SQL Server, PASS, and other data mishaps
Ramblings
PASS Program Update #2
Mar 11th
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
Feb 9th
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?
Jan 27th
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
Nov 20th
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
A new blog is born
Nov 20th
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)
