Introduction

Andy Waren (Blog | @sqlAndy), Jack Corbett (Blog | @unclebiguns), and Kendall Van Dyke (Blog | @SQLDBA) have been busy. They're working on SQLRally - a regional PASS event scheduled for May 2011 in Orlando. Andy does a good job explaining the thinking behind the event in his 31 Aug 2010 post: Positioning SQLRally in the PASS Event Universe.

Pre-Cons

Andy's 1 Sep 2010 post on the topic (SQLRally Pre-Con Selection Process – Draft for Comment) includes a draft document outlining a proposal for the pre-conference selection process. I see improvements over the current PASS Summit pre-/post-conference selection process (which I blogged about here). There's even community engagement in the mix.

The Big (Medium) Deal

I think Kendall summed it up well in this tweet:

Andy and the crew also did a good job with this table:

SQLRally is positioned as a regional event. I think regional SQL Server events is a market that's currently underserved and look forward to PASS's offering. Given the SQL Server Community talent behind this event, I'm sure it will be awesome!

:{> Andy

Introduction

The PASS Board presents the following candidates for the 2010 Election:

• Allen Kinsel [My original interview | PASS Elections Portal]
• Andy Warren [My original interview | PASS Elections Portal]
• Douglas McDowell [My original interview | PASS Elections Portal]
• Geoff Hiten [My original interview | PASS Elections Portal]
• Mark Ginnebaugh [My original interview | PASS Elections Portal]

The links above are interviews I conducted with the candidates earlier and to the candidates individual pages at the PASS Elections portal.

I asked a single follow-up question to each candidate: "If elected, what will you change (if anything) about the current Elections process?"

Andy Warren's Response

First, I think we need to convene a committee with a range of voices – some from the most recent NomCom, previous board members, previous excluded candidates, and a variety of people from the community. I believe the first thing to decide is whether or to what degree to filter candidates. I believe some filtering is appropriate and we need to set levels for that, but in general I am in favor of a light filter that then gives the community the right to vet and decide on the final nominees. I also think there would be a lot of value in putting in an alternate path to the slate; a community nominee chosen based on the highest number of write in votes received. That would give the community a way to totally bypass the NomCom to get their candidate on the slate, and then the community could vet the slate and vote. That’s a really quick overview of my ideas, but in the end we need a process that is clear, consistent, and trusted by our members. I think we can get there, and I think we should get it done this year.

Introduction

I had an opportunity to meet with members of both the PASS Board of Directors and Nominations Committee this past weekend at SQL Saturday #51. You'll never believe what we talked about...

The PASS Board Elections 2010

Yep, you guessed it. We talked about the election process. What follows is what I gleaned from those conversations, followed by opinion and conjecture on my part. 

The NomCom

The Nominations Committee (NomCom) was asked to do a difficult job: Vet the applicants for the Board of Directors 2010 elections. At the interview phase NomCom members were given this ranking sheet:

The results, aggregated across NomCom members by candidate:

The overall ranking and NomCom votes for each candidate were (from this page):

Scores:

The Board

The PASS Board of Directors then voted 7-5-2 to accept the slate as returned from the NomCom (from this page):

The Board came together on Monday to discuss the slate with the Committee before voting to approve it (7 yes, 5 no, 2 abstentions).

Things I Noticed Because My Head Works This Way

All kinds of people run for the PASS Board and I think that's awesome.

One Unfair Categorization

They can be unfairly categorized in several ways. One way in which I choose to unfairly categorize them is:

• Those with CxO experience - to whom I refer as CEOs
• Those without CxO experience - to whom I refer as Community People

So I added a column to unfairly categorize the interviewees thus:

I can hear you thinking "What are you trying to say Andy?" I'm so glad you asked! First, relax. We haven't reached the conjecture part yet. I'm trying to say a pattern emerges if you look at the ranking from top to bottom, and that pattern is people with CxO-level experience scored better.

What does this mean? I discuss that later in this post.

Do the People Matter?

From my conversations this weekend, I can tell you members of the PASS Board and NomCom are defensive about their decision. They stood on principle. They've made improvements to their process. They were way more transparent than they've ever been.

