The Future of PASS

2020 has been a tough year for PASS. It’s primary fund raiser – the PASS Summit – was converted to a virtual event that attracted fewer attendees and far less revenue than the in-person version. Going into the event they were projecting a budget shortfall of $1.5 million for the fiscal year ending in June […]

Notes on the PASS 2020 Virtual Summit – Conclusions

I waited a week to write this, letting the experience settle some. Looking back, it wasn’t a terrible experience. Content was findable and as far as I could tell delivered without many issues, which is the main goal of any educational event. Networking felt like an after thought poorly executed, not at all a first […]

Notes on the 2020 PASS Virtual Summit – Part 6

Mostly Friday notes here. This morning I was the moderator for Continuous Integration with Local Agents and Azure DevOps by Steve Jones. The way the Summit worked this year is that the speaker, moderator, and support staff would all join a Zoom call and then the Zoom call was streamed back to Cadmium and out […]

Notes on the 2020 PASS Virtual Summit – Part 5

Thursday evening, writing a few more notes. Felt like I struggled more to stay engaged and attentive today, which is above average for day 4 of a 5 day event, for me at least. About 3 pm I went for a long walk and listened to a presentation, that worked out well, it was stuff […]

Notes on the 2020 PASS Virtual Summit – Part 4

Last night (Tuesday) was the main reception and then “networking bubbles”. The reception consisted of DJ Leanne playing assorted music (and seeming to have a good time doing so) with a chat window for attendees and a bartender/mixer (mixologist?) making a few variations of a SQL Sipper .Reading that, it probably feels underwhelming and I […]

Serious Thoughts About PASS

Back when Covid started I guessed that this might be yet another live-or-die challenge for PASS. PASS is heavily dependent on Summit revenue and uses it to fund all the other stuff. Looking at the most recent budget notes (see the PASS blog) there’s a forecasted shortfall of $1.5m and that’s if they hit their […]

Vote in the PASS Election

If you login to pass.org AND have previously met the criteria to vote this year, you’ll see this. Click the button and you’ll be off to the voting page where you can pick three candidates from the slate. I haven’t endorsed anyone this year and I’m not going to announce my choices either. Read the […]

Notes on the 2020 PASS Virtual Summit – Part 3

Tuesday notes! Today I’m in Execution Plans in Depth by Hugo Kornelis. Notes: Today the presenter is using the Cadmium/EventScribe platform instead of GotoWebinar Started off with a lot of people not being able to hear the presenter, that was fixed quickly Being able to see questions and comments is nice. Not much traffic there […]

Notes on the 2020 PASS Virtual Summit – Part 2

Writing most of this Monday afternoon while on lunch break. I’m attending the Advanced T-SQL Querying and Query Tuning pre-con by Itzik Ben-Gan. You access pre-cons via the Virtual Summit web site or app, but in this case (idk, may all pre-cons) it’s presented via GotoWebinar. Quick notes on the experience: All users muted due […]

Notes on the 2020 PASS Virtual Summit – Part 1

I’m in learning mode this week, scheduled for two full day pre-cons plus the Summit. I’ve been to a couple of virtual events already this year, but they were ones where I had never been to the in-person version so it was hard to compare things. For the Summit my goal is to try to […]