Like most in the SQL community who are fortunate enough to attend the annual summit I am looking forward to next Sunday.  But, unlike most I am probably looking forward to this years summit for slightly different reasons. I’m definitely ready for the plethora of sessions, the great networking and all of the regular things everyone looks forward to (SQLKARAOKE!) but, when you are as heavily involved as I am in leading the Summit Program Committee, just getting it “started” is a huge relief.

For the last four years Ive looked forward to the Sunday before the Summit like ive looked forward to no other Sunday of the year.  However this year is going to be different!  This year will be my last year of leading the Summit “Program Committee”.  Its truly bittersweet for me as Ive really loved doing this but Its time for me to focus on doing other things for our great community.

I plan on handing the reigns of the summit over to _____ after the end of this years Summit.  I wish I knew who was taking over so I could tell you, but as it is no one has volunteered and PASS doesn’t exactly have a structure in place to allow for transnational hand off(more on this later).  I wish I could say it will be all Rainbows and Unicorns for the next person leading the program committee but, the reality is it is a lot of work.  The payoff is quite large though in knowing that you lead a group of 30ish volunteers to do a large portion of the work in making the summit a success but, even with a dedicated support staff (PASSHQ) its still a challenge.  After doing every job from the bottom to the top of this small piece of PASS I  feel like ive literally “Been there, done that, got the T-shirt”

I’d guess Ive spent at least 10 hours a week on average working on the Summit for the last several years and this year I added on regular PASS Board member tasks and am regularly exceeding those 10 hours a week, unfortunately, its just not sustainable for me any longer.  Im happy to spend the time for the community but, Its time for a new challenge and fortunately being on the PASS Board affords me all of the community challenges I could ever need (including figuring out to handle transition within PASS mentioned earlier). 

If you spot me at the Summit, feel free to stop over and introduce yourself, I promise not to try and convince you to volunteer to take my PASS job!

My favorite PASS memory isnt actually a single memory at all, its actually the conglomeration of all the SHARED experiences I have with all the hundreds(?) of people that I have gotten to know rather well over the years.  One of the most important things about our community of SQL professionals that I can never seem to put into words are those “Shared experiences”, they are what makes us unique.  Some first timers will listen to the conversations and think “what in the world is so funny” or “really, did that actually happen” or more likely, “what in the heck are they talking about” and I can see that there would be some intimidation factor with that but, the reality is you just have to jump in and start making those shared experiences of your own.  While some of my favorite shared experiences are from 2004-2006 that doesnt mean that I dont have some great ones from 2010 with people I had just met.  My point really is those experiences (which un/fortunately become memories) whether made at the Summit, a SQL Rally, SQL Saturday, or a local UG meeting are the things that actually tie us together as a group of professionals.  Sure, we all talk SQL and geek about it but, without the shared experience factor we’d all just be names behind posts on a Newsgroup/Forum which wouldnt be nearly as much fun!  

just choose one

If I had to list a single memory though it would be from 2004, where it all started for me.  You see I had just met Pat Wright, and Tom Larock and somehow they convinced me to attend the early morning (7AM If I recall) PASS volunteer session.  Im not an early morning person AT ALL so I definelty felt some peer pressure to go but, I can honestly say sitting in that session hosted by Wayne Snyder has probably changed my professional career as much or more than anything else.  Wayne is a very dynamic speaker and he had us all believing we could change the world, or at least the SQL portion of it.  I really miss those sessions, and wish we could find a way to ressurect them because this introvert would have never become involved with PASS had it not been for that 1 single session (and the encouragement of Tom and Pat) Thanks to the 3 of you for that!

