calling «best of sessions» where we take the session with the highest evaluation on Tuesday and ask that speaker to present the same session on Wednesday, repeating the same process for those who speak on Wednesday, asking them to present the same session again on Thursday. This should allow the BEST content at the summit to be seen by the most attendees.

It hasn't been all fun and games

This evolution and opening of the program process hasn't been all BACON and index seeks, there has been more than one change on this list that have caused many questions, and in some cases very involved discussions. We haven't always gotten everything right, but heck I'm happy that I can say I think we got it mostly right. There is always room for improvement and more to do to continue to evolve these processes,

If you believe in these changes and you like how I communicate them, consider voting for me. I'm running for the PASS Board of Directors, and I need your help to make a difference. Click here to read about why I'm running.

I received my diagnosis

Allen Kinsel — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 14:15:57 +0000

Luckily, I didn't have to pay a single thing for it.

Brent Ozar unwittingly made the diagnosis the other day in a comment on Stuart Ainsworth's blog (I shortened it a bit)

Since I have served on both of those PASS Committee's (Program Committee as a leader) I must be insane.

I mean, no one willingly jumps in front of that many bullets, at least not for long. Whether he meant it or not, Brent is right though, when you put yourself into one of these types of committee's you truly are opening yourself to all sorts of bullets. This sort of «target practice» has been one of the toughest things for me to learn how to deal with as a PASS volunteer. The good news though, is that its amazing what it will do for you professionally, its one thing when your «favorite» developer is firing Air soft bullets in disagreement with you, its quite another when leaders of the SQL community who you have a huge amount of respect for start firing .50cal's.

Many of my companies developers (several hundred total) have commented to me in the last few years that I have «mellowed» out a bit, a few of them have laughed and blamed it on old age, but in reality, I know its a side effect of serving in very public roles within the PASS Community.

Sql Server and SSPI handshake failed error hell

Allen Kinsel — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 15:18:00 +0000

The infamous SSPI Failed error strikes again!

One of our SQL servers was generating these errors for «some» Windows logins but not all.

Error: 17806, Severity: 20, State: 2.

SSPI handshake failed with error code 0x8009030c while establishing a connection with integrated security; the connection has been closed. [CLIENT: 192.168.1.1]

Error: 18452, Severity: 14, State: 1.

After exhausting all of the normal troubleshooting for this error (accounts locked, disabled, Sql Service accts, bad connection strings, SPN's, etc.) I spent the next few hours learning more about the way SQL handles authentication requests than I had ever wanted to know.

The Scenario –

A couple of separate individual Windows ID's started generating these errors while attempting connections, all other windows logins were working properly. The connections were initially happening through applications, but also occurred through sqlcmd. When logged in to the server locally with the offending ID's the connections to SQL would succeed.

The Troubleshooting process –

Check all the regular SSPI issues, I wont bore you with the details as they are easily searchable

A relatively easy way of checking the «easy» authentication issues If possible/appropriate is to log into the SQL Server locally with the offending ID and fire up sqlcmd and connect to the server via sqlcmd –Sservername,port –E (by specifying the port you force TCP/IP instead of LPC, thereby forcing the network into the equation)

Verify whether the login is trying to use NTLM or Kerberos (many ways to do this but simplest is to see if there are any other KERBEROS connections on the machine)

SELECT DISTINCT auth_scheme FROM sys.dm_exec_connections
If Kerberos is in use, there are a few additional things to verify related to SPN's, since only NTLM was in use on this server I skipped that

Determine if the accounts were excluded from connecting to the machine through the network through a group policy or some other AD setting

After all of these checked out OK, I began to try and figure out what the error code 0x8009030c meant, turns out, its fairly obvious what the description is : sec_e_logon_denied. This description was so helpful I thought about making this server into a boat anchor but, luckily for my employer the server room is located many miles away and has armed guards.

Since I knew we could logon locally to the SQL Server with the ID that SQL was rejecting with logon denied something else was trying to make my life miserable.

We didn't have logon failure security auditing turned on so, I had no way of getting a better error description, As luck would have it though this would prove instrumental in finding the root cause. To get a better error message, I found this handy KB article detailing steps needed to put net logon into debug mode.

