The PASS Board of Director elections are closed and the results are in.
I am incredibly honored that the PASS community elected me to represent them on the Board of Directors for the next two years.
I’m very excited to have this chance to work with the community to share our thoughts, vision, and ideas about PASS and to grow our organization to new heights. It’s going to be a lot of fun and I hope everyone will share their ideas with me so we can make PASS rock even more than it already does.
I just wanted to get out a quick update about the AppDev Live Meeting today.
Josef Richberg will be speaking on the subject of SSIS Load Balancing. You can find more details on the Application Development Virtual Chapter home page. Or, at 1PM Eastern time (UTC -0400) you can head on over to LiveMeeting.
How is it possible to aggregate 12,000,000 records of sales data in a short time window? In this presentation Josef Richberg will demonstrate the techniques used to randomize the input data and then use the SSIS threading framework to distribute the workload. These techniques make it possible to process a large quantity of data in a very short time frame.
Josef is a DBA for HarperCollins Publishers working with SQL Server and SSIS. He has over 16 years experience designing, building, and tuning SQL Server. Josef is also the recipient of the ’2009 Exceptional DBA’ award and he actively blogs at http://josef-richberg.squarespace.com.
PASS elections are just a few days away (from October 14th to October 20th). By now I hope that you’ve taken the time to read my, rather broad, position or Brent Ozar’s interview with me. If you haven’t, take a minute. I’ll still be here when you get back.
Now that you’ve read all of that, let’s move forward. A lot of that is pretty vague. One of my user group members pressed me for more details about what I would do if elected. Let’s just say that he was very insistent that I put my views online before the election.
My views boil down to three things: Knowledge. Growth. Connecting.
First off, let me say that I don’t think that PASS should get involved in the certification game. In the early days of the 21st century there were a number of Linux certifications available. Nobody knew which one was going to be the de facto certification at the time, so nobody got a Linux certification (well, nobody I knew got one). As a result of this cluttered marketplace, no certification had any value. Microsoft already produces certifications – they solicit feedback on how to make the process better. Rather than dilute certification market we should work with them to provide helpful, constructive feedback to make the certification process better.
That was all a sidebar. I’m not here to debate the merits and flaws of the Microsoft certification process. What I really feel strongly about is learning. More importantly, I feel that lasting learning is incredibly important.
When I went out and took the exams for the MCITP: Database Developer certification, I used a certification guide. But what I found as I studied is that the guide taught me how to pass the exam. It wasn’t teaching me how to apply the exam concepts to the real world. Throughout the certification process, I ended up using the exam guide to guide my learning. I read Books Online about three times as much as I read the certification guide just to shore up the key points.
Most certification guides just prepare you for the exam. Frequently, they aren’t even useful as a reference once you’ve taken the exam. This isn’t to knock certification guides. They serve a purpose – to help you pass an exam. But what I’m getting at is that PASS is in a phenomenal position to create certification guides that meet the needs of database professionals – certification guides that teach the fundamental concepts in a real world context while they prepare you for the exam.
How about training? How do you know that the person training you has any real world experience? How do you know that the person who wrote the training material has any real world experience? I’ve attended C++ programming classes taught by DB2 DBAs who were looking for some extra walking around money. There’s nothing wrong with that. But when you’re investing in your career, or the career of your employees, you want to make sure that there is some real world expertise behind that trainer and his training manual.
Building off of the certification guide idea, I would like to see PASS creating training material that is immediately valuable to community members. Training based on real world situations that has been written in direct response to community needs. If I want to know about the SQL CLR, I know who I would ask via email, IM, or twitter. But those people only have so much free time to answer questions before they’re overwhelmed. Now, if their combined wisdom were put into a training course based on real world usage of the SQL CLR that would do a much better job of training and educating community members than multiple email threads.
I’d love to see PASS grow. More importantly, though, I want to see the members of PASS grow. Personal and professional growth are key to being happy. How does PASS fit into this?
PASS is full of the brightest database professionals in the industry. Every time I speak to a PASS member about SQL Server, I learn something new. They’ll smile and laugh while talking shop, but as soon as I ask them to share their ideas as an article or presentation a look of absolute horror crosses their face. Speaking and writing aren’t scary things, but many people are terrified to even try.
I want to create a group of speaking and writing mentors within PASS to work with people who want to get started sharing their expertise with the public. Of course, this isn’t just for people who have never written or presented before. Anyone who wants to improve their speaking and writing should feel free to take part and also to give back. We all have a great deal to offer each other why not take advantage of our collective skills?
I’ve said it before and I will say it again – PASS is far more than just the Summit. PASS is a vibrant, global, organization with a wealth of knowledge and it is a shame that many of us only get a chance to share with our local community while we’re socializing at a meeting. Even then, we rarely get a chance to share with other people in our region unless we make a concerted effort to seek them out.
