Search results matching tags 'SQL Saturday' and 'community'

Portfolio changeover time for the PASS board

rob_farley — Fri, 28 Dec 2012 05:13:33 GMT

The last PASS board meeting for the year has happened, and the portfolio handovers are well under way.

Sadly, having new board members elected means having existing board members step down, and this last board meeting was the last one for both Allen Kinsel (@sqlinsaneo) and Kendal van Dyke (@sqldba). In 2012, these guys had the portfolios of local chapters and SQL Saturdays, respectively.

Newly elected board member Wendy Pastrick (@wendy_dance) is taking over from Allen on local chapters, while I’m taking over SQL Saturdays from Kendal. In 2012, my portfolio was 24 Hours of PASS, which is being rolled into the Virtual Chapters portfolio, headed still by Denise McInerney (@denisemc06).

I have to admit that I’m really excited that the 24HOP portfolio is being merged with Virtual Chapters, as the two are so linked. I had been on the 24HOP committee before I joined the PASS board, and had recommended that the two portfolios be merged around the time I was elected to the board. During my term I even recruited Virtual Chapter leaders to be on the committee for 24HOP, as I believe their experience in the online experience makes them best suited to influence PASS’ premier online event – the semi-annual 24HOP.

2012 was a good year for 24HOP, although it was the riskiest for some time as well.

Two of the more obvious changes that we made were to look at a new platform, and to return to the 24-hours straight format (rather than two 12-hour blocks). This more continuous format meant that numbers dropped (the largest audience is in the US, so any sessions that are overnight for the US are obviously going to have smaller attendance). However, this format meant we reached over 100 different countries, which I think was really significant. Comparing the first 2012 event with the first 2011 event (which used the 2x12 format), we jumped from reaching 54 countries in 2011 to 104 in 2012.

While I was still on the committee, we had discussed the need for a new platform, as the LiveMeeting platform wasn’t coping well with the numbers we were seeing. A number of options had been considered, some too expensive, some not capable of scaling sufficiently, and a decision had been made to use a platform called IBTalk. It was obviously more expensive than LiveMeeting (which had been available for free), but looked like it was going to scale much more nicely. We used it for both 2012 events and it will also be used for the next event (on Jan 30). The decision to use IBTalk was very risky, but as an experiment it seemed to work okay. There were both good and bad elements of the platform, which I’m not going to go into in a forum like this, although the second event that we used IBTalk for ended up being much smoother than the first, and I anticipate that the Jan30 event will be event smoother still.

I felt like the first event of 2012 was dominated by the new platform. It was held two weeks after the SQL Server 2012 launch, which had also been a large virtual event using a new platform. I guess experimenting with new platforms was a large topic of discussion that month. One thing that didn’t really work for us was the closed captioning. It turns out that when you have someone providing closed captioning live, any typos that come through, or anything that is misheard by the person providing the service, etc… well, it doesn’t always work for being able to feed a translation service. We tried, and it was good to try – but it didn’t work so well. Despite all that, PASS members can view the session recordings at http://www.sqlpass.org/24hours/spring2012/Home.aspx

The main 24HOP event in the second half of the year was the annual Summit Preview event. We didn’t try to pursue the closed captioning again, but we did continue with IBTalk. Going back to LiveMeeting was never going to be an option for us, and we wanted to take a second look at the platform, in light of the various things we’d learned from the experience in Q1. It was a better experience from a number of perspectives, and we certainly got to test the scalability.

Over the course of the day, we had good numbers – only a handful shy of 10,000 attendees across the course of the day (okay, a handful if you count fingers, toes, and were inbred – we had 9979). The lowest attendances were around the 100 mark, but the largest reached 1421 attendees. The highest from any previous events was around the 800 mark, so this was a significant improvement – and the platform handled it just fine. If we’d had that many people trying to access the LiveMeeting platform it simply wouldn’t’ve coped, and the IBTalk platform deserves praise for that.

