SQL Server, PASS, and other data mishaps
Posts tagged SQLPASS
How deep can you dive?
Mar 24th
Go deep or stay home!
After last years Summit we launched a feedback site http://feedback.sqlpass.org in hopes of gathering all of the feedback about the event in one place. The number one thing people have asked for on that site is for there to be a track of sessions in the 400-500 level range. The problems with the community desire for higher level sessions are twofold, one we dont normally get a huge number of session submissions that are at the 400-500 level. Two, I’ve been told by those who are qualified to present those types of sessions that an hour and fifteen minutes (spotlight) is often not enough time.
Cramped for space
In the past our conference size has dictated the floor-plans at the conference center and we’ve been maxed out at 14 concurrent sessions. This year however, because of anticipated attendee growth, the logistical geniuses at PASS HQ were able to add another session room (I’m looking at you Anika and Craig). With this new room I have options on what to do with the extra session rooms!!
Changes for the Summit 2011
This year we’ll be using the space we gained from the new room addition to have longer deep dive sessions. The current idea is to offer these longer sessions in hopes that they will attract presenters who are qualified to present these deeper dive sessions. Currently, the plan is to have a maximum of 6 deep dive (lvl 400 or 500 only) 3 hour sessions. Because of the way the schedule is laid out, we will run 2 of these sessions concurrently every conference day.
Rules… Yeah there’s always rules
We will accept abstracts for this new session type in the same manner as a regular abstract. That is to say anyone can submit a half day abstract. If you submit an abstract for a 1/2 day session it will count as one of your 4 allowed abstract submissions. The session selection for these sessions will be handled by the regular respective abstract review teams. Even though we are going to allow anyone to submit abstracts for these sessions, it should go without saying that if you don’t have prior experience or reputation for being able to give an extended, strong 400-500 level session it may be best to focus on a regular summit session. What I mean by this is for these particular sessions we will be instructing the review teams to weigh the speakers perceived ability to deliver the session higher than we normally would for a regular session.
Possible Hiccups i.e. Changes
Two things could change with these sessions.
- I am considering making the sessions 4 hours long (roughly 3 regular session slots). If we do that the maximum number of sessions would drop to four. I’m leaning heavily away from this but, if anyone has a strong opinion on this I’ll listen
- Depending on the quantity and quality of the abstracts we receive, we may have less than the maximum sessions shown above (4 or 6)
- Im still considering a single DBA 101 “Accidental DBA” type session for one of these sessions but havent been swayed that there is more interest there than there is in deep dives
PASS Resources Revealed
Mar 17th
What has PASS been up to?
This is where the treasure is!
Ever find yourself with tons of extra time just looking for something to dig through?
yeah, me neither… But, I do make it a point to go out and read through lots of PASS documents regularly. Sure, Some of those documents are not for public consumption but, a large portion of them are available for any PASS Member to view. Almost all of them will require you to be logged in to the PASS site.
A good starting point is the PASS Governance Page <- lots of good stuff hides on this page, Im working on getting this page removed from behind the login wall
PASS BOD Meeting Minutes are posted on the left hand side
The Feb 2011 Minutes are here
- Good discussions in here about Globalization of PASS, especially revolving around events
The Jan 2011 Minutes are here
- This was an in-person meeting and there is a literal ton of info in here. Highlights are globalization, Summit 2011 Planning, Summit 2010 Post mortem, 5 Year plans, Bylaw Changes
PASS Monthly Reports are found in the middle on the left
These are gems that reveal the day to day inner workings of the BOD and HQ
The Feb report should be posted in the next day or 2
The Jan report however, is here
- In here You’ll find things about Chapters, IT Projects, Marketing initiatives, ERC info, Sponsorship Sales, Summit Program, SQLRally, Gloablization, etc
The Dec report is here
- This one contains things like Chapter info, HQ Finance, IT Projects, Marketing, Summit, Rally, 24hop, SQL Saturday,
The budget for PASS is included at the bottom of the governance page
2011 Budget is here
- Wanna know where the money is supposed to be coming from, and where its supposed to be going? this is where to look.
- Side note: Im going to check into where the 2010 audited financials are, they should be available by now.
The SQL Rally has posted all of the planning meeting notes posted here
- There is tons of good stuff in here, its especially interesting to me to watch the minutes back and forth dealing with very familiar problems as what I’ve seen in the Summit program group.