In fact, I'll take a moment here to chide us - the SQL Server Community at large - for largely ignoring the hundreds of hours of work the PASS Board and Headquarters invested in created the PASS Board Elections Portal. There was (and is) a ton of information on the site, and it's good information. Kudos to the PASS Board and HQ for publishing this information. I asked PASS HQ for information of page views and they responded:

Official 2010 PASS Elections Procedure – Overview – 246 downloads
2010 PASS Nomination Application – 210 downloads
2010 PASS Elections Ranking template (Interviews) – 224 downloads
2010 PASS Elections Ranking template (Nominations) – 63 downloads

From this it's easy to tell a relative handful of us even visited the site. One can argue this is the first year for the site and, in years to come, the numbers will improve. That's plausible. But overall, these are pretty dismal numbers for the amount of work PASS put in. Bad us.

The NomCom submitted a recommendation that the PASS Board ratified (7-5-2). Of the seven candidates who entered interviews, five remain. The two eliminated were Jack Corbett (Blog | Twitter) and Steve Jones (Blog | Twitter). Why all the hoopla over Steve Jones?

The Opinion and Conjecture Part

Did the NomCom do Their Job?

Yep. They did what they were told to do.

That said, I disagree with what the NomCom was told to do. I think the NomCom was told "Go out and find us a spouse for the next 50 years" and what the Community expected was for the NomCom to set up a few blind dates (that's not original, but for the life of me I can't recall who said something like that to me). If you're bashing the NomCom, I'd ask you to stop.

You could argue that they did their job with the same zeal as the people who shrink-wrap CDs and DVDs. But understand they were told to protect us from another marketing executive. This isn't a complaint about the NomCom - it's constructive criticism. I believe members of the NomCom know the difference.

Did the Board do Their Job?

I see the Board's job as promoting the long-term interests of the PASS Community. I think members of the Board would agree with me on that. I think the seven people who voted for this slate as it stands feel that they were doing just that. But I disagree, for reasons that will become clearer as this post progresses. I think the five who voted against this slate as it stands have a much clearer vision of the impact and importance of Community.

Process vs. Execution

Many of you know I've been managing developer teams for a while now. It was a transition for me and I've recorded some of the lessons learned here on this blog. One of the things I've learned is that there are a couple basic categories for failure: process and execution. A failure of process means I've missed something in my thinking about how things really work. A failure of execution means I know how things should work but I didn't do it that way for some reason. I hope that makes sense. Another way to look at it is:

• "I don't know the right thing to do." - This is a process failure.
• "I didn't do the right thing I know to do." - This is an execution failure.

When my strongest defense is "I followed my process" you do not know where I failed. All you know is that I know I failed. "We followed our process" then becomes a logical-sounding defense, when it's merely an excuse. Allow me to demonstrate:

I left Farmville Virginia at 4:00 AM EDT Friday morning heading to SQL Saturday #51 in Nashville Tennessee. I thought about where I was going the night before, printed some basic instructions, pre-programmed a few addresses into my Garmin, and then drove roughly 550 miles in about 9 hours... this was my process. If I'd ended up in New York City instead of Nashville I could offer the excuse that I followed a process, but you would see right through that excuse, wouldn't you? You'd say things like "That's weak Andy". If you had a vested interest in meeting me in Nashville and I called emailed you from New York City to tell you I wasn't in Nashville and that I was, in fact, even further from Nashville than I was at the beginning of following my process, you would be understandably put out.

And you wouldn't care so much that I followed my process. My point: We don't elect processes for the PASS Board. Hiding behind the Process Excuse is not a step towards the healing that needs to happen.

It Shouldn't Be About One Person

Since the beginning of the PASS Board 2010 Nominee Application process, four people have been eliminated from the slate. I could make strong arguments for voting for any of them. But I don't get that opportunity. I also don't get the opportunity to vote for them. Worse still, I've been denied that last opportunity.

The person this centers on is Steve Jones. Why? Well, Steve sends an email every weekday morning to over a million SQL Server database professionals. He's been sending that email for years. Contrast Steve's "touch" with PASS membership and a quick check of the math reveals Steve daily reaches a community that is two orders of magnitude (exotic math here, apologies) larger than PASS' membership. Add to that fact that approximately 2,500 PASS members attend the PASS Summit each year, and (I'll be generous) roughly 1,000 participate in voting for members of the PASS Board. 1,000,000 is actually three orders of magnitude bigger than what most would consider PASS' active members.

All the PASS Board and NomCom needs to do is convince the other 999,000 people in Steve's reach that, while he may be qualified to send them (opt-in) email every weekday about SQL Server, he isn't qualified for a seat at the table of the largest SQL Server association on the planet. Good luck with that.

