Growing the Pool of SQL Speakers – Part 3

Continuing on from Part 2, I want to continue this time with two points I left open last time: How to qualify who gets help in terms of funding to speak Whether there is really a speaker shortage I want to start with the second point. Is there a shortage of speakers? The honest answer […]

Instructables Contest: Paracord

Instructables has a Paracord contest going that requires some portion of a project include paracord (often referred to as 550 cord for the breaking strength of 550 lbs. I don’t have a good idea yet, hoping one appears before the April 11 submission deadline. Thought I’d share, most of us in IT enjoy a challenge […]

Building a Wiki

I’ve long admired the value that I get from Wikipedia and like the concept of crowd sourcing knowledge, just never seemed to get around to setting one up. Finally decided to do it as a way to accelerate the SQLSaturday documentation, and I’ve set it up at http://wiki.sqlsaturday.com. I looked at a few options. I […]

Notes from the Orlando Code Camp March 2010

I arrived about 7:15 and already quite a few people on hand. Registration was moved to inside this time, just inside the cafeteria, and seemed like a much better traffic flow. Few things I noted on arrival: Attendees didn’t receive name badges (this really helps speakers & networking) Breakfast set up looked good, no decaf […]

Book Review: Titan The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr.

I read Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr. ($13 @ Amazon) as one of the books recommended to me earlier in the year when I asked for suggestions. It was a long read, but filled in a lot of blanks about events around the turn of the century, and a lot about Standard […]

What Sessions Do You Want for the PASS 2010 Summit?

Survey was announced in the Connector on Wednesday, reposting the link here. We need your thoughts on this! http://www.zoomerang.com/Survey/WEB22ADZ7NCK9A

PASS Update #27

I’m just back from the March 2010 Board meeting and it went better than usual (for any meeting). Most of arrived Sunday afternoon/evening and after a bit of social time I spent about four hours with Hannes, Craig, and Blythe working on SQLSaturday transition stuff (lots of details next week, but we’ve made good progress!) […]

Critiquing Free Events

Yesterday I wrote about expectations at free events, basically saying they don’t differ a lot from paid events. The next part of that is to talk about how to deliver and accept criticism in a positive way. At most events there is an evaluation form given to attendees and while it’s hard to write a […]

Free Events – It’s All About Expectations

Isn’t free enough? If you go to a free event do you have a right to complain? Or, if you lead a free event, should you have the expectation that attendees will appreciate all the hard work and ignore minor problems? A thorny topic for today! The short answer is that even free events have […]

Windows Themes (We need a PASS Theme!)

I imagine most of us change our wallpaper on the desktop from time to time. Frivolous but fun, a simple way to personalize what is otherwise a not very exciting tool most of the time. Windows 7 does a nice job of taking that further with some really good themes – you can get a […]

SQLAndy

Month: March 2010