Say hello to my new best friend! -- nltest.exe

After downloading nltest & using it to enable netlogon debugging on the SQL Server, I got this slightly better message in the netlogon.log file

06/15 14:15:39 [LOGON] SamLogon: Network logon of DOMAIN\USER from Laptop Entered

06/15 14:15:39 [CRITICAL] NlPrintRpcDebug: Couldn't get EEInfo for I_NetLogonSamLogonEx: 1761 (may be legitimate for 0xc0000064)

06/15 14:15:39 [LOGON] SamLogon: Network logon of DOMAIN\USER from Laptop Returns 0xC0000064

The error code 0XC0000064 maps to «NO_SUCH_USER»

Since I was currently logged in to the server with the ID that was returning no such user, something else was obviously wrong, and luckily at this point I knew it wasn't SQL.

Running «set log» on the server revealed that a local DC (call it DC1) was servicing the local logon request.

After asking our AD guys about DC1 and its synchronization status, as well as whether the user actually existed there, everything still looked OK.

After looking around a bit more I discovered this gem of a command for nltest to determine which DC will handle a logon request

C:\>nltest /whowill:Domain Account

[16:32:45] Mail message 0 sent successfully (\MAILSLOT\NET\GETDC579)
[16:32:45] Response 0: DC2 D:Domain A:Account (Act found)
The command completed successfully

Even though this command returned «act found» it was returning from DC2. (I dont exactly understand why the same account would authenticate against 2 different DC's based on a local desktop login or a SQL login but it apparently can)

After asking the AD guys about DC2 the light bulbs apparently went off for them as that server actually exists behind a different set of firewalls, in a totally different location. While DC2 would return a ping, the console wouldn't allow logons for some reason. After a quick reboot of DC2, and some magic AD pixie dust (I am not an AD admin, if it wasn't totally obvious from my newfound friend nltest) the windows Id's that were having trouble started authenticating against DC3 and our SSPI errors went away.

Interesting tidbit -- During troubleshooting, I found that this particular SQL Server was authenticating accounts against at least 5 different DC's. Some of this might be expected since there are different domains at play but, I haven't heard a final answer from the AD guys about whether it should work that way.

The solution

Reboot the misbehaving DC, of course there may be other ways to fix this by redirecting requests to a different DC without a reboot but, since it was misbehaving anyway, and the AD experts wanted to reboot so we went with that. A reboot of SQL would have likely solved this problem too but, I hate reboot fixes of issues, they always seem to come back!

Developing Better SQL Speakers

Allen Kinsel — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 13:10:00 +0000

I've been focusing on different aspects of speakers and their interactions with PASS lately. Id like to expand on that and take a large detour.

The AHA Moment

last week while going over some ideas and upcoming changes to the PASS Program Committee with my PASS boss, Jeremiah Peschka I had what I think is a great idea, and Id like to throw it out here and see If I cant help get it off the ground.

Speaker Development

It seems like a lot of the suggestions I've been getting lately with regards to the program haven't really been relevant to the problem I was trying to solve. At first I thought I wasn't explaining myself properly or I was writing in the same manner my brain works (all over the place) . Then It donned on me, maybe I'm trying to solve the wrong problem. (I know this was definitely one of my greatest moments of clarity). In a lot of what we do in the program committee we're really not positioned to help speakers grow perse. But, speakers still need help, they still want to refine their craft, learn new tricks, etc. I know I for one would love to get started speaking but, while I can tell who is a good speaker, I certainly don't know how they got that way, surely they weren't born with it!!!

The BIG Idea

Why cant we make a new Virtual Chapter within PASS for speaker development. I think this would provide a great venue for speaker development, It would be great if we could get the best speakers within the SQL community to give a monthly livemeeting about the different aspects of developing speaking skills. The topics could range from how to prepare for a topic, how to craft a great abstract, how to create great audience interactivity, how to create great demo's/powerpoints etc etc. There are literally hundreds of topics that I could see being presented that would be of great use to developing speakers. If the idea takes off, I could foresee an exchange of sorts, where hopeful speakers are matched up with experts for mentoring. Think SQLMatch.com where you look for a mentor for your SQL related speaking! I think with my grand total of 0 sessions experience I wouldn't be an appropriate person to lead this VC but, I would certainly be willing to help another more qualified person with the details and help out anywhere needed.