The platform decision isn’t over yet. A new search has taken place in light of what we’ve learned in the past year, and including a lot of what people have expressed to us on platforms such as Twitter. There are platforms that are way out of our price range (it can be very expensive to present 10,000 man-hours of content using some platforms), and there are ones that won’t cope with some of the things we would like to do. With some of the Virtual Chapters growing fast, a new platform needs to be able to cope with them too, with a wide variety of attendances needing to be handled. I wish Denise all the best for that, and have been able to happily assure her that the PASS HQ team that does most of the work behind the scenes for 24HOP (particularly Jane and Vicki) is excellent and will make her look brilliant this year.

Another change in 2012 was the sponsorship story. For a long time, Dell had been a major sponsor of 24HOP, and I want to thank them for that. However, 24HOP wasn’t a priority for them in 2012, and new sponsors needed to be found. The first event saw sponsorship come in from Microsoft, SQL Sentry and Idera, with Idera being replaced by RSSBus for the second event. But what really excited me was to see a second tier of sponsors join the fray, with Melissa Data and Confio joining Idera as ‘Alliance Sponsors’. It was really good to have six fantastic companies sponsoring the event, and providing extra options for them.

I haven’t even mentioned the non-English events that have taken place! PASS has seen 24HOP events in Russian, Portuguese and Spanish this year, although my personal involvement with those events have been somewhat less. Again, the PASS HQ staff have been great in enabling these events, and helping them run smoothly.

So I leave 24HOP in capable hands.

Instead, I pick up the SQL Saturday portfolio – another fast-growing facet of PASS. Already the 200th SQL Saturday event has been scheduled, and I’m finding myself getting onto a moving train. Luckily, I won’t be battling anyone on the roof Bond-style, but there are a lot of things that will need attention to make sure that the SQL Saturday model can continue to be successful.

The PASS HQ staff most responsible for the SQL Saturdays that happen all around the world are Karla and Niko. If you’ve ever met either of these two, you’ll know that they run quickly and are nothing if not achievers. I suspect that I could just tell them to keep doing their thing and the portfolio would be considered successful. This is incredibly useful to me, because I should be able to focus on identifying and solving some of the things that might need to change as these events become larger in both size and number. I’m keen to look into some of the edge cases, such as international events (including non-English), and both the larger and smaller events that are around – but all the time trying to serve Niko, Karla and all the community leaders in what they do.

@rob_farley

SQL Saturday #146 : Nashua, NH

AaronBertrand — Sun, 21 Oct 2012 01:35:00 GMT

Today was SQL Saturday #146, put on by Mike Walsh, Jack Corbett, and a host of other volunteers and organizers.
Scott and I missed the speaker dinner last night, but we headed up from Rhode Island at 6:00 AM and made a good day of it. We had lots of great conversations with both existing friends and potential customers.

After lunch I participated in a panel discussion with Joey D'Antoni and Andrew Kelly, led my Mike. We basically talked about various things DBAs are responsible for - and ultimately take the blame when they don't work. My favorite part of the discussion was around backups, and how you shouldn't have a backup plan, but a recovery plan. Meaning - essentially - don't bother taking backups unless you've tested that they can be restored successfully.

I had the last session of the day against some tough competition. About 35 people attended, but I don't like the last time slot because there are almost always conversations that extend past the end time. In a lot of cases it's ok to cut into someone's lunch or networking time if they want to stay longer, but you absolutely cannot cut into raffle time. Anyway, the feedback was fantastic - it's amazing how much feedback you can solicit when you offer up a raffle prize like a free license to SQL Sentry Plan Explorer PRO. :-) Also have to love a write-in vote for speaker expertise (and no I don't think this was a bribe):

You can download the slide deck and samples from my session here.

Kudos to Mike et. al. for a great event!

SQL Saturday #156 : Providence, RI

AaronBertrand — Sun, 16 Sep 2012 03:09:00 GMT

Well, East Greenwich, RI. Another successful event, this one put on by John Miner, Brandon Leach, Steve Simon, Scott Abrants and a host of other folks. Several #SQLFamily friends in attendance as well: Grant Fritchey, Mike Walsh, Jack Corbett, Wayne Sheffield and others. I gave a session in the morning and then a session to cap off the day. Thanks to everyone who attended! The downloads are here:

T-SQL : Bad Habits & Best Practices

The Ins & Outs of Contained Databases

SQLSaturday #162 : Cambridge, England

AaronBertrand — Sun, 09 Sep 2012 21:08:00 GMT

Yesterday I presented at SQL Saturday #162. My slide deck and samples are here:

Slide Deck & Samples: Bertrand - T-SQL Bad Habits & Best Practices

I also wanted to answer a question from an audience member after the session about how to generate YYYYMMDD strings to represent yesterday's date in order to append to a backup file name. In this case because we're probably not worried about performance (you're performing this calculation once), we can just use string conversion (see this blog post for a more detailed discussion about doing things like stripping time from datetime at high volume).