This week is a busy week for 2011 Summit planning.  Some things need direct community participation and Id like to draw your attention to them

• Lightning Talks (5 minute “mini sessions”) Call for speakers closes today at 6:59 UTC (11:59 Pacific)

If you have an idea that you’d like to talk about for 5 minutes, Id encourage you to submit.  These sessions were well received last year and I expect the same this year

• Session Preferencing is open until  6:59 UTC on Aug 20 (Aug 19 11:59 Pacific time)

The Summit schedule creator(s) will make extensive use of this to properly size the rooms for each session.  There is more art than science to building the schedule but, the more data we have the better.

• Applications for the Nominations Committee
  

Lots of hard volunteer work went into the forming of this years process.  Please support it by offering your time if you have it to give.

Last year PASS decided to invest in the development of our own tools to manage the educational portion of the summit.  This investment has proven to be an excellent idea as it has made running the program a lot simpler.  In the past we had 2 or 3 different tools to manage the summit and thats not including the massive amount of excel spreadsheets that were passed around.  This would create obvious problems when changes weren’t propagated through all the tools in the same way.  In prior years it was a herculean effort to get the Summit program handled on time, this year however it has been markedly easier.  Maybe its not herculean anymore but, its definitely still takes a great deal of effort from a large number of volunteers.  Additionally, the same system we are using for the Summit in 2011 was used for both SQL Rally’s so in that way, the data and use of the system should start to form one experience for the entire community (speakers, volunteers & attendees)  Sometimes its the small behind the scenes things that really make a difference on the admin side that the public may not see and in this case I cant say it enough how thankful I am the past PASS BOD made that decision to invest.

As part of this tools upgrade, we are able to do some interesting things that we may not otherwise be able to do like…

Produce an OData “feed” of event sessions

If your familiar with OData you can try it out here

http://feeds.sqlpass.org/public/events/OratorDataService.svc

If you want to see the Summit 2011 Sessions for instance, try this link. Feel free to give it a try and let me know if you see any issues, but note the sessions arent scheduled yet so those data elements wont be correct

Hopefully having a service like this will open up the data enough that it will be useful to someone out there.  We have several internal uses planned for this feed including updating the mobile application we trialed at the SQL Rally “guidebook“  Yes, we will have a fully functioning mobile application for this years summit (and most other PASS events shortly)

Hopefully Ill be able to keep this place updated with something relevant way more often

(edit: somehow I forgot the Nomcom!! oops)

Stepping out

For as long as I can remember Ive been involved in one way or another with the PASS Summit.. This simply means I have a short memory because I think I first started with the summit in 2006 or maybe it was 2005.  Either way its been a long run at making the premiere event for SQL Professionals a success. During the last PASS Board meeting I let it be known to the other directors that I would like to move on to other things within PASS.  I have spent a huge amount of energy over the last few years attempting to remake the processes around the summit education program.  Ive worked with a great set of volunteers over the years and together we have had some great success in making the processes better and more “translucent” as my favorite volunteer would say.  However, I think its time for a new challenge and Id like to put the same effort into one of the other PASS portfolios.  This will also give someone else with a renewed energy and vision a chance to make their mark on the Summit program.  This is where I’d like to start the handoff, unfortunately there isnt exactly a line at my door of people wanting to take it from me.  So, if you ever wanted to give up your life free time for the good of the SQL community feel free to drop me a line!

Stepping up

At the same board meeting, I stepped up and decided to put my name on the ballot for the PASS executive board.  There are lots of rules and regulations in the bylaws about who can run and when, I wont bore you with all the details but, the end result is out of those eligible to run: Myself, Tom LaRock, Rick Heiges and Douglas McDowell are running for the 2 vice president seats while Bill Graziano is running unopposed for President.  I admittedly didnt start that week thinking I was going to run for the executive board of PASS but, as it turns out it fits nicely with what I want to do for PASS going forward so I decided give it a shot and run.  Hopefully enough of the board will see that I have the right kind of energy to do good in one of the positions.

I appreciate the challenges and opportunity that have been given to me over the years in this community and hope this is merely the next logical step in my service to our community.