How can I see this through

If only I had some contacts in the SQL speaker community who would be willing to present on these topics? Surely there are some talented SQL Speakers that would be willing to step up to the plate and offer to help out those of us just trying to start the process of learning to present. Getting willing speakers to talk about these topics should be the hard part, the scheduling/leading the VC should be pretty easy but its still additional work.

So…… Which SQL Community Speaker/Leader wants to help me, help the community, and make this happen? I'm totally open to any ideas, I'd just like to see this get started!

PASS First Time Speaker Statistics

Allen Kinsel — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 14:50:39 +0000

Last time I wrote about limiting speakers to 1 session per summit, I appreciate the feedback, and thought id take another turn at this topic.

As I was reading the comments it reminded me that last year, I was asked by PASS marketing to pull a list of what we considered «new presenters». I thought I would revisit that list and give some of the statistics I discovered.

I want to start by saying I did this research almost 9 months ago, and I didnt reverify that this information was correct enough to post, it was pulled from their submitted bio's. So feel free to point out if something is wrong.

We had 85 unique community speakers in 2009. Of these 85 I was able to identify 17 people who were new to the summit within the prior year (08 and 09)

Gail Shaw 08
Grant Fritchey 08
Denise McInerney 08
Denny Cherry 09
Jacob Sebastian 09
Brent Ozar 08
Rod Colledge 09
Jamon Bowen 09
Jonathan Kehayias 09
Michelle Ufford 09
Ravindra Gurram 09
Jason Massie 09
Rob Garrison 09
Glenn Berry 09
Kendal Van Dyke 09
Kevin Guinn 09
Trevor Barkhouse 09

Every speaker on this list wasn't new to speaking, they were new to speaking at the PASS Summit. Which is exactly the kind of new speakers we're looking for.

At first glance Id be willing to say that PASS is already doing a pretty good job of involving new speakers. Using these numbers it looks like we already incorporated approximately 20% new speakers within a particular selection year. While ultimately I think that number could(should) inch up even higher, Im happy to know that we're not doing so badly at this that I want to go visit an Access conference just to raise my spirits.

PASS Program Update #2

Allen Kinsel — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 15:31:00 +0000

Here comes High Gear

Things have really started to move lately, We've officially started the Program Committee for 2010.

We received 53 applications this year from members hoping to help out on the program committee. That's a huge number for us, When I joined in 2007 I think I was accepted by default because we didn't have enough volunteers. in 2008 there were approximately 20, last year we had 23. Obviously we're gaining some attention in the process of making the education program at the annual pass summit the best year after year.

Selecting the abstract review teams

With so many applicants, selecting the teams was quite a chore this year. Its like interviewing for an open position at your company but instead of having 1 position, you have 17 open and instead of a hand-full of qualified applicants, you get a boatload. That pretty much sums up the experience every year but, this year it was twice as bad as I remember it being in the past (possibly because of the doubling in applicants). In the end, the quest to fill these teams took quite a bit of time, unfortunately just like selecting employees for your day job, there is really no best way to make the selections. I should have probably just used a dartboard for the selections but, I didn't want to disservice those that had taken the time to apply. After quite a few iterations of making sure everyone was in the team that best leverages their skill sets, the new volunteers were notified.

Changes

The program Committee Portfolio changed hands in the PASS BOD this year, the new owner is Jeremiah Peschka. Overall my experience with Jeremiah has been the same as my experience with the prior 2 Board members I worked with on Program, they've all been nothing but great. We have already started batting around a couple of major changes to the Program Committee.

Thing 1

I tricked convinced Lori Edwardsto join the program committee as an adhoc project manager unfortunately we haven't found a jazzy title that sticks yet, so she's currently known as the task team leader, I hope we can properly anoint her later. With 17 applicants added to the abstract review teams, we moved the other 36 people who applied into a task group that Lori has the joy task of managing. Having a dedicated volunteer leader to manage the side projects that always come up should change the way we get things done and hopefully without me being the bottleneck, things will happen even faster. This year the program committee has many things we want to accomplish, in addition to the regular things that we have to do to put on the summit every year. I am hopeful this setup will prove to be one that works well, and we can refine and document the process so it can be reused in future years.

