Allen Kinsel - SQL DBA

SQL Server, PASS, and other data mishaps

Growing the pool of speakers

By Allen Kinsel, 4 months and 18 days ago

Following up to Andy's series about growing the pool of speakers, I thought I would detail an idea we've been kicking around for this years summit.

First some history

In 2009 PASS accepted 585 community abstracts submitted for a total of 113 community sessions slots that were available (including 10 pre/post conference sessions) of those 80 were regular sessions, and 23 were spotlight sessions.  We had 30 speakers give 2 sessions including the 10 pre/post conference sessions.  We normally ask that speakers accepted for a pre/post conference session also present a spotlight session, so that every attendee of the conference gets access to these high caliber speakers.  This left us with 20 regular speakers presenting 2 sessions in 2009.

The big idea

In order to give more speakers a chance to present at the annual summit, were proposing limiting all community speakers to 1 primary session per summit.  There would obviously have to be exceptions for panel sessions and co presenters since we wouldn't want to discourage those types of sessions.  The benefits as I see them are that we'd open up 20 more slots, give or take from year to year, to new speakers thus allowing others in the community an opportunity to present.  The downsides (or risks) as I see them:  We stand to potentially loose coverage if we receive no abstracts on a particular subject that would be a currently chosen speakers second session.  Cost, that is 20 extra comped admissions to the summit.  Pass would need to decide if the value of these extra comped admissions are worth the expense.  What I mean to say is if we spend money on those extra comps, that money couldn't be used on some other priority. 

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PASS Program Update #2

By Allen Kinsel, 4 months and 19 days ago

Here comes High Gear

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

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.

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PASS Value Allocation

By Allen Kinsel, 4 months and 19 days ago

Listening to the SQL community over the years, I thought Id take a second to put a quick thought out about why I believe PASS makes almost every decision it makes as an organization.

As a non-profit, Its all about money value, and its use to support the community.  Almost every decision that is made within the organization has a value cost, whether that value is actual dollars that need to be spent, or if its a volunteers time, nothing is free or limitless.  Just because Microsoft decided that the top tier SQL engine will now cost 58k per processor, doesn't mean they are giving that money away freely to user group organizations.

If you're unhappy with where the organization is allocating its resources, Contact them directly, or probably even better contact all of the board of directors (protip: email format )  let them know you want things to have a different priority, if that fails, they have elections every year, VOTE!

Convincing your boss to pay for your training

By Allen Kinsel, 4 months and 29 days ago

 

Things are tight

It seems like budgets are being cut everywhere, and IT training seems to be one of the first places cut.  In an earlier post I outlined where you could get a lot of valuable training for relatively little cost.  In this post I will explore a few methods that have worked for me over the years to get your boss to say YES to paying for you to refresh your fountain of knowledge.

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Accessing Top Quality Training

By Allen Kinsel, 5 months and 6 days ago

Where did the Training go?

With the economy being what it is, many companies are cutting back on training budgets yet our need for knowledge as database professionals never stops.  Luckily the SQL Server community is one of the liveliest around and there are solutions.

Online

I'd estimate that  almost everyday of the week you can find live webcasts about various subjects in the SQL Server arena, the problem here is that many of these top quality training events aren't well publicized.  I never knew about them until joining Twitter a few years back.  As it turns out, many SQL user groups around the world stream their meetings online via live meeting, there are PASS VC's webcasts, Vendor sponsored webcasts, and the list goes on and on.

Local Events

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