Perhaps this shouldn't be about one person. Perhaps it should be about Steve and Jack. Or Markus, Jack, Denny, and Steve. Or all nine. Or just about Andy, Allen, Douglas, Mark, and Geoff. We'll get there, I'm sure. But right now it is about one person: Steve Jones. And it's about Steve for good reason - he's Steve (insert emphatic adjective here) Jones! This isn't hard to figure out. And it reminds me of a lesson from Donald Trump. Donald was bankrupt and yet he needed a large sum of money to make the insurance payment on his yacht. He went to the bank and, to everyone's surprise, obtained a loan for $250,000. Reporters were stunned and asked him how he talked the bank into the loan. Donald's response (paraphrased) was "If you owe the bank a million dollars you're in trouble. If you owe the bank a billion dollars, the bank's in trouble." That's the impact of three orders of magnitude in action.

Fair or not, this is about the PASS Board rejecting Steve Jones' candidacy for the PASS Board of Directors in 2010.

Embarrassing Steve

In my conversations this weekend members of the NomCom and the PASS Board expressed noble concerns about embarrassing Steve by revealing too much information about why they made the decisions they made. Two points about this sentiment:

1. It's misplaced.
2. It's too late.

Why misplaced? Part of the reason this is about Steve (see above) is because Steve is wildly popular. The Board and NomCom really risk embarrassing themselves - and not Steve - by revealing why they do not feel he's a good candidate for the slate. If you examine the categories used to judge Steve and the other candidate applicants during the interview process, you see PASS' vision for ideal candidates. If you look at the NomCom's aggregate ratings for Steve, you see his low scores are volunteering inside PASS (2.00), volunteering outside PASS (2.17), and fit (2.17). The emphasis on Volunteering is a process error that should have been corrected during execution. The word "volunteering" should be replaced with the word "impact" and one metric used to determine Impact to the SQL Server PASS Community should be volunteered hours. Another metric to consider is compensated hours that impact the PASS Community. Some people actually work in Community positions. The fact that those people are "just doing their jobs" should not reduce recognition for community impact, in my opinion. Especially not for a seat at the table of an organization that has seated Directors from sponsoring corporations.

I know Steve. I believe he would be disruptive. I think he would challenge the status quo and defend the SQL Server Community with every ounce of his being. I believe he would start his two years of service on the Board more stubborn and obstinate than he would end it. Like every Board of Director member that's taken time to share their experience, Steve would evolve. For some, that's a problem. They cannot tolerate the disruptive-ness. I believe Steve was deemed "unFit" for the Board for this reason.

For me, those are the very reasons I want him on the Board. I want change. If it has to be disruptive to come to PASS, so be it. I want more transparency. More than that, I want the Board's default response to anything new to be "Let's get this published." A Board member asked me this weekend "Andy, how will we be able to tell we're transparent enough?" My response: "When someone complains that you're putting out too much information, that's how."

Why too late? PASS needs a time machine to fix this. The damage is done. I know - for a fact - the Board has recently reversed and overridden decisions they deemed incorrect. Even decisions where the preconceived process was in place and followed to the letter. Yet in this instance they have made a stand on this and, by all appearances, are willing to die on this hill. Even if the Board reversed this decision, I seriously doubt Steve would wish to run under these conditions. Making a change now would just tick off more people. It's too late now.

Conclusion

The PASS Board has communicated "we don't want you" to a number of potential future candidates. I'm one of them - there are others. And we're all asking the same question: "If Steve Jones isn't qualified, am I?" It's difficult to watch and listen to this conversation. Believe it or not, it's difficult to participate in it because the disappointment is palpable. Steve would have been a great candidate and Board member. Everyone seems to get that except the Board.

For a while, PASS positioned itself as The SQL Server Community. There was real effort to market PASS as more than just a conference; sincere work was put into reaching into local and regional communities. This pretty much undoes a lot of that. Steve is a SQL Server Community Champion. He doesn't need a title or a seat at any table to warrant that recognition. We - the SQL Server Community - get it. The PASS Board indicates (by this vote and subsequent defending decisions) that it does not. And by not recognizing this blindingly obvious fact, PASS is marginalized into a corner of the SQL Server Community en masse. This episode has illuminated a differentiator between a "them" and an "us". That's sad.

I believe the PASS Board shot itself in the foot - with a high-powered sniper rifle.