Thing 2

Abstract Committee Abstention. In the past we didn't have a policy about the abstract review volunteers submitting abstracts in the same track as they are reviewing abstracts in. This was usually handled internally to each track and that member abstained from all discussion and ranking of their abstract. This year however, we alerted every potential abstract reviewer that they wouldn't be allowed to submit abstracts to their review track. This rule may exclude some volunteers from reviewing abstracts in the future but, it just made sense from the transparency standpoint.

New Summit Management Software

The new summit software selection is causing some of our critical timeline dates to need to be adjusted. I'm not in a full panic defcon 5 mode yet but, If we don't have a working environment in the new software by the end of next week, Ill be pulling the panic alarm. Configuring a site to accept abstracts, and manage the speaker experience takes an unbelievable amount of time and right now we're still waiting for the final paperwork & approvals. Sliding the call for abstracts back doesn't effect much of the planning for the summit except it compresses our timelines for getting the sessions selected and posted to the summitt website. Currently we're aiming for a mid April call for speakers opening, with the actual call running approximately 30 days.

Speaker Resources

Brad started working on this years update/changes to the speaker resource pages on the sqlpass website. These sorts of changes are always interesting since they cross over a couple of portfolio's. I'm hoping that we can collapse the 2 pages currently posted into one page that is less confusing, or potentially 2 pages that work better together and don't overlap as much as the existing pages.

Lots of new ideas coming, expect a new blog post tomorrow outlining one of the more controversial (potentially) Ideas I'd like to get some community feedback on.

Your relationship with your professional organization

Allen Kinsel — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 11:00:40 +0000

Do you have a relationship with your professional organization?

What is your professional organization? is it in technology? Something like Ineta, PASS, ISUG, IDUG, IOUG or one of the other various technology groups that exist. Or maybe your preferred group is more in the business side of things like ASPA, LOMA or AICPA. If you dont know your desired professional organization, take a second and plug in your favorite search terms + professional organization into «binoogle» and see if the results lead you to a new beginning.

Expectations

If you already know your professional organization, what do you expect of your relationship with your organization? Is it a two way street? Do you give as well as receive? Would you like the relationship between you and that organization to be stronger or weaker? Do they do enough to help you succeed, do they provide value? Do you do what you can to enable their success? A little overly rhetorical probably, but you get the point.

Relationships

Every professional organization (that I know of) requires many dedicated volunteers to succeed. The more help they have the more work they can get done and thus the more value that can be provided to the members (thats you and me!!) The relationship between members and the professional organization is certainly a two way street and both sides need to be at their best in order for either to succeed but, normally the relationship is onesided where the members gain more from the organization than the organization gains from the members, thats why there are thousands of members and hundreds of volunteers. If your involved in an organization, do they get the help they need and use it appropriately? Do you appreciate them? Do they appreciate you? is it worth it?

How can you add value to the relationship?

No matter what you do, or what your interests are I bet there exists an organization that could use your help. Why not step up today and offer your services? No matter what level your skills are, beginner, or Grand Jedi Master, you too can help your chosen org bring more value to its members.

This post is part of the Tsql Tuesday series

How did I get here?

Allen Kinsel — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 05:27:56 +0000

There's a meme going around that I thought I'd take my turn at answering.

Better late than never I suppose, Work always seems to have a way of getting in the way of posts like this!

It all started with a CAT3 cable

It all started on a dark night in the middle 90's, I was enrolled in college sitting in my dorm room trying to connect my brand spanking new Pentium 133mhz computer to our college network so I could partake in what was at that time a huge LAN group playing Warcraft/Diablo/Duke Nukem. The problem was no one on the campus apparently knew how to connect to the network, yes it was a smallish campus. The only piece of guidance that could be found was in the welcome doc. «Network connectivity can be established in the bookstore» after contacting the bookstore and procuring the required 10baseT network card (~175$) they basically said, take this wire and plug it in the wall, everything else will work automatically. Well, even today we know things rarely work that easily. The cable that was sold to me by the bookstore was a regular phone cable because apparently the bookstore managers didn't know any better, it wasn't their fault though since the public campus network was less than a year old at that point. Somehow I spent enough time trying to get the correct table that I was lucky enough to get hooked up with the «campus nerd» who happened to live in the dorm 1 floor above me. He set me straight, told me where to get the required cable and handed me a scribbled list with the required connection info. Many late nights and much tinkering later I was successfully connected. Being the natural tinkerer I shortly figured out all about the network and what it took to get win 3.1 and 95 connected. Shortly, I became the «campus nerd» and when it was apparent to me that I was naturally inclined with computers, and not so much with coursework I wasnt inerested in, I quickly gave up school and began bartering computer work.

