Allen Kinsel - SQL DBA

SQL Server, PASS, and other data mishaps

5 things I want to change while on the PASS Board

By Allen Kinsel, 10 days ago

I've been doing a lot of thinking over the last 3 or 4 months about «why» I wanted to run for the PASS Board.  I think I have finally come to the point where I can distill it down into a list of 5 specific things that I will work to make happen while on the PASS Board

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»

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What I'm doing to evolve the Program Committee next

By Allen Kinsel, 14 days ago

Since I wrote about how we've been evolving the Program Committee in the past, I thought Id write about some of the ways we're trying to change the Program Committee in the future.

But first, I want to clarify something that someone else pointed out to me.  When I write about the Program Committee, I always say «We».  When working on something as complex as the program for the summit, it is necessary to work as a very cohesive team.  This leadership team I am a part of is who makes all of the tactical decisions about the way we manage the education at the Summit.  I always refer to «us» as «we» because I cannot (and will not) take all of the credit for putting the Summit education together.  Without the team, the committee wouldn't be half of what it is.  While I have been the overarching member of this team (the 1 they cant seem to run off) , the others are always there when we have work to do.  Well, except Jeremiah, He's got this new gig where he's a turtle hunter or something....

We've been working hard over the last 2 years to bring some exciting (well, exciting to me anyway) changes to the program committee.   A couple of these changes you should start seeing official announcements about any day now but, I decided to be a tease...

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PASS Summit Community Choice Session results revealed

By Allen Kinsel, 25 days ago

This year the Program Committee decided to try something different to increase community involvement with the abstract selection process for the annual summit.  We decided to allow any registered PASS members to vote on the final  4 community sessions to be presented at the Summit in Seattle this year.  With our historically low turnout in surveys of our membership, I turned to the team at PASSHQ with a simple question about whether or not we could use the same voting tool that is in place for the upcoming Board of Directors election.  Considering our surveys have traditionally resulted in 300-500 results , at the time I put a personal goal on the survey response rate of 500, anything greater than that and I would consider the time and energy It took to put it together a win, anything less and well, we wouldn't be doing any more exploring in the use of public voting for Summit Sessions.

I'm VERY pleased to say that by all indications, the voting process was a great success, sure we will always aim to do better but, for now, having over 1100 people vote on what they want to see at the Summit is a huge win for PASS as an organization.  In the App Dev group, the winner was declared by 2 votes.   2 votes out of 600 is pretty outstanding, if you didn't take the time and vote, you could have been the vote that swayed the result!!  Don't miss your chance next time!!  The winning sessions can be found here. 

I want to take the time to thank each and every member of the awesome PASS Community who voted.  As well as Jeremiah Peschka (Twitter|Blog) & Lori Edwards (Twitter|Blog) for dealing with my crazy ideas on putting this together, and keeping me in check.  Andy Warren (Twitter|Blog) for helping me get the voting tool he built for pass working for this use.  Id also like to give a huge thanks to Hannes, Wesley and Elena at PASSHQ for helping bring all of this to PASS (pun intended)

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Dont forget to vote for the PASS Summit Community Choice sessions

By Allen Kinsel, 29 days ago

Just do it!If you are a PASS member, on August 3rd you should have gotten an email inviting you to vote on four of the sessions to be presented at the 2010 PASS Summit. 

There are some great sessions up for selection, You can review them here.

If you havent voted yet, be on the lookout today for a reminder. You should get an email with personal links to vote, it will only take a few minutes of your time and your opinion counts!

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Community Choice Sessions at the PASS Summit 2010

By Allen Kinsel, 1 month and 20 days ago

Its Still Alive

Yes this blog is still alive!  I recently had some hard decisions to make with regards to what I needed to drop in order to get at least 3 hours of sleep in a night.  And unfortunately for the 3 of you that read my blog, it was the blog that lost that battle.  I should be getting back in the habit of writing now that the biggest crunch time for the program committee at the PASS Summit is over.

What happened?

Short answer : The PASS Summit speaker selection process. (Program Committee Manager role)

Longer yet short answer: The PASS Summit program committee leadership position is a very involved volunteer position, taking more hours of my time than I can count (Just ask my wife!!).  For the last month the 4 amigo's (Jeremiah Peschka (Blog|Twitter) , Lori Edwards(Blog|Twitter), Elena Sebastiano (PASSHQ), and myself) have been working tirelessly towards the first goal of announcing the community sessions.  With that out of the way the PASS work doesn't stop, we get to do other «fun» stuff.  Innovate with PASS if you like, because that's what we're going to try to do!!   

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  • Allowing effective developer access to SQL Server:
    • Karen Lopez: Another approach I use: Be generous in granting privileges in the DEV database (but still lock down the server environment), but don't let Devs promote any DDL to the next environment. Only the DBAs can deliver/apply DDL to the next (usually QA) environment. So if the devs modify their tables/columns without the architect...
  • PASS Summit Community Choice Session results revealed:
    • Andy Warren: Allen, nice job on this. Great to see the community get a chance to participate in building the program and share in the excitement of the upcoming Summit. Andy
  • Community Choice Sessions at the PASS Summit 2010:
    • Allen Kinsel: Thanks, We hope that this will be a good test of community selections, and hope to expand it a bit in the future
    • robert cook: glad you decided to keep blogging and gracias to you and your amigos for giving an opportunity to the sql community for direct involvement with session choices
  • Sql Server and SSPI handshake failed error hell:
    • Robert L Davis: I agree about the reboot. That's why I check SPN's before DC/Kerberos errors. An SPN can be fixed without rebooting, but if the issue is DC connection and no one can log in to the SQL Server, you're down anyway so a reboot shouldn't be out of the question. The problem with having a...
    • Allen Kinsel: I guess should have worded that a little differently, in my experience in a lot of environments kerberos isnt used since its not configured, so it always falls back to NTLM, with only NTLM and no Kerberos in the result list, its usually safe to say that SPN's arent the issue. I...

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