Category sqlpass

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What the heck are you people talking about?

Jun 7, ’10 8:00 AM

The call for speakers is closed and the selection committees are about to begin reviewing the abstracts. Before they get started, here are a few little pieces of trivia about the sessions.

Keep in mind that I have done minimal cleansing on this data so it’s going to be a bit messy and unreliable for anything apart from entertainment purposes.

Raw Numbers

There were 574 sessions submitted this year by 209 speakers working for a total of 163 separate companies.

Out of a total of 127 job titles, the most common one was “Consultant”. Or, it would be until you take into account the different variations of DBA, Database Administrator, etc. Taking that into account, 20 of you are some kind of DBA.

If you want to get a bit fuzzier about the numbers:

  • 17 of you are an engineer and are probably measuring something with calipers right now
  • 12 of you identify as a manager
  • 12 of you think you’re a developer
  • 27 of you claim to be a consultant
  • 11 of you work in B.I.
  • 32 of you claim to be architects. You draw squares and arrows to represent work.

All of you work for a total of 163 different companies. Unless some of you can’t spell your company’s name right. Then you may work for fewer, I’m not sure. The data, as I said, is dirty.

The Submissions

The average length of a session abstract was 617.7 characters or 99.19 words with a standard deviation of 243 characters and 39 words. Out of all the presentations, 187 have never been presented before. They may very well be 100% fresh in November when you arrive.

Here’s the distribution between the different levels:

  • 100 Level (Novice) – 109 sessions
  • 200 Level (Intermediate) – 239 sessions
  • 300 Level (Advanced) – 178 sessions
  • 400 Level (Expert) – 44 sessions
  • 500 Level (Advanced Expert) – 2 sessions

Pre/Post Conference

42 total pre/post conference sessions were submitted. That’s a lot of competition for a few slots.

  • 14 were B.I. (9 for architecture and 5 for reporting/delivery)
  • 13 relate to DBA work
  • 12 relate to application development
  • 3 relate to professional development

The only conclusion I can draw is that very few of us are prepared to talk about our careers for a single work day. Are you playing Legend of Zelda at work all day? What’s up with that, guys? People making a living talking about this kind of stuff.

Spotlight Sessions

There were 58 spotlight sessions submitted and I’m afraid to say that your day jobs faired even worse in this section.

  • 20 were DBA related topics
  • 15 were development topics (this better not be all IronPerl … I mean PowerShell)
  • 13 were somehow related to B.I. architectural whatnot
  • 5 were related to B.I. reporting and delivery. Apparently these guys are too busy making money to talk at the PASS Summit for 8 hours.
  • 5 of you thought that you could talk about your job for 90 minutes. Good for you. That’s long enough to get to the good parts in Krull or watch any number of amazing kung fu movies.

The distribution is starting to skew a bit here. If we combined the BI tracks it would look a lot more like the pre/post conference situation.

Community Sessions

Here is where you guys clearly shine. You submitted a whopping 472 sessions. That’s an average of 2.25 per person. While not bad, you could have submitted 4. I’m just saying that maybe next year you should pick it up a little bit.

  • 137 application development topics. We’re number 1, we’re number 1
  • 135 DBA topics put this in at a close second.
  • 113 BI architecture topics
  • 48 Professional development (you can talk for 75 minutes about your job, but not 90?)
  • 39 B.I. reporting topics. I think these people really must have jobs to do, because that’s not a lot.
Comments (3)

The Missing Speakers

Jun 1, ’10 6:38 PM

Allen Kinsel (twitter | blog) and I have been fielding a draft email back and forth this afternoon. Rather than bore you with the backstory, here’s the body of the email:

After we heard from a few Microsoft employees who work outside of the normal speaking groups, we decided to do something about it. We’re asking you, and anyone else you know who falls into this category, to submit your sessions during the community call for speakers. This is our way of making sure that you don’t slip through the gap. Please pass this on to any of your colleagues who may find themselves in the same situation.

One last thing: The Call for Speakers ends Saturday, so you will have to hurry.

http://sqlpass.eventpoint.com/cft/

Why would we do this? Microsoft have their own call for speakers, right? They do, but it’s a Microsoft internal process – we can only make suggestions about the final speaker selections.