Then there was a book

A short while later I had landed a job as an all around network guy. I was doing everything and anything for a relatively small business. One day my boss proudly announced we were going to be getting a new server with a Database (SQL 6.5)! Apparently we had outgrown our existing business systems and the decision had been made to install what was essentially a combined financial/payroll system. A few short months later, in the middle of a payroll processing cycle our SQL server decided to do what SQL 6.5 did quite often, it got corrupted. Since I had a grand total of 4 months experience in SQL a consultant was called in and she fixed our problem. More importantly she brought with her a copy of the latest and greatest SQL book and as luck would have it, she left it behind. For the next 6 months I studied that book inside and out. A «database geek» was born

Finally, a chance meeting

In 2004 I was attending my first precon (given by Kimberly Tripp) at my first PASS Summit when I was looking for some lunch and happened to sit with 2 guys, Pat Wright and Tom Larock that are to this day two of my closest PASS friends. There is little doubt that the experience of meeting these 2 and attending the volunteer «roundup» lead by Wayne Snyder has had a profound impact on my career (this blog is a testament to that impact). A «volunteer geek» was born. Being a volunteer for PASS and participating in the SQL Server community has taken my skills up at least 2 notches, for that I am thankful.

These are the technical moments of my life that led me here, since I'm nearly the last one to answer this, I thought id go ahead and tag my friend Pat Wright since I noticed he hadn't answered yet. Otherwise, I have enjoyed reading everyone else's paths to a very similar outcome!

Photo Courtesy of Darren Hester

SQL Karaoke, Volunteering and SQLPASS

Allen Kinsel — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 21:59:02 +0000

Why do I volunteer for PASS?

Ive been asked more times than I can count why I spend so many hours working for an organization that doesnt pay anything other than thanks and smiles.

I work for a large company, and have a very small team of people. As such, it is often very helpful to have a sounding board outside of your sphere of influence to talk to people about ideas, issues and bacon, mostly bacon. Sure there has always been newsgroups and forums and they certainly have their place for this type of information exchange. However, when you know someone and have shared a dinner, a beer, a session, or even just a 5 minute hall discussion, they are more vested in you're outcome than some random stranger on an internet forum. The overall quality of the conversations and of the information that is exchanged in these groups is higher than the average internet sql community, if only by a little bit.

Payment (in the form of knowledge) for the work I do for PASS is 100% reaped by my employer, in the form of better database systems! Granted my professional knowledge is also increased but, whats good for me is good for them too right? This becomes a pretty easy sell at least in my head to know that I can put in some hours of work for a professional organization and in return they open up many conversation breakers between myself and not only the superstars of the SQL community but between myself and many of the rest of the community that is just as eager to share their knowledge.

So, with that in mind I give you a new friend that Ive twittered with for quite a while but,only just met at SQLPASS this year @mrdenny (blog). I think Denny may have had 1 too many Jaeger shots that night but, this rendition of eye of the tiger is #PASSAWESOMENESS

Related posts:
A new blog is born

A new blog is born

Allen Kinsel — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 14:20:11 +0000

A new take on an old idea

As if there aren't already enough blogs around about SQL server I've decided to start and build my own. For those of you tortured lucky enough to know me you'll know exactly how hard the decision has been to start this blog.

I hope this blog will become a place that I can throw random thoughts about with almost reckless abandon. I plan on using this place as a sounding board for ideas as well as a place to store my ideas for use at a later time.

I will likely be focusing more on SQLPASS than on SQL Server troubleshooting itself so, this is where this blog will be different from most. I think SQLPASS could be so much more than it currently is and I intend to do my level best to make that happen

Oh, super huge thanks go out to Brent Ozar (twitter, web) for his awesome how to setup a blog series. Without that, I would not have this site today. I owe you a beer at the next SQLPASS Summit!

So, welcome to my world, please feel free to look around (theres nothing else here)