SQL Server, PASS, and other data mishaps
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PASS Summit 2011 Preconference meta details
Apr 26th
PASS Summit 2011 Preconference Session selection info
The other day I detailed as much info as I could about changes to this years session selection processes. The call for ALL Sessions at the Summit is officially open until May 5, 2011 that means we’re accepting abstracts for regular sessions as well as for the Preconference sessions.
Competition
For many of the more experienced speakers in the SQL Community the opportunity to give a full day highly technical session at the summit is attractive. Not only do they get to showcase their technical skills, they also get to showcase their own unique training style. Additionally, the pay isnt half bad either. Of course, most of these speakers will tell you that based on the amount of time needed to generate an all day session the pay is actually half bad, not half good 
Requirements Change
For the past 3 years we’ve had a set of requirements in place that qualify speakers to present a preconference session, those requirements are looked at every year by a set of volunteers to make sure they are still valid and usually only minor adjustments are made. This year however I made a larger adjustment. In order to clarify the requirement that giving a precon requires you to also give a spotlight session, I added #11 to the list of criteria you should meet to deliver a precon. Since that is a gimme criteria, I bumped the total criteria needed to meet from 4 to 5
Improvements
After you’ve done your thing and submitted a terrific abstract for a precon session its up to us to try and be fair in the selection process for these sessions. Over the last few years we have tried many things to both open up the selection process and to open up submissions to a competitive process. There have been many ups and downs in this iterative process. Sometimes we do well, and sometimes… not so much. The point is that we’re always trying to produce a better process. I’m excited that hopefully this year we’ve ironed out a few more of the wrinkles we exposed last year.
Process Part one
After the Call for abstracts closes we are going to release a “preferencer” tool that we’re going to use to allow PASS Members the ability to communicate what their favorite sessions are. We’re going to use the data gathered from this tool to assist us in making the session selections. Additionally, we are tentatively going to use this same info to prepopulate your attendee schedule builder after the selections are made. I’d like to think we’ll be able to use the data from this tool in a 1-1 fashion where we take the top X precons per track and build the session schedule that way. In reality though, I expect we’re going to find several overlapping session subjects at the top of the list. I’m thinking things like 3 “indexing sessions” in the top 5 for the DBA track, or 2 Sessions from a single speaker for instance. We’ll need a a team to help make those decisions.
Introducing the team that will make the decisions
K. Brian Kelley Author/Blogger/Speaker Extraordinaire – A man with his credentials doesn’t need an intro.
Lori Edwards PASS Junkie, blogger, and all around pain in the … – I kid, Lori has been picking up all of the slack in the PASS Program committee, as well as participating in the PASS ERC
Me - Yeah, Im going to have a seat at the table this year. I havent participated in an actual abstract selection team in a couple of years so this should be a fun diversion.
In building this small team, I’m expecting that there wont be a heck of a lot of “work” to do. I’m really expecting that we will be able to rely mainly on the members preferences but I wanted to have insurance in case there was more to the selection than simply relying on preferences.
The multiple similar session problem
In the past one dilemma that Ive been looking for creative ways to solve goes something like this.
“If I specialize in Architecture for SQL Flux capacitors and Veteran speaker XYZ always presents a precon on SQL flux capacitor architecture how will I ever get chosen for a precon”
This year, I’m hoping that with the membership showing which sessions they’d like to see if a particular topic has an apparent huge interest, we can potentially give 2 precons on a similar topic (1 on Monday, and 1 on Tuesday). The way the tool is being built, we should get good data about which precons a group of people would most like to see. I dont know if this will work or not but, its a small enough risk that I cant see why we wouldnt at least try to see what the data tells us.
After thinking about the data this tool should generate, I wonder where I can find a good data analysis person to volunteer and tell me what it means. Maybe I should ask someone in the community for help with that before mucking it up myself *hint*
PASS 2011 Summit Abstract Submissions
Apr 11th
This week we’ll be launching the call for abstracts for the 2011 PASS Summit.
I thought it would be good to go over the basics for this year especially since some things are changing from years past. Many of the changes are minor, some are behind the scenes so to speak, and a small amount are larger and more public facing.