Here’s the deal – there are some speakers out there that we feel are an important part of the community, speakers who are outside of the normal Microsoft speaker track. They aren’t on the product development team, they aren’t architects, they aren’t general managers at Microsoft. These are the DBAs who keep Microsoft’s databases running, CSS/PSS, and other DBAs out there in the trenches. Most importantly, they’re also members of our community.

You probably know some of them – they’ve spoken at the PASS Summit, at SQL Saturdays, and at user groups. They’re highly rated speakers and they’re valuable members of the community.

If you know someone who falls into this group of people, pass this message along. We are working to make sure that this year’s PASS Summit is the best one that we’ve had and we know these people will make it even better.

Thank you.

Comments (5)

What I Do At PASS

May 5, ’10 10:00 AM

I haven’t blogged about what I do on the Board of Directors until now. I didn’t think people would be interested in it because there are times when it’s not the most thrilling thing on earth to me – ask your manager to describe the most thrilling part of his job, I guarantee that it isn’t going to be “getting into fights with panthers.” Just in case you don’t know, I’m on the PASS Board of Directors where I am currently the director in charge of the program for the annual Summit. I have expanded that portfolio (using the jaws of life and about 85 gallons of expanding marine epoxy) to include education in general. When I’m not working on the PASS Summit I’m making school children read Inside Microsoft SQL Server 2008: T-SQL Programming.

Here’s what I do during my week.

Program Committee

PASS Summit Planning HQ

The PASS Program Committee is the group of people that work to bring you the sessions at the PASS Summit. There are a lot of volunteers involved in the entire process, but Allen Kinsel and Lori Edwards help out on a weekly basis. Many of you know Allen from his previous involvement with the PASS Program Committee. Lori came on board this year to help out running a lot of the projects and teams that come up around the program selection process.

What do we do, exactly? Well, we have a conference call every week. On this conference call we (Allen, Lori, and Elena and Craig from PASS HQ) work through the processes and challenges around the PASS Summit. This year we’ve done a lot of work around changing the vendor we partner with for the abstract submission process.

There are a number of smaller committees for each of the session tracks and pre/post conference sessions. In order to get everything working, we had to re-work the handbook for each of the committees to use to select abstracts. The handbook is designed to help everyone select the best abstracts and outline all of the processes used to select the abstracts.

After the phone call I usually go down to Don Pablo’s for a rockin’ good time.

Certifications

One of the things that I took on when I was elected to the Board of Directors was working on the certification process. A lot of people have expressed dissatisfaction with the current situation. I’ve started working with Microsoft Learning on ways to make the process better. So far we’ve had a few conference calls, emails, and I’ve spoken with a few people in the community about this whole process.

This is slow going, it takes a lot of time and effort to look at what people want, put it together in a meaningful fashion, and then build a plan of action. I know that there’s some frustration in the community around this, I’ve read the forum post on SQL Server Central, I’ve talked to you guys at SQL Saturdays, and I’ve traded emails back and forth. If you want to get involved or if you’ve got an opinion, shoot me an email or sound off in the comments.

Speaking

There are a lot of people in the community who would like to share what they know. But they don’t. I’ve thought a lot about why people don’t get up and share what they know. The best way for me to think about it is to remember how I got started.

I first got started presenting several years ago at a previous job. We held regular lunch and learn sessions because it’s a good way to get people together and it’s a good way to share what you know. After a lunch and learn the organizer would sit down with the presenter and go over the results of the evaluation. This was incredibly helpful. The organizer might not have been an expert presenter, but then again I’m not an expert presenter either. The important part is that someone was there to help me and guide me through those early, introductory, steps.

Where is this leading? I’m not sure yet. Elena, my counterpart at PASS HQ, and I are working on some ideas that we think will bring a lot to the table and give everyone the opportunity to contribute and learn.

Summary

So, there you have it – this is what I do in the 10+ hours a week I spend working on all of my Boardly (Directorish?) duties. It’s a lot like middle management but without the pay or corporate parking spot.

Comments (4)

Submitting a Winning Abstract at PASS

Apr 27, ’10 7:09 PM

For those who couldn’t make today’s presentation, or those who could but want to hear Tim Ford and Buck Woody trashing Wisconsin, I’m pleased to share with you both the slides and the recording of today’s presentation. Or rather, two recordings.

The Powerpoint

The Presentation

Submitting a session to the PASS Summit really isn’t terrifying. What’s terrifying is being accepted and being faced with the prospect of speaking… I kid, I kid. There’s nothing terrifying about it. You put together an abstract, revise it a few times, and then submit it. When you submit an abstract you’ll want to put together a list of objectives – problems that you’re going to solve for the attendees.

