Notes on SQLSaturday #51

We started the event with a speaker/volunteer dinner at the home of Kevin Kline (former PASS President, current MVP,and all around good guy). Aside it being a looong way out from downtown Nashville, it was a great evening, people inside and outside, burgers, bbq, and all the sides, and even banana pudding. Thanks Kevin! A […]

PASS Update #41 (Elections)

In 2009 we had a contentious election cycle at PASS, and I won’t go through the details again, but because of that I saw two things; we needed greater transparency, and for what I feel was the first time the SQL community took on the task of vetting and discussing the candidates. The latter point […]

PASS Board Meeting This Week

I’m flying to Nashville today for the Board meeting on August 19 and 20, 2010. I had already planned to attend the SQLSaturday in Nashville, so for once the schedule aligned nicely. I’m hoping that is something we can do more of, good for the Board to be in town to see grass roots in […]

A Chance to Win a Free Trip to the PASS Summit

Passing along this contest from Idera and MSSQLTips. I don’t do many plugs, but it’s a chance for someone to go to the PASS Summit that otherwise would not – and that is a good thing! http://www.mssqltips.com/pass_giveaway_entry.asp

Logo Selected for SQLRally

Hopefully everyone saw the announcement already, either via the PASS Connector or the Twitter announcement, but we have – finally! – a logo: I think it’s pretty good and almost everything I hoped for; simple, clean, emphasis on SQLRally but still showing the PASS association. The one thing we didn’t get was the checkered flag, […]

Registration Open for 24 Hours of PASS

The ‘Summit Preview’ edition, this time around it features speakers from the upcoming PASS Summit with each doing a one hour presentation. This time instead of a continuous 24 hour stream, half will be delivered on Sep 15, 2010 and the other half on Sep 16, 2010. I think you’ll find it to be really […]

Begining Thoughts on a PASS Speaker Certification

Consider this one a thinking out loud post more than most. We’ve had an explosion of speakers in the SQL Server world over the past three years, and more arriving every day. That’s an unbelievably good thing for our community and our profession for a lot of reasons. Almost all do a passable or better […]

Reminder to Vote for the SQLRally Logo

Kendal Van Dyke blogged about it last week here, we ended up with 3 great designs to pick from for the new SQLRally event format (coming to Orlando in May 2011), all you have to do is help us pick the best one! Voting Link: http://www.sqlpass.org/Events/PASSSQLRally/LogoVote.aspx Which will look good on a web site? On […]

PASS Update #40 (Elections)

Last week I made it through the first screening of candidates for this years Board of Directors election. Seven of nine candidates advanced to the interview phase with my interview scheduled for Wednesday of this week. It’s a strong field of candidates this year, and I hope that all make it through to full nominee […]

Help Build the SQLRally Speaker/Topic Selection Process – Part 1

Last week we announced PASS SQLRally, the new event that we’ll be holding in May 2011 in Orlando (aka the “Spring Event”). A big item is deciding how we want to pick speakers and build the schedule. We have a process we use for the Summit and we could use that, but if we’re building […]