I believe that it’s important to remember that PASS is more than a yearly international conference. It’s two yearly international conferences. No, that’s not right. PASS is a huge community. Even when you look at my home state of Ohio, there are three PASS chapters in state. That’s more than enough people to put on a regional conference and invite participants and speakers from the neighboring states.
PASS in a wonderful, vibrant community, but we need to build stronger connections locally and regionally if we want to increase the health of PASS as a global organization. Local and regional conferences will also help us grow personally and professionally. PASS members will have more opportunities to hone their speaking skills, network, and increase their knowledge and understanding of SQL Server. We will be able to attract members from the other technology communities and increase collaboration across industries.
As I said earlier, my views boil down to three things: Knowledge. Growth. Connecting. I believe we have a very strong community right now and that we can take PASS from simply being a great community to being the de facto source of SQL Server knowledge, training, and community.
Starting today, and ending on Friday, October 16th, you can submit a blog post, or series of blog posts, to the 2009 Log Reader Awards.
You’re probably asking yourself “What’s a Log Reader Award?” Well, dear reader, a Log Reader Award is an award created by bloggers (myself, Andy Warren, and Brent Ozar) to recognize other bloggers for their excellence in writing across a number of metrics including style and technical knowledge. (Ability to recognize an Oxford comma is a plus, but not required.) We realize that it’s important to recognize people of all skill levels and that what makes a great introduction to a topic is not the same thing that makes up a deep dive into a single feature of SQL Server.
To make this easier, there are multiple categories: Book Review, Business Intelligence, CLR, New Blog (less than one year old, at least one post a month), Professional Development, Series (Multiple Posts), Server Management & Automation, T-SQL, and Unusual (it’s great, you love it, but it doesn’t belong in a previous category).
Well, you go to the submission form and enter your details. On October 17th, we take your list of submissions and review them. Keep in mind, though, that we’re only going to review the last two posts you submit. This is how we’re going to stop you from voting Chicago style. Only posts that you’ve written between October 15th, 2008 and October 16th, 2009 are eligible. You can’t submit your doctoral thesis on relational design that you wrote 15 years ago. We’re looking for current articles from active bloggers.
Your RSS subscription will look like this
The satisfaction of a job well done.
In addition to the satisfaction of a job well done, you will also receive the praise and admiration of your peers. We’re working on ways for award recipients to show off that they are an amazing blogger. Oh, and we’ll be announcing the winner at PASS. In front of people. So it won’t just be me telling the coat check crew about you… everyone will get to know how great you are!
Have as many mobile devices with connectivity available as possible.
Have a camera ready and charged.
Charge everything every night. Even if it’s at 95% charge: charge it.
Pick sessions that challenge you.
Pick sessions you know nothing about.
Make back up plans for sessions you want to see, just in case.
Don’t make plans.
Be flexible.
Don’t trust the wi-fi.
Pack light.
Don’t be afraid to ask vendors for swag.
Drink water.
Walk everywhere.
Wear good socks.
Plan to be tired.
Take a backup.
Carry a pen and paper.
Carry a pencil.
Carry business cards.
Don’t carry books – they’re heavy.
Plan on 5 nines of uptime – you can sleep during the maintenance window.
Caffeine is your friend.
Drink water.
Be open to conversation.
Don’t be afraid to start a conversation.
Introduce yourself to everyone.
Don’t loiter – stand and talk instead.
Slide decks are downloadable; conversations aren’t.
Carry snacks.
See the city.
Take time to breathe.
Take time to sit.
Don’t be afraid.
Learn.
I started this in the comments on Colin Stasiuk’s post – 4 Weeks Away from the PASS Summit and thought I would continue it here.
So, I had a video made up when the nominations process started. Then I emailed the unencoded 15MB version to PASS instead of the wonderful, tiny, encoded version. So, that being said, here’s the wonderful, tiny, encoded version. Enjoy:
[media id=1]
Well, it’s election season at PASS. The fun part is that I’m running this year. That’s right, yours truly is running for the PASS Board of Directors.
So, here’s how it works: elections go from October 12th through October 20th. During that time you can vote. Up until that time… you can’t.
I have ideas about PASS. A lot of ideas. If you want to know about my ideas, check out the amazing video I made (I’ll be posting it later today) or feel free to get in touch. I do actually want to hear your thoughts, hear what you have to say, and be challenged to do a great job as a member of this great community that we’re all a part of.
That’s right. Here at PASS we’re working on ways to virtualize everything. Not only can we virtualize away your web server and SQL Server, but now we’ve found a way to virtualize your user group!
We’re pleased to announce that PASS has several new Virtual Chapters dedicated to providing you with the finest quality SQL Server content made with the freshest virtual ingredients available on the market today.
