I have now been on both ends of the process. Submitting abstracts for conferences and selecting them in this year’s SQL PASS process.
First, I would like to applaud PASS for taking a huge step forward in two areas. First is marketing. They have grow the submissions, sessions and attendees at an exponential pace. I guess they will beat TECHED this year. They also introduced a social element to the process. Once you submitted an abstract, it was open to others to view. This creates a crowdsourcing element. It makes the community to step it up a notch. The result is a better conference for the participants due to competition.
Here are a few tips from my experience on both sides of the isle.
Anyway, I would be happy to review your abstract in the future and provide constructive criticism. Feel free to drop me a note.
Last week, I wrote an editorial that I tried to keep fact based and my opinion out of. Wait, is that still an editorial? Anyway, I was happy to see this post by Bill Graziano(RSS, Twitter) today. BTW, have you subscribed to the SQLPASS blog?
I was concerned that the BI track would be taking away from the other tracks even though it didn’t look to be justified based on the survey. My concerns have been alleviated.
Here are a few quotes:
Again the full post can be found here.
I will be speaking at the Greater Fort Worth SQL Server Users group this Wednesday. The talk will be on Troubleshooting with the DMV’s. If you are a DFW SQL’er come on out. Directions and more info can be found here.
If you don’t come, I am sending my boy after you with blow torch and a pair of pliers.
I hope I do not offend my BI brethren. I am just stating the facts from the survey and the fact that that the abstract submission deadline has been extended due to fact that the BI conference has been canceled.
My request is that the number of sessions per track reflect the survey results. I hope that the BI track is not inflated to the point that it cuts out sessions from other tracks.
Here are some fact from the survey which can be found here.
Based on the survey DBA and Database Dev tracks should have the most sessions. The Professional Development and BI tracks should have close to an equal number. In the past, it seems like the BI sessions doubled or tripled the Professional Development session.
I am trying to keep opinion out of this post so I leave it an this. Am I misinterpreting the numbers? What are your thoughts?
Disclosure: I am team lead on the DBA abstract selection team and I have submitting a single ProDev abstract.
Here are the slides from my SQL PASS DBA SIG live meeting today. I thought is was a timely topic with the increase of twitter usage in the SQL Server community after the PASS Summit. A lot of people said they could not get in with the passcode. My apologies on that… I am not sure what happened there. Anyway, here are the slides and .sql file. Please feel to hit me up if you have any questions.
Edit: If you missed the audio too, this post is still valid.
PASS has brought a lot of new SQL folks to twitter and people who were causal users previously have really embraced it. I hope they stick around long enough to “get it”. There are few things you have to do to make the experience good. Ok, one more list.
1. You have to follow enough people with similar interests. “Enough” is relative. 200 is a good number. I need 1000+ but I like to drink from the fire hose.
2. A good start is to follow everyone here, here and here.
3. Search for people with similar interests at http://search.twitter.com
4. Get a real client. I like outtwit. Others like digsby, tweekdeck, twhirl, witty.
5. Use it to update your facebook status.
Related posts:
Social Computing for the DBA
This Update Came from SQL Server
A SQLCLR Twitter Client
SQLBlog on twitter(see video)
Cool SQL People that I Follow on Twitter
Twitter 101
Not sold yet, see all of the SQL and PASS comments. On top of that, you get to know the smart SQL people much greater detail than you would on the forums or newgroups. I will be presenting on Social computing for the DBA December 3rd. Stop by.
A lot of stuff was announced and covered extensively. I shared a good chunk of the posts here. If I missed your PASS review\post\etc, feel free to add it in the comments. There were several things that I didn’t see much coverage on so I will add to the discussion.
1. You can sign up for the Kilimanjaro private CTP and a free SQL 2008 hyper-v instance here. I heard about this from http://edge.microsoft.com
2. The MSDN\Technet forums went live on Velocity CTP2 via @cslemp.
3. The cloud ORM SQL data services in now in public CTP.
4. Keep an eye on http://www.codeplex.com/SSISTwitterSuite from @AndyLeonard and @JessicaMMoss
4. SQLBatman announced Sarah Palin as his running mate. He is passing out deep fried Twinkies wrapped in moose bacon for swag as we speak.
I have been to SQL Connections and TechED this year so earlier this year I pointed out to my director that they could get a really good group and early bird discount if we send five people. I graciously offered to hold down the fort while they were out. Dumb me :) The session list looks awesome! All I am hearing on twitter is PASS this, PASS that. Yall have fun, asshats! All shenanigans need to end up on YouTube.
If you want to live vicariously like me, follow along here on twitter(RSS)
I also believe Brent Ozar(RSS) and Joe Webb(RSS) will be live blogging the keynotes.
The SQL Heroes contest is wrapping up. I got a kick out of making QPee just by learning the best SQL 2008 feature that you've never heard of. I thought it was cool I made the finalists but I thought I would actually have to win to get anything more than personal satisfaction out of it. The competition is stout. It turns out, I actually only have to make the top 5 to win a Windows Home Server. 50-50. Those are my kind of odds. :)
Vote.
I am Jason Massie and I approve this message.
Here are the slides and scripts from my June presentation at the North Texas SQL Server Users Group. The presentation was on the Data Collector in SQL Server 2008 but it was short so I also touched on filtered indexes, query hashes and troubleshooting. Enjoy and let me know if you have any questions.
Also Peter Debetta is presenting TONIGHT at 6:30 on the following topics:
"We'll be discussing the various ways you can secure your SQL Server data via encryption, including the new Transparent Data Encryption feature of SQL Server 2008."
Stop by.
Reminder: You can catch me at the North Texas SQL Server User's Group tomorrow night. The Data Collection presentation that I put together may be short so I have a few backup slides and demo's on filtered indexes, queries hashes and the 2 second SQL Server 2008 upgrade. Directions and details can be found at http://northtexas.sqlpass.org
Hope to see you there.
I am going to give a talk on the data collector in SQL Server 2008 at this month's meeting.
Topic:Data Collections in SQL Server 2008
Date:Thursday, June 19th, 2008
Overview:
Data collections are a new feature in SQL Server 2008. They allow you to collect perfmon, trace or query data to a central database. We will start off by setting up and configuring Data Collections. We will look at the default collections and historic reports in Management Studio. We will cover setting custom collections and providing a UI with SSRS.
Directions etc can be found here.
What can I say? Another great day at TechED. My highlight was Adam Machanic's error handling session. I learned something new! I liked Andrew Kelly's trace session too but I do everything he does when analyzing traces already. Nice to know that I was on track. I have a trace session coming up in Swynk's vconference that is pretty similar + SQL 2008 updates. I worked the storage engine station for a while and helped customers. That was cool. I did sneak in to Peter DeBetta's and Michael Wang's session for a few minutes to snap a few picks.
As cool as TechED is, I must say that the SQL content is better at PASS and SQL Connections. I have done all three from both sides of the podium. I can honestly say that from a purely technical view of things, I would rank it like this: PASS, SQL Connections, TechED.
Anyway, here are today's the pics.
P.S. I can't wait to get home to the wife and kid's. Hi, honey!
There are a couple new features that I would like to quickly point out. These are basically just tools that I use daily so I integrated them into the site. I hope you find them useful.
ALT HEAD: HOWTO: Inserting dummy data
Here is a slide show of a few pictures I took at at PASS this year in Denver.
Enjoy!