WHOOP! Another PASS Summit is complete. This one was amazing. It's my first time ever as a member of the Board of Directors of the PASS organization to attend the Summit and take part in the full process of making the sausage. It was hard. It was exhausting (more so than usual). It was one the most exhilarating, fascinating and wonderful experiences of my life. First the sad news, Rimma Nehme and Dr. DeWitt have delivered their last presentation at the PASS Summit. It's the end of an era. I was at the first session delivered by Dr. DeWitt. It was one of the most amazing technical keynotes I'd ever seen until the next one that he gave. The two of them became absolute rock stars in the SQL Server…
The Nominations Committee has done their job and the final report has been published. Good luck to everyone running. Thank you for stepping up and taking part in this process. This is the first time in a very long time that I don't get to put out a "You should listen to me and vote for..." blog post. Since I'm on the board I feel more than a little squeamish coming out for any candidate. If I openly support Person Y over Person X, have I just yacked off all the supporters of Person X? Have I yacked off Person X? Most importantly, have I potentially poisoned a relationship that I need in order to be effective while on the Board? Add to that the fact that I was ask…
I decided in January that I would write regularly about people that I'm grateful for. Now it's April. Oops. The concepts are simple and science based. Positive emotions help your clarity of thought. Further, your moods and actions extend out through your network to the third layer. With that in mind, I want to think more clearly and the most direct path to positive thoughts and emotions being gratitude, I'm attempting to focus and publicize my gratitude by publicly sharing it through these blogs (in short, I'm trying to tune my brain like I would tune a query). I am grateful for Tim Ford (b|t). Tim is a great guy. Further, Tim can be patient with thick headed dorks (raising my hand). For example, among all the other stuff Tim does…
It's not a question of scheduling. I just haven't been to lots of community events in the last several months so that I can see community speakers and find one to give an award to. I've been trying. So, we're giving out two awards this month (my blog, my award, my rules). Unfortunately, neither one is going to a full-blown community speaker. Hey, not my fault. I'm trying. Anyway, on with the show. The first award goes to ALL the speakers on the SQL Cruise. That's Jes Borland(b|t), Jeff Lehman(L), David Klee(b|t), and Kevin Kline(b|t). Look, I get it, Tim Ford(b|t), the guy who runs SQL Cruise, goes after top speakers (and, somehow I get in too). But, until you've watched these people present, in the long form sessions that…
A while back I wrote about saying "Thank you" to people. Last night I was listening to NPR on my ride home from a great New England SQL Server User Group meeting (yes, I listen to NPR). Two different reports came on during my ride that got me thinking again about my previous blog post. The first talked about how negative emotions directly impact your ability to make rational decisions. They've found that people actually spend more money on items when they're depressed than they do when they're happy. There's a bunch of research around it, but I missed where it was published. It was a great discussion. They found that getting yourself into a positive mood directs your focus outwards rather than inwards. One of the best ways to get that…
For the first time ever at the PASS Summit, a competition was held to select a speaker for the 2015 Summit. This competition was organized and run by Denny Cherry. You can read all about what he thought of the event right here. I was asked to take part as a judge. I was on the panel for all the preliminaries and then sat in the room for the final. Here's what I thought of the event. First off, thank you to the PASS organization for taking a chance. This is a deviation from the way things have been done. Trying new things can be difficult, but the organization stepped right up and supported this addition to the rich pageant that is the Summit. Second, I want to thank Denny…
I love negative feedback. Well, not really. I love constructive feedback. I love the feedback that gives me things to think about. Am I presenting the right material? Am I presenting it in the right way? Can I improve? But, in order to get constructive feedback, people have to tell you that something you're doing, or not doing, isn't working. That's frequently taken as negative feedback, but it isn't. Let's explore this. If there's a feedback form for a session. It says that 1 is bad, 5 is great and you put a 1, or 2, you didn't like the session. But, if you don't leave a comment, that's just negative feedback. If the comment is something along the lines of "You suck." That again is negative feedback. But, if you say…
Having very recently gone through the nomination process for the PASS Board, I thought I would share a few things about it. Overall, it was a great experience. I feel that I really had to stretch to meet everything required of me. It was quite difficult to put together all the campaign material. Deciding on who to ask to give you recommendations was also very difficult. All, very much, as it should be. We're talking about stepping up to run for the board of, essentially, a multi-million dollar corporation. It should be hard to do that. The interview process with the Nomination Committee was also no picnic. Most of these people had already served on the board, so they knew exactly what you, the nominee, was going to get into,…
I'm learning how to speak German. Interestingly enough, you don't start off reading dissertations. Instead, you begin by learning the names of things, Teller for plate, Buch for book. The fundamentals. I'm a third degree black belt in Ken Ryu Kenpo. But you don't start that, or continue it, by learning complex kata. Instead, you start with how to make a fist, how to hold your hands up in a defensive stance. The fundamentals. I've been doing crossfit and Olympic weightlifting for a couple of years now. I've been working hard on my clean, standing up tall during the lift, getting my elbows around quick. The fundamentals. Situation after situation, skill set after skill set, you have to get the fundamentals right. And, if you don't get the fundamentals right,…
Oh we are a bunch of high school kids at heart. Maybe high school never ends (and there's a nightmare, god I hated high school). But, there's been drama about the 2014 PASS Summit sessions and the Selection Committee's work. I was on the committee. I worked as a part of the team responsible for rating sessions for the Azure track (said track is gone, more on that later). As self-serving a statement as this is, I think we did a good job. Further, I think the process worked. You can read the official explanation of the process here. Amy did great work and deserves your thanks. All the volunteers who reviewed over 900 submissions from more than 300 people, ON THEIR OWN TIME, FOR FREE, also deserve your thanks. The vitriol directed at…