-- In SQL Server 2005, 2008 or 2008 R2, you can say:

SELECT [filename] = 'Backup' + CONVERT(CHAR(8), DATEADD(DAY, -1, GETDATE()), 112);

-- In SQL Server 2012, you can use a slightly more self-documenting method:

SELECT [filename] = 'Backup' + FORMAT(DATEADD(DAY, -1, GETDATE()), 'yyyyMMdd');

I was really impressed with how this event was run - it was super organized and I had a great time, so kudos to Mark and Lorraine Broadbent and everyone else who helped by speaking, volunteering and sponsoring.

Today I was able to take a walk around "The Backs" (the walkways along the river behind all the famous colleges here), then went to Castle Mound with Buck Woody & family, then Scott and I took a train to Ely to see the 4th largest cathedral in Europe. A good day. Pictures here:

Cambridge | Ely

How SQL Saturday could be better

AaronBertrand — Tue, 15 May 2012 12:58:00 GMT

I've been to a lot of SQL Saturdays. They are great events to attend - from a community standpoint, from a learning standpoint, and from a speaker growth standpoint. Who could ask for more, right? Great sessions, from passionate speakers willing to both teach and learn, fantastic networking opportunities and lunch. All for free, or at a very low cost - some events need to recover costs and charge $10 for lunch. Still a phenomenal bargain IMHO.

But we all know that these events aren't perfect... there are sometimes failures in process or communication that lead to frustration for attendees, speakers, organizers and volunteers. And most of these failures occur during the period leading up to the event, not on the actual Saturday.

So I have just a few minor suggestions that might help.

Speakers: don't overwhelm the organizers.

I know some of you think you have 10-15 sessions that you could deliver equally well, but all you're doing is making their job harder, and I don't think it benefits anyone. I find it hard to believe that the quality of all 15 would be similar, regardless of how experienced a speaker you may be. Pick your top three or four, and cap your submissions there. If you can't narrow it down because you think all 15 of your sessions are completely awesome, check the list of existing submissions, or contact the organizers to find out the areas where they need more coverage (they are listening at SQLSaturdayN@sqlsaturday.com, where N is the SQL Saturday number, e.g. SQLSaturday146@sqlsaturday.com). If it's too early in the submission process, then either wait, or be sure to cull your list closer to (but before) the submission deadline. I'm not in favor of the latter, though, because if you submit 15 sessions but only want to seriously consider 3 or 4, you may have prevented other speakers from submitting their session on a topic too similar to one you didn't intend to present in the first place.

Speakers: don't double book.

While you might like to have a back-up plan, this almost guarantees that you'll have to cancel on one of the events. Since you don't know which event will finalize their list of speakers first, I don't think it's fair to invite two or three girls to the prom, and end up going with the prettiest one who says yes. I suggest you pick the event you're most likely going to be able to attend, and leave your second- and third-place choices for the next time they have an event. Or pick the one with the earliest submission deadline, so that if you don't get selected, you will still have time to submit to your second choice. As above, if you wait instead of submitting five minutes after an event is announced, you can get a good sense of how many sessions and what topics and speakers you're up against (these aren't kept secret, on purpose).

Speakers: cancel promptly.

Even if you don't follow the above two suggestions, have the courtesy to cancel the minute you learn or decide that you won't be able to make the event. The longer the organizers are fooled into believing you're going to make it, the harder it's going to be for them to fill your slot(s). This goes for cancelling your regular attendee registration as well: since you are automatically registered when you submit to speak, if you're not going to be there, you're potentially preventing someone else from attending. I've heard of several cases where speakers cancelled the day of the event, or shortly before, or didn't bother letting the event know at all. Having attendees show up to an empty room with no speaker just downright sucks for everyone. I realize that some cancellations are unavoidable, and I'm not suggesting you should skip a funeral to honor your speaking commitment - but as soon as you know, let them know.

