27Apr 2015 by Grant Fritchey 20 Comments

Benefits for Some, All or Only a Few

PASS, Professional Development
As a member of the PASS Board of Directors I attended the PASS Business Analytics Conference (BAC) recently. You can read more about it here and here (as well as here). Let me start with an important note: I am voicing my opinion here as an individual, not an official stance of the PASS organization. There is controversy around the BAC because of a whole bunch of things, but one question in particular bothered me. It was suggested that the people attending the BAC were just consuming the worth or value that other people who paid for the Summit generated. At first, I just dismissed this concept. It stuck in the back of my mind though. Suddenly I realized why. Yes, the BAC was partly paid for by Summit. The…
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31Mar 2015 by Grant Fritchey 6 Comments

PASS Board Update: March 2015

PASS
Hello all, It's been a while since my last update. Sorry. I've just been traveling and presenting and working on books and this slipped through the cracks a bit. I'll try to do better in the future. Nothing major to report. As a board member I've been working primarily on two things. First, I've been polishing my goals for the Chapters Portfolio. I'll publish those below. Next, I'm working on the budget for Chapters for next year. In between times, a lot of what I do, is work with Regional Mentors (RM) and Chapter Leaders (CL) on an individual basis. As much as the stuff that PASS as an organization is involved with is around technology, the PASS organization, especially Chapters, is all about people. And you know how people…
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16Mar 2015 by Grant Fritchey 8 Comments

How To Speak At SQL Saturday Events

PASS, Professional Development
The PASS SQL Saturday events are meant to be a place to grow the pool of speakers, provide a mechanism for the speakers to learn, and fulfill the PASS goals of Connect, Share and Learn. So, you've decided you want to start speaking at a SQL Saturday event. Cool. You went to the <Insert Large, Popular, SQL Saturday> event last year, so you submitted this year... and didn't get accepted. Now what? First, submit. You won't get accepted if you don't try. SQL Saturday, especially the big, popular ones, may not be the best place to present for your very first time. In fact, with the large ones, you may not get accepted because people who already have a reputation are submitting to those (we all want to talk to big…
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16Jan 2015 by Grant Fritchey 10 Comments

Two Weeks on the PASS Board

PASS
The one absolute promise I made about serving on the PASS Board is that I would let you know what I was doing there. Well, we're two weeks in and I figured now was a good time for a report. Next week is my first board meeting (and I will report back on how that goes). I'll be presenting the goals I've worked up for the Chapters and see how many of them we can get approved and then how many of them we can deliver. In the time I've had on the board so far, a big part of what I've been doing is learning about what has gone before. What kind of goals did we have for last year. Which of them were delivered. Which weren't. Why. What's…
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