So, what is a Virtual Chapter? Well, once upon a time these things were called SIGs. Then someone decided that these were more than just special interest groups (SIG, get it?). Now we have Virtual Chapters. Same great taste, now with 1/3 the calories!
Spread the world, tell people you know about the Virtual Chapters . This is a fantastic program and a great way for you to get access to SQL Server learning when you can’t make it to a user group or just feel like getting your learn on during the day.
That’s right, free and/or cheap stuff. Right now you’re probably saying to yourself “ZOMG! He’s got free stuff!”
So, what do I know about that’s free?
Data Cleansing with SSIS – Eric Veerman is going to be talking all about data cleansing. You know, getting all of the crud and nastiness out of your incoming data. You know, the data where people have extra spaces in their name because your CRM system treats that as a different person and sales people can steal commissions if it’s a “new” customer.
SQL Lunch: Historical DMV Information Thomas LeBlanc is giving this presentation. Here’s what he has to say about it: DMV are great to find information about performance without running a trace. But there information is lost once the SQL Server service is restarted. After finding some useful scripts online (Thanks SQL Server community!!!), I decided to schedule a job to run the night before to store Index Usage, Least Used Indexes, SP Usage, Missing Index and Expensive CPU Usage. We will review the scripts and historical data captured.
CBusPASS – the Columbus, OH PASS Chapter – is meeting tomorrow, September 10th, at 6:30PM. Joe Webb will be giving his presentation Locking and Blocking Made Simple: A good working knowledge of how SQL Server makes use of locking and transaction isolation levels can go a long way toward improving an application’s performance. In this session, we will explore SQL Server’s locking methodology and discover techniques for enhancing query response times.
Some of the 24 Hours of PASS Sessions are now online for viewing. Check them out and get your learn on!
Remember how I posted about getting to PASS on the cheap? Or how about that interview I did with Thomas LaRock about getting to PASS on the cheap?
Well, thanks to some some great volunteers we now have a forum for the Summit! The point of the forum is to help you save money bu sharing a room with another attendee, a ride, or to coordinate social get togethers. We really want you to come to the PASS Summit and have fun. I really do. Really.
The PASS Summit is coming up in a few months and I bet you’re worried about attending. It costs money; I totally understand that. But there are a lot of ways to go for cheap.
Here’s what I mean by a sponsor: Ask your employer to sponsor your trip to the PASS Summit. They aren’t paying for it, they’re sponsoring you.
You’re asking someone to spend what might initially appear to be a large chunk of money on you.
Wrong.
You’re asking your sponsor to make an investment in your career. But, in addition to this, you’re telling your sponsor that by sending you to the PASS Summit that you are going to be investing back in the company. By sending you to the PASS Summit, they are investing roughly $3,000 on training for you, give or take a few pennies. Sounds like a lot, right? Well, not really. Because, if you think about it, at the PASS Summit you are getting three days of training from the best and the brightest that the SQL Server community and Microsoft have to offer. Nowhere else are you going to have the chance to learn from so many great minds. This opportunity alone would normally cost you an ungodly sum of money. Now, ask yourself: How many people are on my team who could benefit from this knowledge? How many people are on other teams in my organization who could benefit from this knowledge? Let’s say there are 8, including you. What’s 8 x $3,000? $24,000. That’s a lot of money. There’s no way your company could possibly afford to send 8 people to the PASS Summit (bear with me, I’m going somewhere).
Act now and you can get $24,000 worth of training for only $3,000
That’s right, boss! For one easy payment of $3,000 you get $24,000 of value!
How can you possibly deliver this much value? Well, you take copious notes. Take notes in such detail that you could give the presentation. If you don’t think you can do that, talk to the presenter and get their slide deck. Most presenters are more than happy to give you a copy of their slides. Plus, I’m pretty sure they have to make the slides publicly available if they want to present at the PASS Summit. Why are you taking so many notes? Because you’re going to make presentations when you return from the PASS Summit! That’s right, you are going to bring the PASS Summit to your company. You’re going to go to the PASS Summit so you can come back to work and teach everything you learned to your co-workers. Remember how I mentioned that you were investing back in the company? This is how. You’re going to cram your brain with knowledge at the PASS Summit. You’re going to distill that knowledge for when you get back to the office. Then you’re going to deliver training that is specifically tailored to your organization.
They write you a check. Seriously, though, this knowledge thing you’re doing isn’t free. Someone has to write a check. By the same token, if you’re sending yourself to the PASS Summit on your own nickel you’re going to attend sessions that you’re interested in. If someone else is sending you, the topic turns to “investment”.
Your sponsor makes an agreement with you: They will pay for airfare, hotel, and the Summit registration costs (hopefully all three, although registration is fine too). In exchange you do everything we talked about above. Their side of things is, frankly, pretty easy: find a couple of grand laying around that they can invest in your career. Money doesn’t grow on trees, but three grand is pretty easy to find.