Well, that’s about all there is to that. If you have questions, post them in the comments. I can’t tell you what PASS is looking for because, well, I don’t know. It’s based on a number of different things and depends, in part, on your abstract itself. So, write some abstracts, give them a once over, and submit them to PASS.

Want some more ideas about writing abstracts? Look no further than Brent Ozar’s blog post How to Get Readers to Pay Attention.

Want to know more about public speaking? I would suggest Confessions of a Public Speaker.

Comments (6)

Submit to PASS!

Apr 26, ’10 8:00 AM

The call for speakers is rapidly approaching and to help everyone get ready, we’ve got a special treat for you. Chuck Heinzelman, of PASS Board of Directors fame, has agreed to put on a presentation - Intro to Speaking At PASS: Creating a Winning Abstract (If I Can Do It, Anyone Can!).

What’s the point of all of this? Well, we all have problems writing abstracts, especially when we first get started. Good abstracts are key to getting your talks accepted at events. You could have the greatest presentation in the world but nobody will know if you can’t write an effective abstract.

Tune in on Tuesday 4/27 at 12pm Central time for this LiveMeeting event. Members of the PASS Program Committee will be online to answer your questions.

Comments (1)

SQL Saturday 42

Apr 6, ’10 9:00 AM

SQL Saturday is coming to Columbus, OH! I’m pretty excited about it.

Want to help out? Speak at the event. Maybe you just want to attend? That’s okay, too!

The point is that there’s going to be a day of free SQL Server training in Columbus, OH. You could be there!

Comments (0)

How can we grow the pool of Summit speakers?

Mar 12, ’10 10:13 AM

Allen Kinsel, my brother in arms for the Summit 2010 Program, posed a question about how to grow the pool of speakers for the PASS 2010 Summit. Allen has proposed that in order to bring in more speakers, we limit things to 1 session per speaker. With 168 sessions across the board, that’s a lot of potential speakers. Currently, we limit things to 2 sessions per speaker.

What are your thoughts?

This poll will close on Thursday, March 18 at 8AM EST and I’ll publish the results in a separate blog post.

[poll id="2"]

Comments (13)

SQL Server Presenters on Twitter

Nov 25, ’09 8:00 AM

I put out a call a while back for a list of SQL Server presenters who are on twitter. A fair number of people responded. I kept it quiet because I was busy doing my day job, but I was secretly plotting… Plotting to put this list together and share it worth the world! (evil laughter)

Not only did I put this list on my blog, I also put it on twitter. Behold, my SQL Server presenters twitter list.

I will be trying to maintain this list as more people come get on twitter and become willing to share their twitter info. I wish that I could give this twitter list over to the community to maintain, but I am more than willing to take list maintenance on until there’s a way to trade list ownership on twitter.

The whole point of the list is to make it easy to find presenters and presentations, both for the future needs of a user group as well as for your immediate needs (e.g. your speaker cancels at the last minute).

If you’d like to get on the list, hit me up on twitter or shoot me an email via the contact page.

Josef Richberg @sqlrunner
Brent Ozar @BrentO
Thomas LaRock @sqlrockstar
Kendal Van Dyke @sqldba
Tim Ford @sqlagentman
Lara Rubbelke @sqlgal
TJay Belt @tjaybelt
Todd McDermid @Todd_McDermid
Jack Corbett @unclebiguns
Kevin Kline @kekline
Colin Stasiuk @BenchmarkIT
Trevor Barkhouse @SQLServerSleuth
Ken Simmons @kensimmons
Aaron Nelson @sqlvariant
Jorge Segarra @SQLChicken
Joe Webb @JoeWebb
Glenn Berry @GlennAlanBerry
Pinal Dave @PinalDave
Sean McCown @MidnightDBA
Jonathan Kehayias @SQLSarg
Tim Mitchell @Tim_Mitchell
Eric Humphrey @lotsahelp
Artemakis Artemiou @artemakis
Wes Brown @WesBrownSQL
Aaron Bertrand @AaronBertrand
Adam Machanic @AdamMachanic
Jimmy May @aspiringgeek
Rob Farley @rob_farley
Brad Hurley @bradohurley
Rick Heiges @heigesr2
Chris Randall @cfrandall
Stuart Ainsworth @stuarta
Mladen Prajdic @mladenprajdic
K. Brian Kelley @kbriankelley
Arnie Rowland @Arnie1568
Buck Woody @BuckWoody
Ross Mistry @RossMistry
Grant Fritchey @GFritchey
Rod Colledge @rodcolledge
Denny Cherry @mrdenny
John Sterrett @johnsterrett

Comments (4)

Links for the Week 2009.11.20

Nov 20, ’09 8:00 AM

Bonus link dump week! Since I haven’t done one of these in several weeks, some of these links go all the way back to October 29th, enjoy.

