Tomorrow will mark another chapter in the 24 Hours of PASS series.I am involved once again - this time in a moderator role. The event begins at 8am ET for me.  I will be introducing Alberto Ferrari who will be speaking on ''Excel 2013 Power Pivot in Action'' which is a great self-service BI story. This 24hop event will be in a different ...

As I finish up preparing for the Sep 20 (@1pm ET) webcast, I thought a final blog post may be appropriate in order to quickly reference many of the areas that I have touched upon.  Naturally, much of this information is geared towards First Timers, but Alumni are welcome to join in the webcast as well and are encouraged to help spread even ...

In this post, Logistics centered around how to get to downtown from the airport (SEA - commonly referred to as SEA-TAC for Seattle - Tacoma). As you would expect, the Seattle airport is almost always busy.  Some airports have periods where almost no activitiy is going on.  That is rare here.  Signage is good throughout the airport ...

I really don't think that you can get the full flavor of the Summit unless you delve into Social Networking.  There are multiple vehicles for social networking.  Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare, LinkedIn, and Yelp are all tools in the Social Networking Toolbox.  At the Summit, the best one of these is Twitter.  With twitter, yo ...

Now that I have covered just about all of the ''official'' Summit activities, it is time for a blog post about ''After Hours'' activities. There is a webpage that lists some of the activities that we are currently aware of.  You can find that page here. Monday Night Networking Dinner - Last year, Andy Warren and Steve Jones started a ...

One of the most valuable parts of the entire Summit experience is the networking that goes on. In this post, I will go over some of the opportunities for you to network with others.  Once again, this post will not focus on ''after hours'' activities which will come later. Badge and Ribbons - Once you get to the Summit and pick up your ...

The Summit is much more than just geat content from excellent speakers.  There is a great deal of other stuff going on at the Summit to really enhance your experience.  In this post, I will not focus on the ''after hours'' events. Do you want to get your hands dirty with Denali?  Perhaps you downloaded the latest Denali bits, but ...

One of the things that you should do is map out your ''Learning Itinerary'' before coming to the summit. It probably will change once you get onsite, but having a plan will save you time and perhaps some frustration.  You can go to the Summit website and start to build your schedule. When you arrive at registration to get your badge and ...

This is the first in series of blog posts about getting ready for the PASS Summit 2011.  Why am I doing this?  I am preparing for my webcast on Sep 20 @ 1pm ET (Details to come) about this subject.  I thought that I'd get this information out in a blog format as well. Even before the Conference Begins, there are some great ...

Are you using your benefits to further your SQL Server skills? The other day, the company I work for (Scalability Experts) had a benefits meeting where open enrollment for insurance and other similar things were discussed.  Since we are a small company, we outsource HR/Payroll/Benefits and I discovered a new benefit that I was unaware of ...