Keep pushing, you'll get smarter
Need some ideas on how to put this letter together? I’ve done the basic homework on this one. This sample letter is, in fact, the letter that I’ve sent to my employer asking them to give me money in exchange for my smarts. It also includes the sessions that I want to attend as well as the sessions that I think might be of some use to my co-workers.
Why give away my secret sauce?
Seriously, I want to see as many new faces at the PASS Summit as I can. I want to meet people and learn from them. I want to make new friends. And, frankly, I want you to have a chance to experience everything that the PASS Summit has to offer: sessions, networking, food, vendor swag, all of it. I put the letter together with the help of a few community people because we want to see you at the PASS Summit. The kicker: I don’t get a single cent if you got to the PASS Summit. I just want you to go and have as much fun as I had.
Here’s the Sample PASS Summit ROI document. This is very similar to the document that I sent to my employer.
Let’s say that your sponsor will only cover the registration for the PASS Summit. What are you going to do? There are a lot of ways to get to the Summit for cheap. More importantly, there are a lot of ways that you can stay at the Summit for next to nothing. For the purpose of this example, I’m going to assume you’re arriving on Monday, November 2nd, and flying out on Friday, November 6th. It’s a bit hectic, I know, but it saves on the hotel.
Let’s take a look at flights, first.
| Point of Origin | Cost |
|---|---|
| Columbus, OH | $194 |
| Chicago, IL (any airport) | $309 |
| New York, NY | $258 |
| Atlanta, GA | $242 |
| Milwaukee, WI | $197 |
| Los Angeles, CA | $179 |
| Denver, CO | $159 |
| Dallas, TX | $257 |
| Tampa, FL | $238 |
| Ljubljana, Slovenia | $1936 |
I just looked these up on Expedia. So, it’s pretty easy to see that you could get to the PASS Summit for about 300 bucks, max via airplane. Less if you ride a horse. Or maybe more. I don’t know how much travel by horse costs. Point is, you can travel for pretty cheap.
What about food while you’re at the Summit? Well, I survived last year largely by eating the food provided by the catering folks and then buttering up vendors and getting invited to fancy dinners. It sounds gross, but it’s true: if you butter up vendors you can get invited to dinner. Even if you don’t butter up the vendors, you can still get invited to dinner. Even then, you can still eat for incredibly cheap in Seattle. There are a number of great local restaurants within an easy walk of the convention center. As long as you’re willing to eat breakfast and lunch at the convention center, you could probably get a way with spending no more than $15 a day on food. So that’s 4 days at $15 a day, roughly, which works out to $60.
$300 + $60 = $360, in case you’re keeping track at home.
Park bench? Well, unless you enjoy the homeless chic look of Derelicte and freezing to death on a bench, you probably want something better than a park bench. This is where cheap hotels and your network come into play.
Taking a quick look on expedia (search in Seattle and narrow down the search to “Downtown Seattle”), there are multiple hotels within walking distance of the convention center starting at $80 a night. If you split that with a friend, you’re down to $40 a night. That’s only $160 for all four days that we’re talking about for our hypothetical trip to the PASS Summit. Keep in mind when you’re reviewing your hotel choices that you’re going to be spending about 30 minutes standing up and awake in your room over the entire course of the Summit. The rest of the time you are probably going to be in a session or at some kind of event. The hotel doesn’t need 200 cable channels, a whirlpool, HBO, “magic fingers” or anything like that. Bed + walls = win.
So, now we’re looking at a total price of $300 + $60 + $160 = $520.
Here are some pricing comparisons if you don’t believe me (all prices exclude tax and whatever exorbitant “hotel fee” the city government has decided to levy on us):
| Hotel | Price per Night | With Roommate |
|---|---|---|
| Sheraton (Conference hotel) | $199 | $99.50 |
| The Roosevelt | $116 | $58 |
| Red Lion Hotel | $161 | $80.50 |
| Grand Hyatt Seattle | $191.00 | $95.50 |
That’s right, if you can get your company to foot the bill for the PASS Summit registration, the total cost for you could be as low as $520 if you’re careful about things. With 2 months left until the Summit, that’s a very small amount of money that you need to save between now and then. Don’t get coffee every day, stop renting movies, don’t get another tattoo, stop going out to lunch, do something. There are a lot of ways to save yourself $520 between now and september. Remember, you don’t have to pay for the hotel until you check out, but you do have to find the cash for your airfare.
There you have it! If you work with your employer to bring value back from the PASS Summit it becomes a lot easier to justify your attendance. Becoming the trainer not only makes you more valuable through your ability to train your co-workers, but it also increases your ability to communicate clearly and fluently as well as think on your feet. If you think creatively, you can easily find ways to save money at the PASS Summit and make it possible to attend on the cheap. So, remember to ask your employer for money and offer to make a deal and work things out however you can. You never know, they just might give you a big pile of money.
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