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Microsoft OLAP by Mosha Pasumansky

PASS Presentation canceled :(

I am very upset about it, but my tomorrow's PASS preconference presentation isn't going to happen. My flight to Denver today was canceled, after having spent few hours in Seattle airport I realized that there was absolutely no way for me to get to Denver before tomorrow morning. I went through all airlines, asking for any flight, any connection, and every other flight was full and sold out. I apologize to everybody who registered for this presentation. I hope PASS will be able to accommodate you for another session. I am very upset, for I have spent lots of time during last month preparing for this presentation. I believe that I gathered plenty of unique material not available anywhere else, knowledge that would have benefited MDX practitioners. I even developed a new tool (code name 'MDX Studio'), especially for this presentation, which features MDX expression debugger, MDX query execution performance monitor and attribute overwrite viewer - this was supposed to be a surprise announcement during my presentation. If only PASS was in Seattle, just like last year, and year before that.

Anyway, I apologize again, and once I calmed down, I will start thinking about other ways to share the content of the presentation. It will take me months to write all of it down, so I hope another opportunity for speaking will come soon again, this time in Seattle or somewhere close, like Vancouver or Portland - where I could just drive...


Published Sunday, September 16, 2007 10:10 PM by mosha

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Chris Webb said:

If there's a BI Conference next year, and if it's in Seattle, that would be great for me...

September 17, 2007 4:21 AM
 

Adam Machanic said:

I hate the airlines!!  Why was your flight canceled?  I'm not aware of any weather issues?

September 17, 2007 8:13 AM
 

mosha said:

I have no idea why the flight was canceled. Other airlines were flying to Denver at the same time, so it cannot be weather. It was a mess - everybody who was on that plane scrambling to find an alternative. I bet many won't be able to get there even today.

September 17, 2007 11:43 AM
 

Denis Gobo said:

A little bit related  ;-)

My parents are visiting from Amsterdam. They took the plane from Amsterdam to Newark, New Jersey this Saturday

Somehow the plane ran out of fule(????) so they stopped in Bangor Maine to fill up. They arrived 2.5 hours later at Newark airport

I have never ever heard of this before, it was a direct flight from Amsterdam to Newark. It is not like they are stuck in traffic and stopping and going uses up fuel

Bizarre

Don't worry about PASS, I was ready to book a hotel and flight in January, got it approved at work. And then a cousin of my wife informs me that he is getting married that weekend  ;-(

Oh well maybe next year, hopefully Murdoch will pay for the ticket  ;-)

September 17, 2007 11:51 AM
 

Adam Machanic said:

Mosha,

That's terrible!  What airline?  I will add it to my personal blacklist, along with the only other current name on there, Alaska Airlines.  Interestingly, also PASS-related.  I booked my flight three months in advance last year -- getting into Seattle on Monday morning, leaving on a red eye Thursday night.  The airline called me four days before the trip to tell me that they'd decided to change their flights around and my flight would now arrive Monday night and leave Thursday morning.  After much argument with their "customer service" people they "allowed" me to cancel the flight so I could book with another carrier.

I'm happy to hear that some airlines, like Southwest and JetBlue, are actually trying to "serve" customers, creating written customer rights, etc.  Until all of the airlines do it, we have to vote with our feet and boycott the bad ones :(

September 17, 2007 2:58 PM
 

mosha said:

It was United Airlines. Southwest people were actually nice to me, trying to fit me on the flight through Las Vegas or Phoenix, since they don't fly to Denver directly. But all these flights were full as well.

September 17, 2007 3:16 PM
 

James Luetkehoelter said:

Man that really stinks. Gotta love the airline industry (Marin, if you're out their, I don't mean Croatia Airlines :) ).

I fly United almost exclusively (so I get the whole fancy-pants super-duper flier status). It can really be touch, depending where you're coming from and who happens to be working. I have the unlucky pleasure of knowing O'Hare airport extremely well.

If you're still going to be at the conference, do something in the SQLounge area - heck, I'll be down for as much as I can :)

September 17, 2007 3:28 PM
 

Adam Machanic said:

Ahh, United was close to being added to the blacklist anyway, after stranding me in Montreal earlier this year and being INCREDIBLY rude about it -- I was actually escorted out of the airport upon being informed of the change in itinerary, and told that I could call their 800 number outside of the airport on my mobile phone if I wanted to.  Then I was actually yelled at by the woman at the ticket window when I went back in to try to talk to someone in person.  I ended up talking to an Air Canada rep, who put me on another United flight that United wouldn't put me on, but under an Air Canada ticket.  The Air Canada people were fantastic--extremely friendly and understanding of my plight.  Clearly, another airline that gets the whole "service" angle!

September 17, 2007 4:47 PM
 

Deepak Puri said:

Hi Mosha,

That's a real pity, and we're all totally frustrated - makes me feel lucky that I got to SQL PASS so smoothly (even though it was partly by plane this time). Many of the folks signed up for your session (including me) attended Reed Jacobsen's instead (even Reed wanted to attend yours, but for the obvious conflict) - and some of them insisted that they came primarily for your session!

Anyway, how about a LiveMeeting Webcast, as a start to disseminating some of the materials you had prepared? I'm sure there'll be some appropriate conferences coming up as well ...

September 17, 2007 5:50 PM
 

Thomas Ivarsson said:

Mosha! Send each topic to developers that you have confidence in and let them help you with the writing.

Regards

Thomas I

September 18, 2007 3:36 PM
 

Sergey Sheinblum said:

Mosha, can you post or suggest any communication 'train' to share your knowledge amoung your blog readers and MDX community?

Your hard work and huge contribution to MDX community is always GREATLY appreciated!

September 19, 2007 12:26 PM
 

Darren Gosbell said:

I like Deepak's idea of doing a webcast (or a series of them). I'm sure that everyone that was signed up for the PASS talk plus those of us that could not make it would be interested.

September 19, 2007 6:57 PM
 

Darren Gosbell [MVP] - Random Procrastination said:

You go away for a few days and look what happens...

September 25, 2007 2:51 AM
 

Microsoft OLAP by Mosha Pasumansky said:

SQL PASS Summit 2008 and Microsoft Business Intelligence Conference 2008 are two major conferences targeting

August 1, 2008 1:59 AM

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