Organizers: don't delay notifications.

Speaker selection should happen as close to the submission deadline as possible. I know of at least one event where speakers changed their travel plans to be sure they would be in a certain city on a Saturday, only to find out much later that they weren't being selected to speak. Letting them know earlier will allow them to change their plans appropriately, whether that means staying home, attending a different SQL Saturday, or maybe even just spending one less night in the hotel because they won't need to be there Friday night for the speaker dinner. Now again, I realize that sometimes you can't control how early all of your speakers will want to book their travel, or exactly when you can get together with the other volunteers to make the final selections. But as much as possible this should be part of the planning process when picking the submission deadline in the first place. I think the selection should have to occur at least one month prior to the event, and in a lot of cases two months would be ideal. This would allow remote speakers that are chosen to book flights and hotel without paying last-minute premiums, and for speakers that are not chosen to make alternate plans.

Organizers: have a healthy balance of local and remote speakers.

Obviously you want to have top-notch speakers for your audience, but at the same time, you want to help groom local talent and propel them in the community (one of the founding goals of SQL Saturday). I don't think there's a way to apply a blanket rule or percentage for this, as different locations have different pools of local talent, but organizers should have some familiarity with their local speaker pool and should be able to ensure that an appropriate mix is selected. In some cases this may mean that you have to decline a better remote speaker, and I'm not suggesting in any way that this job is easy (or that you should always pick lesser experienced speakers with bad abstracts just because they're local), but I think there could be some better effort here.

PASS: minimize the number of events on a single day.

I realize it's impossible to give every event their own dedicated Saturday, but keep in mind that in addition to encouraging double booking by some speakers, and precluding others from attending one city in favor of another, you're also spreading sponsor dollars thin and making it less likely for a sponsor to step up to the level that gets a table and allows them to send a representative or two. If a SQL Saturday doesn't succeed here, the organizers and volunteers might be a little gun-shy about trying next time, and everybody loses. As with a couple of other suggestions here, it is difficult to set a hard and fast rule here - one proposal I heard was to allow only one SQL Saturday within a 350 mile radius, but geography alone is more of an issue for the local speakers and less of an issue for remote speakers and sponsors.

[Edit: In other words, I'm not convinced that a hard-coded mile radius rule, be it 350 or 400 or however many miles, is valid. 350 miles in Massachusetts or D.C. is very different from 350 miles in New Mexico or Montana. I also don't even dream of considering imposing a "no two events shall happen on the same Saturday" rule - even though I tried to make that clear above, it seems my suggestion is still being misinterpreted. I am not trying to indicate that there is some perfect rule that everyone is overlooking. I'm just suggesting that we shouldn't want to see another 5-event SQL Saturday, and should do whatever we can to prevent it from happening.]

PASS: put some policies in writing.

While some of these suggestions could be enforced through code on the SQL Saturday site, I realize that you can't just wave your hands, snap your fingers, and have the code in place. But in the meantime I don't think this should be a barrier to formalizing policies that could eliminate some of these problems. I think most are common courtesy / common sense items that don't need to be technically enforced, but posting some of these policies on the specific event site (or on the main SQL Saturday site) should be enough to help the community police this behavior. If you state, for example, that there is a cap of four sessions per speaker, there is no excuse for speakers to submit more than four, even if the site would still allow them to do so. This can also place some onus on the individual organizers to respond to those speakers and tell them to whittle down their list, or you'll remove all of them. It's a little tougher for organizers to discover that a speaker has submitted to other events as well, but I think both of these examples are things the speaker should be more responsible for anyway. You don't always have to actively *prevent* a behavior to curb it - sometimes people just need to be told how to do something right rather than get slapped every time they do it wrong.

Once again, I will stress that these are not perfect or even directly implementable answers, and I don't have any illusions that these will make SQL Saturday perfect. But I do believe they are areas that have caused some frustration in the past and that deserve further consideration - the sooner, the better.

