The Future of the SQLSaturday Tools

Every year when many of the SQLSaturday event leaders meet at the Summit the topic of improvements to the tools comes up. Certainly the site has seen changes and improvements over the years, plus at least two new coats of paint (on the public site), but it’s never enough (with software, it never is). Invariably […]

Notes on the 2017 PASS Summit

Just a few notes: Weather on Wed was great, ok on Thurs, cold on Fri. Have had worse years! Felt like I saw fewer people this year (that I knew), in part due to arriving Wed after lunch and in part to many of them skipping the event due to Halloween Had a lot of […]

Monday Night Networking Dinner 2017

It’s on! Free registration at EventBrite. I wrote last month about not being able to make it to Seattle on Monday to help organize the annual Networking Dinner. Good news though, Lisa Bohm has volunteered to organize the event this year. It will be held at Yard House, 1501 4th Ave, Seattle, beginning at 6 […]

PASS Travel Plans, Halloween, Networking Dinner, SQL Dinner & Game Night

Normally I fly out Monday to spend the week at PASS. It’s good to get there early to adjust to the time change, I like to attend the meetings on Tuesday, and of course Monday night is the networking party that Steve Jones & I have organized the last few years. This year I’m flying […]

Changing the SQLSaturday Logo?

I read with interest the post from Bob Pusateri that discusses what seems to be the next iteration of the SQLSaturday logo. Informative, calm, and I thought had quite a few valid points. I don’t know that I can be as logical or as calm! Logically, I’d add to the list of concerns the signage […]

Reviewing the 2016 PASS Audited Financials

Notes on items I found interesting in the financial statement, recommend you download and read the entire document. Global Alliance Partner (GAP) dues decreased from $103k to $65k. This doesn’t seem like a lot of money either way, is this program successful? It looks like we lost $40k in foreign currency in 2015. Not sure […]

Reading the January 2017 PASS Minutes

I’ve been catching up on stuff this week, including reading the January 2017 minutes. It was in-person meeting so a lot was covered. I don’t want to summarize it, you should read it, but there were some trends I noticed I wanted to comment on: Goals are frequently mentioned, but not shown. What was the […]

Reviewing the PASS 2017 Budget

I did a quick review of the 2017 PASS Budget. It’s not a page turner, but it has a lot of good information. I wish there as more context about some of the changes. The following isn’t a summary, just notes about areas I either care about or caught my eye: No revenue growth predicted […]

The PASS Executive Committee

I was just reading The PASS Board Guidance Policy . Overall a reasonable document and absolutely worth reading if you’re thinking about running for the Board. It is missing what I consider a key point about the Executive Committee, so I wanted to write a quick note on that. The Executive Committee (ExecCo in PASS lingo) are […]

Thinking about Chapters (aka Groups)

I think it was 2003 or 2004 when someone from PASS came to Orlando and helped start what became OPASS. They stressed the need to find speakers each month and the need to have multiple people involved so that the group wouldn’t die if someone moved on. The formula was find a sponsor, find a […]