SQL Server

Development

Stuff & Things

Comments (1)

Volunteering with PASS

Nov 12, ’09 8:00 AM

The PASS Summit just wrapped up and I’m riding a giant wave of excitement about the entire organization, not just the summit. I met so many great people over the last week who were excited to be a part of PASS. On top of that, there were even more people who asked how they could get involved in PASS.

Locally

You can start off by volunteering locally. This is probably the easiest way to get involved with the organization. If there is a local chapter or user group in your area, contact the person in charge and find out how you can help. User groups always need someone to set up before meetings, call sponsors and ask for money or swag, book speakers, or maintain the web site. The work isn’t always full of glory, but no volunteering work is. If you don’t enjoy what you’re doing, don’t despair. There are a lot of other things you can do locally, just talk to the leader of the user group and find another way to help out.

Of course, if there isn’t a user group in your area, you could always call PASS HQ and find out how to start up a PASS chapter. I’m not going to lie and say that it’s an easy process because it isn’t. This is how I got involved in PASS, I can tell you that it’s been a lot of hard work but it has been incredibly rewarding.

Virtually

In addition to the local chapters, PASS has a number of Virtual Chapters. What is a Virtual Chapter? A Virtual Chapter is similar to a physical chapter, it just meets virtually. The Virtual Chapters are currently focused on specific topics within SQL Server – Database Administration, Database Development, Business Intelligence, Virtualization, to name a few. Just like the physical chapters and user groups, Virtual Chapters need volunteers to find speakers, sponsors, and market the user group meetings. If there is a particular Virtual Chapter that you would like to work with, contact the person in charge of the Virtual Chapter, the Board member in charge of Virtual Chapters, or PASS HQ.

Internationally

So you’d like to help PASS out on the international scene, eh? Maybe you want to work on something for the Summit, maybe you want to make the PASS website better, maybe you know that you want to help on a grander scale but you don’t know where to start. If that’s the case, you should definitely call PASS HQ and tell them that you would love to help, but you’re not sure where to get started.

There are two ways to get involved on the international stage – task based volunteering and project based volunteering.

Task Based Volunteering

Task based volunteering is, in many ways, the easiest way to get involved with PASS at the international level. You are paired up with someone at PASS HQ, a Board member, or another volunteer who gives you a specific task to accomplish. Then, hopefully, you do it and report back. It’s just that simple. If you aren’t sure how much time you have, this is probably the best way to get started – you can test the waters and see how this whole volunteering thing sits with you and make sure that you have the time to do it. If you don’t have the time, you can finish up what you’re working on and stop there. You can always come back once you have more time. Nobody will fault you for that.

Project Based Volunteering

This is it: you love PASS and you’re in it for the long haul. Well, you don’t need to be that enthusiastic, but it helps. Project based volunteering is very long term and is best suited for people who want to have a constant level of involvement with PASS. An example of this is the Summit Programming Committee. These volunteers work tirelessly from April until the last day of the Summit reviewing session abstracts and making sure that Summit attendees get top notch speakers and presentations. If you’re interested in this sort of thing, get in touch with PASS HQ. Board members have specific portfolios and initiatives that they are tasked with – you can take a look at the Board of Directors page and determine which projects you would might like to get involved with. If there’s something that catches your eye, get in touch with that board member and tell them that you would like to help out. I’m sure they’ll appreciate it.

So, Remind Me – How Can I Help Out?

There are four main ways you can help out: locally, virtually, specific tasks, and special projects.

If you want to help out locally, contact your local chapter leader.

If you want to help out virtually, contact the virtual chapter leader, board member, or call PASS HQ.

Finally, if you would like to help out with specific tasks or special projects you’ll want to call PASS HQ or talk directly to a board member or the volunteer in charge of a specific project.

Comments (4)

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