Making the Most of PASS Summit and Similar Events

Events like the PASS Summit aren’t just about education. They are a chance to meet new people, get some distance from the day to day problems of work (and life perhaps), and even have some fun. Done well attendees end the week tired and recharged. How to do that varies by person, by personality type, experience level, skill […]

Networking Dinner at the 2016 PASS Summit

Steve Jones & I are organizing our 7th annual networking dinner on Monday night, October 24th in Seattle. We’re changing the formula just a little this year in an effort to work better with the hosting restaurant – it’s hard to absorb 200 people showing up all at the same time. We’ve set up four […]

The ROI of SQLSaturday for PASS & Decreased Event Funding

Returning to the post about Making SQSaturday Sustainable (see also a follow post about addressing concerns) it mentioned two topics that I wanted to look at more; the ROI for PASS and the decrease in funding to events. For the past few years the standard has been for PASS to sponsor each SQLSaturday at a […]

The End of the BAC–Why?

In a post titled The Future of the BA Community PASS announced that there would be no Business Analytics conference in 2017 and that the new strategy would be multi pronged, focused on local groups and events. I’ve never been a fan of the concept of the BAC so it was with mixed emotions I […]

600 Miles, Limits, Fears, and Possibilities for SQLSaturday

Last week PASS published some new guidance for SQLSaturday that sets a 600 mile rule (has since been updated, still keeps the radius) to keep events from being held too close together and another that reduces the funding from PASS for most events. I appreciate the stated goals, find myself a bit frustrated at the […]

Karla Set the Standard

Last week Karla Landrum announced that she will be leaving her position as Community Evangelist later this year after five years. That means change for PASS and for us and for Karla, but just the nature and scale of that pending change illustrates how much Karla has done in the those five years. Karla was the […]

PASS Nominating Committee Update

Today PASS released a bunch of stuff for the upcoming election including the attributes of an “ideal candidate”. We put in quite a bit of time on that description, in part because people often ask “am I ready” and in part because it is the next step in doing a better job of qualifying candidates […]

Names From the Past

Can you guess what all of these people have in common? Shawn Weisfeld Joe Healy Barry Ralston Trey Johnson Jon Winer Wes Dumey Donnie Reynolds Kevin Jacobs Joseph Memmo Brian Knight Michael Antonovich Declan Link Patrick Thompson Jeff Garbus Jim Blizzard Ken Tucker Jessica Moss Bayer White Joe Celko Judy Pipia Jean-Claud Armand Michael Wells […]

SQLSaturday Orlando 2016 Call for Speakers Closes July 17, 2016

We’ve advanced the closing date for the SQLSaturday Orlando call for speakers to July 17. That’s to give us time to set the schedule and have it announced around August 1, just a little more than 60 days before the event. We’ll get an email with that information out to the Orlando speaker list later today. […]

The PASS Speaker Agreement

I hope when you’ve read all of this post that you’ll think that I’ve added to the discussion and not fueled the fire. The various posts and discussions and the time writing this (multiple drafts) have definitely caused me to re-examine my own views. I’ve found that some were simplistic (might still be!) and others […]