Participating in 3 SQL events in 8 days

AaronBertrand — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 15:08:00 GMT

Well, 8 days not including lead and lag travel time. A quick summary of the three events, and the flights it took to get me to each:

SQL Saturday #105 - Dublin, Ireland

Flights on March 21st:

Providence -> Philadelphia (236 miles)
Philadelphia -> Dublin (3,260 miles)

Time zone change: +4 when we got there, plus Daylight Saving Time kicked in, so +5 after the event.

I spoke at this event, and manned the SQL Sentry booth with cohort Scott Fallen. This event was a fantastic SQL Saturday - very well organized, a quite unique speaker dinner (on a boat that went up and down a canal, through several old-fashioned locks), and I had my speaker feedback before I even returned home:

We also had the Sunday free, where we rented a car, drove on the wrong side of the road (and the wrong side of the car), and visited the western coast - most importantly, the Cliffs of Moher:

I hope we get an opportunity to sponsor and attend future events in Ireland.

SQL Connections - Las Vegas, Nevada

Flights on March 26th:

Dublin -> Philadelphia (3,260 miles)
Philadelphia -> Las Vegas (2,170 miles)

Time zone change: -8

I presented two sessions in the SQL Server track: "T-SQL : Bad Habits to Kick" and "What's New in SQL Server 2012." These two sessions are getting a little old, but both seem to continue to be well-attended and appreciated. As a company we really enjoy this conference because we get a lot of different folks at the booth - developers, general admin folks, even some SharePoint people. We also really like hanging out after hours with the SQLSkills folks and other friends in the industry.

SQL Bits - London, England

Flights on March 29th:

Las Vegas -> Charlotte (1,910 miles)
Charlotte -> London Gatwick (4,000 miles)

Time zone change: +8

Bits is always fun - those guys do a bang-up job organizing this conference and we always find it very valuable as a company. I didn't speak at this event because I was a last-minute addition to the company roster - I had already committed to Connections, which overlapped with part of this conference. I did make it there for both the Friday pub event and the entire Saturday day session. This was the only leg on this entire journey where I felt any sort of jet lag whatsoever - I took a 2-hour nap on Friday afternoon. Greg (@sqlsensei) ran a half at Reading to benefit children with cancer, and set a personal record by finishing in about 1:49.

On this leg of my journey I also did the unthinkable - I forgot my iPhone in the seat back pocket when I deplaned at Gatwick. And the US Airways staff there was far less than helpful. They told me they had checked my seat multiple times (during the five hours it sat at the gate) and found no trace of my phone, however the passenger in my seat on the return flight to Charlotte later that day e-mailed me from my phone and told me he would drop it in the mail. So this in a way restored my faith in humanity, in spite of being completely frustrated with the ground crew at the airport.

And then...

...I had to get back home. Flights on April 3rd:

London Heathrow -> Philadelphia (3,530 miles)
Philadelphia -> Providence (236 miles)

Time zone change: +5

All in all it was a great trip. A little stress on Friday with my phone, but US Airways made up for it yesterday, and I hope to see the phone in my mailbox today. Total mileage (not including preferred bonuses and Nicole's miles): 18,602. Net time zone changes: 26. Value: priceless. Thanks to all the organizers of these great events.

Slides and samples from SQL Saturday #65 - Vancouver

AaronBertrand — Sun, 27 Feb 2011 00:53:00 GMT

Today I presented my "What's New in SQL Server 'Denali'" deck to about 40 attendees at SQL Saturday #65 in Vancouver, British Columbia. Attached below (and here) are the slightly updated slides and samples.

The results are in: I'm an okay speaker.

AaronBertrand — Tue, 15 Feb 2011 00:41:00 GMT

Last weekend I spoke at SQL Saturday #60 in Cleveland, Ohio. I had a great time catching up with some existing friends and colleagues, and met a bunch of new people too. I presented two sessions: What's New in Denali, and T-SQL: Bad Habits to Kick. Yesterday the organizers passed along the scanned-in speaker evaluations (this was the first SQL Saturday event where I found folks to be quite motivated to fill out the forms, since it was how they drew the door prizes). And being the ADD person I am, I quickly transcribed the scores and started pulling averages. I thought my presentations went rather well, with one exception that I'll get to in a moment.