A New Site
PASS HQ and the Program Committee team has been diligently working to bring the summit speaker/education management programming inhouse. With this effort comes a new site for abstract submissions. We hope this new site will make the abstract submission process easier and more relevant to collecting the info PASS needs in order to facilitate session selections.
A New Process
One of the largest changes on the backend process this year is going to be seperating the speaker review from the abstract review piece of the selection process. Essentially, this year we have two seperate teams to do each task. This came about from the comments of previous review team members as well as the need to offload some of the work the call generates for the larger teams. Im hopeful that this change will help bring a little more stability to the scores each team gives an abstract as well as cut some of the subjectiveness (likely only a tiny bit)
A New Session Type
I wrote previously about having 1/2 day sessions at the Summit and they are still planned. Now you know where to bring your best and brightest content! In case your thinking what it would be like to have your 1/2 day session recorded, Ive got great news. Ive got a tentative compromise devised. This year we will be distributing two seperate DVD sets, 1 for attendees of the Summit which will have every session. Another for non attendees that will have all of the regular sessions excluding the deep dive 1/2 day sessions.
Spotlight Sessions & Invitations
Thanks to some great feedback last year The formula that we used for spotlight selections was adjusted and looks like this: We will invite all speakers who recieved an overall evaluation of 4.5 or greater and had at least 15 attendees and 15 completed evaluations. We will be excluding Lightning talks, Chalk Talks, and Microsoft speakers. This year that leaves us with a whopping total of 27 people getting spotlight invites. These speakers are truly spectacular, and they deserve the extra recognition/time for their sessions. All abstracts submitted as spotlight will be considered not only for a spotlight slot but, will also be considered for a regular session if they dont get picked for a spotlight session.
Preconference Changes
I would be remiss to not mention this here but, some different things (changes!!) are planned for this year, as soon as I get a chance to finalize them a bit more I will write about it, hopefully in the next few days to a week.
Abstract Limits
We have decided to change the limits on abstract submissions a bit for this year. We will be encouraging you to submit up to 4 total : Regular, 1/2 day and Spotlight (if invited) Sessions. In addition if you meet the qualifications you can submit up to 2 Preconference sessions. On top of this each person can submit 1 panel (discussion type) session for consideration. In order to do this each speaker in your panel will need to have speaker details entered so we can rate the session properly. This in itself is a pretty good sized change so get creative and see what the selection teams think!
But when
I can hear you asking from here… “All of thats great but, when will the call for abstracts for the 2011 PASS Summit open?” I have great news.
The call will open this Wednesday! 4/13/2011
look for more info coming officially from PASS
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
Why I will vote to move the PASS Summit in 2013
Feb 4th
Oh no, not again!
Seems not a day goes by that I dont have a discussion somewhere with someone about the Summit Location in 2013 or 2014, or even occasionally about the location this year and next.
If you need background, a couple of my PASS BOD Cohorts have already weighed in on the various ways they are thinking about this decision Here, Here, or Here, additionally Grant Fritchey and Andy Leonard both weighed in as well. Much additional conversation seems to happen regularly on twitter as well…
Ive been a member of the PASS Board for exactly 35 days and so far I’ve really only been shocked by one thing. Its almost beyond baffling to me that the #1 issue the SQL community wants the Board (and PASS by proxy) to solve is the location of the 2013 Summit. Honestly, I can think of at least 10 things that are more important for PASS to be focusing energy on than where the Summit is going to be located. But, alas that clearly illustrates that it is a VERY important issue to many community members
I want to be perfectly clear
The location of the 2013 Summit has not been decided yet
The decision is expected to be made in the March BOD meeting.
This post wont go into all the 1000′s of ways a person could look at this issue, and trust me there’s more than 1000. Instead I’m going to tip my hand, and skip all the mumbo jumbo because I believe everyone on the Board already knows how I feel about this issue. So the only possible people who dont know are the 2 of you reading this.
I will vote to move the Summit out of Seattle in 2013
Now that the beans have been spilled (no big shocker there I hope) id like to at least outline how I’ve come to this decision so hopefully you can agree or disagree with me but, at least respect that the reasons are my own, and that I believe they represent whats best for the organization as a whole.