This year we decided to try something new and allow any PASS member input into the Summit session selections.  Hopefully it will provide good info for the session reviewers to use.  They always have a very tough job choosing sessions since there are so many good choices.  For instance the DBA review team will have looked over 200 different abstracts when they are done!  I hope that the preference results will give them a little more info when deciding between 2 equally good sessions.

Preconference seminars

Dont forget to let us know specifically which precons you’d like to see, these results are going to be used more stringently than the regular sessions so the more results we can get the better!

Hurry

Use of the tool ends today so hurry and log in to the Preferencing site and chose as many sessions as you’d like.  There is no limit but, beware choosing too many isn’t exactly helping the situation

Ill put out an update once the selections are over on how helpful the preferencing info turned out to be.

Help Wanted Apply Within

Help wanted Needed!!

This year my portfolio within the PASS board is “Summit program and speaker management”  Ive been involved with this portfolio for at least the last 4 years.  This year, I’m going to be transitioning into yet a different roll within the committee.  Ill still be heavily involved but,  I’m turning the majority of the day to day decision making over to Lori Edwards (Blog|Twitter)  She was hugely involved last year, and I have no doubt she will work her magic again this year!

Program Committee Changes

This year, there are going to be some changes to the processes in the program committee, Ill detail some of those in a later set of blog posts.  For now, Ive decided to split up the groups of volunteers in the program committee to hopefully enable some of the future process changes.

Help Wanted

For this year we’re going to need help in many areas

Abstract Review Teams (led by Lori Edwards)

• DBA/Cloud/BI/AD/PD

Speaker Review Team (led by Tim Ford)

• This group will review speakers independently of their abstracts

Speaker Enhancement team (Wes Brown & Grant Fritchey)

• This will probably stay a small group and work on updating sample abstracts, selection info, generating info for new speakers etc.

PPT/Abstract Editing review/approval (Led by Tim Martin)

• This group will be working on sessions after they are accepted (lots of new ideas here)

Special Projects (Led by AJ Mendo & Lance Harra)

• This group will be working on finishing the Speaker Evaluation tool, coordinating changes to the Summit online tool as well as a few other projects that are envisioned.

Cutting edge

Its been said that what we do in the Program committee is on the bleeding edge of what PASS does in organizing groups of volunteers at the national level.  That is to say, we need lots of help but, sometimes things dont always work out quite how we (I) had expected.  I say this only to set expectations that its not always a smooth ride but, rarely is it not interesting.

We developed an online survey to help us capture all of the relevant info about everyone who wants to volunteer.  Don’t worry, its not a job app and it shouldn’t be resume quality, we’re primarily looking for general information

http://www.zoomerang.com/Survey/WEB22BSJTXJZEA/

Please consider this a personal invitation from me to join us in making the content at the PASS Summit 2011 the best ever! ]]> http://www.allenkinsel.com/archive/2011/02/pass-needs-you/feed/ 5 http://www.allenkinsel.com/archive/2010/09/please-pass-the-awesomesauce/ http://www.allenkinsel.com/archive/2010/09/please-pass-the-awesomesauce/#comments Fri, 24 Sep 2010 18:17:47 +0000 Allen Kinsel http://www.allenkinsel.com/?p=546 Recently, the 3 of you that read this stream of (un)consciousness may have noticed a lot of posts about PASS and the Board of Directors elections.  I was pleasantly surprised to see the news last Friday that I had indeed been elected to a 2 year term on the PASS board. 

I’d like to start by thanking everyone who voted, even if you chose not to vote for me.  We need more community involvement in all things PASS, and voting is a very important part of that! 

This election was not without its fair share of controversy and while overall it was a difficult process for the community to go through, I think a lot of good can result from it.  I hope that everyone who had an opinion about the “process” stays involved.  Staying involved & interested is the easiest way the community can shape the future of the organization. 

I’m very excited to have the opportunity to serve the SQL Server Community in a larger role than in the past.  As always, if you’ve got ideas feel free to send em to me.  I cant make any promises except that I will read and respond but, Im a fan of stealing borrowing others ideas for PASS and making them happen.