First, let me say that I'm always pretty apprehensive about feedback from presentations. There is always going to be a wide range of expectations at an event like a SQL Saturday - whether it be because someone has been to 10 of these events or it's their first time, or even that they may have seen a worse or better speaker right before my session. So I try to take everything with a grain of salt, not letting praise go to my head, and at the same time not letting criticism get me down too much.

That said, my big issue at this event was time management. I'd given the Denali presentation before, and this time the crowd was less than 15 (12 evals were submitted). Several folks had very good questions, so I ended up having to rush at the end to finish the content and leave the room with enough time for the next speaker to get set up. Then my Bad Habits session, in a smaller room, had well over 50 people (43 submitted evals). For this presentation I listed my "12 step program" - 12 bad habits that I'm hopeful to help other people break. I was expecting a lot more pushback, arguments and denial about whether SELECT * or sending @@IDENTITY via RETURN are bad habits. Ever try to tell a smoker they shouldn't smoke? That's what I was prepared for. But alas, the crowd was mostly silent, so I breezed through my decks in about 35 minutes... this forced me to scramble to fill the remainder of my time and make sure people got their money's worth. As noted on a few of the evals, a lighter session at the end of the day was actually appreciated, but it was certainly not my intention.

The ratings on the speaker evaluations are Very Poor, Poor, Average, Good and Excellent - I've given these scores of 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 respectively. Logical, I assume, but just thought I would clarify (I actually calculated it on a scale of 0 - 4, but my one "Poor" checkbox made me cry a little). Overall, I think people were quite kind, given the fact that I know both presentations could have been better. I don't put a whole lot of weight into the first question; unless my session has a very inaccurate title, the attendees should have some sense of whether it will be useful for them before they come - and if they just want to come because it's interesting to them even if it has nothing to do with their day job, it's still not really fair to count that against me.

In any event, my scores were as follows - I've highlighted the high (green) and low (red) in each column:

How would you rate the... What's New in Denali
(43 evals) T-SQL: Bad Habits to Kick
(12 evals) Combined Average
(55 evals)

...usefulness of the session information in your day-to-day environment? 4.083 4.512 4.418

...Speaker's presentation skills? 4.583 4.488 4.509

...Speaker's knowledge of the subject? 4.750 4.767 4.764

...accuracy of the session title, description and experience level? 4.417 4.628 4.582

...amount of time allocated to cover the topic / session? 3.667 4.143 4.037

...quality of the presentation materials? 4.167 4.419 4.435

How would you rate the...	What's New in Denali (43 evals)	T-SQL: Bad Habits to Kick (12 evals)	Combined Average (55 evals)
...usefulness of the session information in your day-to-day environment?	4.083	4.512	4.418
...Speaker's presentation skills?	4.583	4.488	4.509
...Speaker's knowledge of the subject?	4.750	4.767	4.764
...accuracy of the session title, description and experience level?	4.417	4.628	4.582
...amount of time allocated to cover the topic / session?	3.667	4.143	4.037
...quality of the presentation materials?	4.167	4.419	4.435

My take-away from this: I need to be better at adjusting the pace depending on how many interruptions I'm seeing (I will never be the guy who tells you to wait until later on to speak up). How I fix this is kind of up in the air, because next time I might have a much more vocal crowd ready to challenge each and every slide. I should have demos prepared for every single habit, and start skipping them if time starts to get tight. This may mean re-ordering my slide deck to put the most controversial habits first.

It's always a pleasure to offer up my opinions and experience to the community. If one person benefits in any way from a session, then I consider it a success. I know I have certainly learned from every presentation I've given, and last weekend was no exception. I am hoping the speaker evaluations continue to be representative of the whole crowd so I can accurately use this post as a measuring stick to see how I am learning to be a better presenter.

Thanks, as always, for your candid feedback.