What's Next?

The community is grieving. We're going through the steps of the grief cycle like they're a SQL Server deployment checklist. We're moving through denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Can the PASS Board help? I believe the window for PASS Board remedies is either rapidly closing or has passed. I could be surprisingly mistaken, but I firmly believe anything that could actually fix this will not be accepted by this Board.

The problem with that statement is that our ability to influence the makeup of this Board is precisely the issue.

As a community, we've been told we're wrong about who should be on the Board (by the Board) and we have no recourse other than to choose to elect people from the subset the Board thinks should be on the Board. Right up there with Henry Ford's "you can have any color you want as long as it's black"; the PASS Board has communicated "You, the electorate, can vote for anyone you want - so long as we approve them first."

Conjecture++ 

While it will take some time, the SQL Server Community and PASS itself will recover. We'll all make our way through the grief cycle. We'll move on. It'll get better. But some corners have been turned, some bridges destroyed. Steve will likely never sit on the PASS Board. Neither will I. Neither will others more qualified than me.

I anticipate even more community-grown events and opportunities to learn more about SQL Server coming from the crowd. I look for more SQLCruise-type events, and more initiatives like SQL Saturday (which was started in the crowd by Andy Warren, Steve Jones, and Brian Knight - and then given to PASS), and maybe even more national and international conferences like SQL Connections, SQLBits, and the PASS Summit 2010. I think we'll see more crowd-sourcing and tribal evolution.

I like PASS and I believe PASS will continue to grow as an organization - and I will remain engaged and continue to decry decisions that I believe negatively impact PASS and its growth.

Andy

Another Thought

In his latest book Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age, Clay Shirky (Twitter) makes the following statement about social systems: "Social systems have two modes -- dynamic and dead." Static isn't anywhere in that list. Well it is, it's just spelled d-e-a-d.

Folks in other communities want what we have in the SQL Server community. There are lots of reasons why the SQL Server community is vibrant, but a few core principles are at work here. Our community is a network of people who recognize we don't know everything, and at the same time recognize each of us knows something. It's the perfect setup for a social system, and PASS is a social system that represents a subset of the SQL Server Community. One thing I really admire about the SQL Server community is our ability to self-heal. I attribute this to the courage and strength of the leaders in our midst. A good recent example of this is found in the comment by Louis Davidson here.

There's an old psychology joke: How many psychologists does it take to change a light bulb? Answer: Only one, but the light bulb has to want to change. Does PASS really want to change and be more transparent? I ask this because of recent decisions made by PASS. Regarding dropping Steve Jones from the PASS Board of Directors slate, I know a lot of people are lining up to applaud PASS on sticking to its guns and holding to its process. In one sense this is to be admired. I'd like to offer another sense: Do any of us expect PASS to get it right the first time every time? What happens when they get it wrong? Isn't the correct answer to this question: "Fix it - quickly"? Why doesn't PASS do this? Is there no place or time for PASS to act quickly and decisively?

If this ain't it, then when?

I believe I have the answer to my question. PASS doesn't really want to be more transparent. The status quo is easy and familiar. If you think about this from the perspective of game theory, there's really no upside if PASS becomes more transparent. It's not like PASS members or volunteers are going to defect to NOSS (Next Organization for SQL Server) or anything - PASS is the only game in town.

Andy

A quick reminder: I am honored to present Database Design for Developers at SQL Saturday #51 in Nashville 21 Aug 2010!

If you read this blog and will be in attendance, introduce yourself!

:{> Andy

Introduction

This post is the twenty-third part of a ramble-rant about the software business. The current posts in this series are:

This post is about natural development cycles.

Ringing

"Ringing" describes the curve of a waveform that occurs naturally. It's called "ringing" because striking a bell is one of the natural places this curve appears. I see this curve in software projects.

• Code churn
• Bug rate and severity
• Developer enthusiasm

Code Churn

Code Churn is a generic attempt to measure the stability of software under development. It improves upon the earlier Lines-of-Code metric by measuring line of code added, deleted, and edited. One of my more productive days as a developer resulted in removing 90% of the lines of code. My LOC metric for that day was "-1800" but the software (code-behind a web page pre-.Net, before code-behind was automated) was 10 times faster.

At the beginning of a project, code churn will spike and bottom-out as teh development team figures out the best approach to solving complex challenges. One way developers manage this is to sketch out the workflow and identify the "difficult" stuff. Let's face it: If you've been designing solutions for any length of time you have solved some common problems before. You don't need to reinvent the wheel, you can simply utilize the same design pattern.