Other recent PASS info

Weve had a literal whirlwind of activity in the program committee leadership in the last month+  So, I thought I’d list some of the stuff thats been happening

Some highlights

• We gathered a large group of volunteers to proofread abstracts before publishing in the program guide
• Also, we hammered out all the details for 3 new session types for the Summit : Chalk talk sessions, Best of sessions, and lightning sessions
• Published a Session preferencing tool to help us build a good schedule (awesome data gathered here!!)
• We built the summit schedule – this is always fun, if you have any complaints, its on me
• We gathered a team of volunteers  to review session powerpoints so I wont be doing them alone on the last day (YAY!) in doing this we updated the review guidelines to be more relevant/current
• I had hoped we would nail down the Microsoft speakers & sessions a little better (earlier) this year but, it seems like we’ve been getting more changes & cancellations than Id have liked.
• We worked on Coordinated with VC’s & pre/postconference speakers to try and setup livemeeting previews of their  sessions —  Marketing & free community education  –thats like Bacon wrapped Bacon Win-Win!
• Lots of discussions with our Summit software vendor about availability of ppt updates, demos, etc during the summit.  Updates soon

Upcoming releases

• The Summit Schedule builder *should* go live on Monday the 27^th  Also,  realize this is an expected date but things occasionally happen so dont scream too much if its a lil late (or someone will let me know their displeasure with my tipping of the due dates)
• Community experts summit session lists – we’ve asked some experts for their opinions about which sessions to attend, I cant wait to see what these lists look like!

Other Interesting Discussions happening

• Whether we’re going to record/stream a session room at the Summit and what we’d do with those recordings
• Whether we should switch back to 2 days of Preconference sessions or stick with 1 day pre and 1 day post
•  Whether we should be providing desktops in the session rooms for speakers (most don’t seem to use them)
•  PASSion award & expanding PASS’s recognition of outstanding volunteers at all levels

So, consider this to be my personal invitation to you to follow my lead and stop procrastinating!!  Go now to the PASS elections site, read about the candidates.  If you want to know something about us, use the forums, and ask.  I know at least 1 candidate that will answer your question.  Once you’ve done all that come back here, Ill still be waiting.  Now, do what I’m going to do:  I’ll be finding the PASS BOD email ballot, then Ill be selecting the link and clicking on “Allen Kinsel” & 2 other candidates then hitting submit!

I’ve never been known to be the subtle type, so I figure no sense in starting now.  If you need a little more subtlety about why I think you should vote for me, look here.  The #1 thing though, is you, PASS Member, you need to vote.  It matters a great deal to our SQL Server community, even if you must vote for someone other than me [I disagree but, understand]..

5. Pass Summit location.  I believe that we can reach more of our membership by moving the location of the annual summit.  I like the idea of a 3 year rotation in Seattle.

4. Transparency.  I plan to continue the push for as much release of information as the community wants.  Particular things I’d like to see: full disclosure of individual BOD votes, more exposure of the Executive Committee “election process”

3. Better Chapter Support.  We need to do a better job at giving our chapter leaders what they need, some of the most frequently requested things on the chapter “needs” list could be completed more easily than many think if I can succeed with item #1 on this list.  I don’t necessarily want to “own” chapter support but, I think I can provide help to this group, especially where it lends itself to my strength in PASS : speaker management.

2. Professionalism.  I want our association to become more professional.  That is to say, to begin offering more than education as the primary benefit to membership.  I think there should be more benefit to being a PASS member than education & networking .

1. Community Involvement.  I want to get our volunteers engaged in as many processes and tasks as possible.  I’ve done what I consider to be a pretty good job at getting as many people involved in the program committee processes as reasonably possible, Id like to  expand that same involvement into all areas of PASS.  I wrote a lengthy reply on the PASS election forum about this subject, let me know what you think.

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.