Reflections on SQL Saturday #60 - Cleveland

AaronBertrand — Mon, 07 Feb 2011 16:20:00 GMT

Every time I attend a SQL Saturday, I leave with a rejuvenated and even further reinforced sense of community. Cleveland (SQL Saturday #60) was by far no exception. Allen White (blog | twitter), Erin Stellato (blog | twitter), Cory Stevenson, Brian Davis (twitter), and all others involved put on a fantastic event that endured some crappy weather, parking problems, and significant delays and hardship for at least one speaker - sorry Grant! (Grant wrote about his experience.) I was able to meet several community members that I'd only ever "met" on twitter, and even while nose-deep in preparation, I saw a lot of conversations going on, which is great. (At least one SQL Saturday I've been to in the past seemed like most people kept to themselves.)

I presented two sessions: one on SQL Server 2011 ("Denali") and, for the first time, one on bad T-SQL habits to kick. I learned a lot about balance here... my Denali presentation went 5 minutes over, and my bad habits talk fell way under - mostly because I was expecting a lot more pushback on what I think are bad habits. Would have been great if I had been scheduled to give the two talks back-to-back in the same room. :-) Another balance lesson: the Denali talk had 10-12 attendees. The bad habits talk was standing room only: 50+. I hope everyone was happy with my presentations, and I'm eager to see the feedback results.

I got to spend a lot of time with co-worker Scott Fallen, who has not yet learned to not fear the twitter. SQL Sentry was quite happy to sponsor Friday night's speaker dinner at The Brew Kettle, where we had a fantastic time, with lots of great conversations.

Anyway, it was a great event that felt quite polished. These folks clearly put in the work to pull off a high-class event. To top it all off, a hand-written thank you card, signed by all of the organizers? Come on!

Also, just curious, did anybody else see the guy who could have been the twin brother of Chris Pratt (from Parks and Recreation)?

I saw him multiple times throughout the day (he even attended one of my sessions), and I thought for sure I recognized him from somewhere. It didn't hit me until I was on a plane home. Could it have been him?

Anyway, several SQL Saturdays to come, including Chicago and Boston. Next up: Vancouver, February 26th. Hope to see you there.

Reflections on the 2010 PASS Summit

AaronBertrand — Sun, 14 Nov 2010 01:35:00 GMT

It hasn't been 24 hours since I left behind a slew of new and old friends in Seattle, and I already feel - as someone else put it - that I've left summer camp for another long, cold winter. Okay, it's not going to be that bad - I'll soon be heading home to my new wife, and ramping up in my new job. But still, it is weird to be leaving.

PASS brought a lot of things together for me. I got to spend a lot of time in the booth with the SQL Sentry team; I got to spend two days and several evenings with many of my fellow MVPs; and I got a lot of insight into the things that went into (and didn't make it into) the next version of SQL Server. I have posted several blog posts about Denali over the past week, and have several more in progress.

I am now in Vancouver visiting some great friends. The circumstances are not exactly the most spectacular, as several of you at PASS know. But it is still to be visiting and helping them take their minds off more serious issues. Today we were at a Starbucks, and became a part of three conversations with fellow patrons (also waiting for overpriced but tasty drinks) - they weren't deep conversations, just comments and follow-up on the concoctions people come up with ("grande triple caramel latte with extra dribbling"). It reminded me how Canada compares to the United States the way the SQL Server community compares to some other technical communities. In most communities in the United States, the conversations we had at Starbucks would have never taken place. People are too self-absorbed, or too twitter/facebook/blackberry/SMS-absorbed, or remain faithful to the "thou shalt not talk to strangers" commandment handed down from above when they were children. I'm not trying to sugar-coat Canada, but I have only been here for a few hours and I am already reminded how much friendlier people here are in general.

I feel the same way about the SQL Server community - at PASS, over 3,700 people converge on Seattle and just get along. In the halls of the convention center, or the lobby of the Sheraton, or after giving a horrible rendition of a bad song at Bush Garden, you can strike up a conversation with just about anyone about virtually anything.

For the people out there who think there is little value in attending a local user group meeting, a SQL Saturday or a full-blown conference like Connections or PASS, I have news for you: while the online SQL Server community is a fantastic resource, the in-person SQL Server community is an order of magnitude better. My experience at Connections and PASS has renewed my energy for speaking at events around the country - I've already submitted abstracts for SQL Saturday #60 in Cleveland, SQL Saturday #65 in Vancouver, and SQLRally in Orlando. I hope to see many of you at each of these events!