Once the difficult items are identified, it's common to start by developing those pieces of code. Solving the big mysteries first allows you to knock out a proof-of-concept and will drive the more familiar portion of the design. It's not uncommon to develop several proofs-of-concept applications to test various approaches to the solution and even different tools. This makes for lots of code additions, deletions, and modifications. As development time nears the release date, code churn stabilizes to a predictable norm.

Bug Rate and Severity

When testing begins, you'll see lots of bugs reported and then fixed, then almost as many bugs reported and then fixed. The curve will ebb and flow, it's as natural as ocean waves washing ashore. In general (and all generalizations are false), the number and severity of bugs will decrease over time. they will become "fewer and farther between." Stability ensues as the ringing subsides.

Developer Enthusiasm

Developers need a challenge. Stop challenging them and they get bored. They respond to challenges differently - most start new projects enthusiastically, followed by stark realization of the scope of work vs. the timeline - which dimishes enthusiasm. As the project progresses, mysteries are revealed and problems solved. Gradually, the unknowns dissipate. For developers, emotions ring at the beginning of the project until the unknowns are resolved.

Conclusion

Ringing is normal. It's tempting to react to the troughs - or even the crests. Relaxing when things look good can be just as damaging as creating drama when things look bad. A steady hand is required to manage ringing. Realize it's normal, and be a normalizing influence.

:{>

Introduction

I emailed seven interview questions to the 2010 PASS Board Nominee Applicants listed on the PASS Board Elections site. You can read my interviews here:

• Allen Kinsel
• Andy Warren
• Denny Cherry
• Douglas McDowell
• Geoff Hiten
• Jack Corbett
• Mark Ginnebaugh
• Markus Sprenger
• Steve Jones

I asked everyone the same questions and blogged the responses in the order received, giving each applicant a day.

"Why Andy?"

I'm glad you asked. There are a couple/three reasons.

1. I whined.

I complained last year about some things that happened around the PASS Board election process. One theme in my complaints was PASS needs more transparency in the election process. This year I see more transparency in the process.

PASS included a 10-page PDF (PASS Elections Procedure: Overview) describing the elections process, which documents and information will be published and which will be considered confidential, and a detailed calendar of events for the NomCom (PASS Nominating Committee).

This is good work and I commend PASS for opening this process to such transparency.

2. It Ain't Over.

There are at least five ways someone may not make it onto the PASS Board of Directors:

1. Not apply. Like me - I didn't apply to run for the PASS Board.
2. Apply, but not be Interviewed. After the applications deadline passes applications are reviewed by the NomCom. They determine which applicants they want to interview. There are any number of confidential reasons why the NomCom may decide to not interview an applicant. I support this confidentiality.
3. Apply, Interview, but not be selected for the Slate. Again, this part is confidential and (again) I support it.
4. Apply, Interview, be selected for the Slate, and not be Elected.
5. Withdraw. Things change all the time. Circumstances may change for someone during the nominations process. Or someone may realize they are not willing, ready, and able to commit to two years of service on the PASS Board.

I know some PASS Board members ran in the past and were not elected, only to be elected later. The reason why they were not elected or not presented on the slate of candidates doesn't matter to me. I vote for the candidates I believe will move PASS in the direction I believe it should go for the next two years. This is important to me. You should vote according to what you believe is important.

Some of the applicants I interviewed in this series will not appear on the slate of candidates for one of the reasons listed above or some other reason. But I bet this will not be the last you hear from these people. They have demonstrated the have enough gumption to try to make an impact on our community. Today may not be their day, but I believe their day will come.

3. They Deserve an Opportunity to Share Their Passion.

Due to #2 above, this may be the last thing the public hears from some of these applicants this election cycle. I think they deserve a shot at telling you why they believe they can make a difference in the SQL Server community and PASS. I put on my Journalist Hat, perhaps too tightly, and thought up some good questions I believed you would want to ask these folks if you could.

Conclusion

Thanks to all the PASS Board applicants! First for applying to volunteer to lead our community; second for answering my questions!

It's good to see PASS taking these steps towards more transparency. Kudos to PASS for this. I see this as a step on the path of continuous improvement and I would like to see PASS become more agile and take similar steps (for other processes) in the future.

:{> Andy