- Wanna know how many attendees are registered so far for the Rally? yup its in there. Wanna know how many are in Precons? yup its in there too
We (PASS Program) started posting meeting minutes near the lower left side of this page
- I have written about these minutes before
- Good information in here about many new changes that are being considered by the Program Committee
- Essentially It says that I’m not getting nearly enough done for the program committee lately. I need to work on that!
- Im including this here because lost of good stuff gets posted here but, for me I can only find it since its in my RSS Reader.
In Summary, PASS releases a ton of information about what its doing. The problem with this is two-fold, one its a ton of information. Two, the information is spread out all over the place and is often difficult to find on the site using conventional browsing methods so I hope this helps
PASS Bylaw Changes
Feb 24th
Cha-Cha-Changes….
We published a set of changes to the PASS bylaws yesterday. Seeing as how Bill Graziano already wrote everything possible and more about these changes and what they mean to the organization I figure Ill save the bits and say that he does a good job summing everything up nicely. Since a lot of this was done before I joined the board, I wasnt involved in some of the discussion about these changes but, I will say that the discussions I was involved with were very detailed and often labored on the finer points of making sausage. Needless to say, I agree 100% with these changes and think they make sense.
Whats next?
Ive got far too many PASS irons in the fire currently so I know I wont have time to do the necessary background work to push for a few additional changes but, at some point I’d like to see PASS go to a fully elected Executive committee. Id like to see the executives be elected board members serving regular two year terms who are then elected by the board for the executive positions. As part of that I also think Id also like to see a general election of our President. How better for the membership to guide the organization than to have a direct say about who should be providing the overall direction.
Last Chance to volunteer for the 2011 PASS Summit Program Committee
Feb 21st
Today is the last chance if you wanted to lend a hand to the 2011 PASS Program Committee. I wrote about all the gory details two weeks ago here. If your interested please get the survey filled out today before 9PM PST. You might as well do it now though, no sense in putting it off until the last minute!
PASS Summit Speaker Agreement revisited
Feb 17th
Speaker Agreements… Legal, Necessary, but awfully sticky
Every year PASS asks the speakers at the Summit to agree to some relatively simple terms and conditions. I don’t consider them to be anything overly involved or overbearing. For those who haven’t seen them they basically establish that a speaker owns the content they are going to present, that the speakers act as professional as possible, don’t market their products, or their companies products, and allow PASS to record the sessions.
This year the hangup for me is related to that last tiny bit. For regular conference speakers asking them to allow recording of their 1 hour session isn’t a big ask. However where Im reevaluating what we’ve done in the past is related to the all day preconference sessions.
Last year PASS recorded the preconference sessions and offered them for sale to PASS members. Just like the preconference sessions where the speakers get a portion of the admission fee, the contract called for the speakers to get a portion of the sales from the DVD’s. At the time this seemed like a fair way to do things and I still believe that the revenue share is fair.
Drawbacks
Ive heard from several different people that if these preconference sessions are recorded that it may become more and more difficult for PASS to attract the top tier SQL Server speakers to do precons. I can appreciate the position of some speakers on this, if they are giving their best content and we are distributing it digitally for what amounts to a few hundred dollars they run the very real risk of loosing actual sales of training material, or potential clients.
Benefits
On the other side, I need to weigh the risks of potentially shrinking the pool of available speakers with the benefits to the community of being able to offer these recordings. The other benefit is of course the money PASS makes from these DVD sales. To be perfectly clear, the amount of money PASS makes off of DVD sales in general is merely a pittance in the scheme of things. Having the DVD’s available and leveraging the content however is very valuable to our members and something that I think is important enough to at least explore what can be done to hopefully find a good balance
Decisions, Decisions, Decisions
The way I’m leaning on this is to leave things the way they are and see if we see an overall drop in the quality or quantity of our preconference presenters in 2011 onward. I have however thought a lot about possible ways we could create a workable model, where we allowed certain preconference speakers to opt out of recording. This could get really messy administratively, and cause some confusion/anger with attendees not knowing which sessions will be included in the recordings. The other alternative is to just stop recording preconference sessions totally, although I dont think this is a good option.
I guess what I’m trying to do here is expose an internal debate that Ive been having with myself. Ive found that often if I spend the time to write something out it helps me organize my thoughts. As a bonus occasionally, I get great comments/ideas from the 2 of you who read this.