First a tiny caveat – yes I’m putting the fine print first, its important — If by some freakish accident there is no conference space available (within a reasonable $$ limit) in the finalist cities then I may be forced to do something different. — that fine print is merely the DBA in me practicing for every possible outcome in a disaster. Even though I dont plan for it, I cant ignore it might happen.
- A large portion of the community feels so strongly about this that many feel almost disenfranchised by the very group that they have been an integral part of.
- PASS’s #1 Mission is to serve the community, how better than to occasionally have THE SQL Server Event of the year in a location thats more accessible to different parts of the country
- Microsoft has pledged their Support for the conference no matter its location
- To the average “newish” DBA the difference between having 150 MS people at the Summit and 400 is nearly nonexistent
- We’ve moved The Summit before, this isn’t unprecedented, PASSHQ is easily able to do this, the procedures should already exist.
- My portfolio (Summit Program) would likely be the most effected by this change. Maybe marketing would have a large impact as well but, as far as BOD work, Program would likely take the brunt of a move.
- If the majority of the Microsoft presence is traveling, they wont have their homes to sneak off to at 5:00. so they would presumably be more likely to continue to interact after Summit session hours
- Selfish Reason — Moving the summit would force Microsoft to lock in their speaker lineup earlier which would make my job coordinating that easier
Now for the limits of my support
- I think the Summit should be in Seattle more often than not, say 2 out of every 3 years or 3 out of every 4. Based almost entirely on SQL release cycles
- Until it proves detrimental to the organization — I am a risk taker by nature, as evidenced by living on an island in the path of hurricanes (site of the worst US natural disaster ever) but, everyone has their limits
Id like to take a second and ask you Mr. or Mrs. SQL Community Member reading this to do me a personal favor. Find one of those “other” really important things you wish PASS was better at, something we should be focusing on, and leave a comment here or send me a message in email or twitter about it and sling out some ideas, or better yet solutions!! Approach that with the same level of enthusiasm as the Summit location and we should be able to get some real movement on other things that are important to the community. If I get any responses to those “other things” Ill build them all into a a future blog post and make sure they get some attention.
I wrote the above mainly so the community that elected me to lead would know that I’ve spent a long time listening and trying to come up with a decision on this. Now with this decision behind me, I can move on to worrying about other PASS (Community) business without the community wondering if I’ve been paying attention.
Reflections of a Board Meeting
Jan 26th
Ive officially been on the Job as a Director for PASS less than a month and already I’ve had the chance to participate in 2 in person Board meetings. 1 at the summit (non-voting) and 1 this past week in Dallas. Ill be the first to admit, I didnt really know what to expect going in but, I had some ideas.
Going in to the 2 day meeting last week I figured there would be some good conversations, a bit of brainstorming, a fair amount of arguing, and at least touch of indecision. What I found was roughly what I expected in that regard.
The Specifics of the actual meeting were by in large important but boring for the casual observer, so I wont be spending countless bytes that you wont want to read rehashing everything. After the meeting minutes are published (2 weeks im told) I may revisit this post with thoughts but until then I figure I can wait a few months to rock the boat on details that werent overly “interesting” to the community at large.
Things I learned at last weeks Board Meeting
- When you have an Ipad in the meeting room, expect plenty of offhanded comments
- We’re doing a whole bunch of really good things in a piss poor less than optimal way
- The SQLRockstar who brought bacon to breakfast on the BOD wont eat it as he’s a Bacon Snob
- That a person can be a Bacon snob
- The ability to give a backhanded compliment is an art form best demonstrated during meetings
- Takeout Mexican food consumed in a hotel lobby will get strange looks
- Coups have been attempted (successfully??) in some user groups
- Getting 11 people to agree to a place for dinner is sometimes harder than getting them to agree about PASS Direction
What I was surprised the most by wasnt the funny quips, or the amount of good discussions, nor was it the ability of the board to identify problems. Nope, I was totally expecting to find that the board really does “get it”, and for the most part on whole I think they(we) do. What I was surprised the most by was the fact the hotel we were meeting at was channeling its inner Bush Garden:
no SQLKaraoke to be found but, Serious business instead
