I was actually travelling for most of July and some of that was on holiday with the family, the real family. That's why I didn't get a June update posted. I don't have anything much exciting to report. We're finally getting data out of our Chapter database and can report some interesting stuff. We've added 29 new chapters in the fiscal year of 2015. 10 in the US, 12 in EMEA, 2 in LATAM and 5 in APAC. There's a bunch more. Not sure when it's all supposed to be published, but I'll share some of it now, just 'cause. Our chapters logged 1,405 meetings in fiscal year 2015. That's a pretty serious amount of training. Well done everyone! Thanks for all your work Carmen. I missed the July board meeting…
I've had a busy month on the Board. You may have seen some tweets going by about our compliance with international laws regarding SPAM. This has been something of an education, so anything I say wrong below, it's because I'm wrong, but not malevolent (at least in regards to this topic), so please be kind. It appears that the mechanisms we had on our emails for showing where the email came from and how to unsubscribe from it, weren't completely in compliance... IF... we were sending emails that involved advertising. By we, I mean Chapters, not HQ. Now, that IF, could mean that we could skip out of meeting this requirement when our emails didn't involve advertisements, but then it'd have to be in compliance when it did and we'd…
I'm almost done reading the book Connected (will be by the time this is published). It's fascinating although, at least so far, little in the way of suggestions for how to take advantage of this information. That however doesn't change my plans around working on positive thoughts and emotions as a way to hack your own mind and increase productivity. I'm also trying to figure out how to reinforce my network. In short, these are completely self-serving posts. I am grateful for Thomas LaRock (b|t). Tom is hard to miss. If you look at the floor all the time, the green shoes might be a giveaway. If you look up a lot, keep looking up because he's quite tall. Oh yeah, and he's the President of PASS (for a couple of…
It's been a pretty interesting month on the board. First, we did have a little problem. I'm sure one or two of you may have noticed that the SQL Saturday web site was down for a moment. Well, three days. Joking aside, this was a serious problem, but my involvement was largely peripheral since I'm in charge of Chapters. I tried to help out a little, offering what support I could and, if nothing else, supplying an ear, willing to listen. Quite a few people took advantage of that. I communicated all their information up the chain to HQ and the other board members. Nothing has been held back. Next, we've started the budgeting process. That's fascinating. As well as a giant pain in the... well, anyway. Thankfully the people…
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…
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…
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…
I love it that my first post of the new year is going to be Speaker of the Month. I'm really enjoying doing these because I'm getting to attend a lot more sessions at the events I go to in order to get choices. But, please, don't bug me. If I can attend your session, I will. If I can't... Anyway. Speaker of the Month for January 2015 is William Wolf (b|t)Â and his session "Common Coding Mistakes and How to Mitigate Them" that was delivered at SQL Saturday DC. This was a good session. It was informative. I really liked how Bill (I'm going to use that because it's easier to type and despite looking like the Demon Biker of the Apocalypse, he's a bigger sweetheart than I am) kept…
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…