Tag Archives: sqlpass

I’m Speaking at PASS Summit!

Posted on June 22, 2018 | 2 Comments

On May 31st, I was shocked to find out one of my submitted sessions was selected for PASS Summit 2018. My response?

I didn’t see this coming. At all. I was stunned – walking around at the office, saying “Oh my gosh…I got picked” while co-workers looked at me like I had lost my mind. Literally.

I thought I would be going to PASS Summit this year, but not as a speaker. I thought I would be an attendee, learning a lot and having an amazing time. I thought it was far more likely that we see 10 feet of snow this winter in Texas than I would be selected for this year’s PASS Summit.

I am sincerely humbled and grateful to be selected. The competition was stiff. I should know – just like last year, I pulled all the data while it was still available. Once the selections were announced I was able to isolate the sessions from those submitted, and also isolate the ones that were not selected. I was able to determine one particular number – how many sessions were selected out of total submissions.

90. 90 sessions were selected out of approximately 600 submitted. I might be off by a few, but I also checked this against ones that are there but I didn’t have in the data pull from immediately following the closing of submissions. For the most part, the ones that are there that didn’t match with a submission are pre-cons or sessions from what I am assuming were invited speakers.

I’m not saying any of this is bad. What I am saying is that the competition among PASS Summit submissions is growing and becoming more fierce. I see this as a positive for the community – we are developing more and more excellent speakers with awesome content to share.

I queried my data set further, looking for the names of the people selected and those not selected. I found the latter to contain many speakers I know personally, who would make amazing PASS Summit speakers, and may have already done so in the past.

I pulled the list of the speakers that had sessions that were part of the “Best Of” from PASS Summit 2017. Out of 36 speakers from that list, 13 of those are currently part of 2018 PASS Summit lineup. While it could be said that all of these people should be on this year’s roster because they were part of the “Best Of” from last year, I think the only thing that can really be taken away from this number is the fact that no one is guaranteed a speaking spot at PASS Summit, no matter who you are.

Are there invited speakers? Yes, but like the regular submissions selection, that list likely has some subjectivity to it as well. Maybe an invited speaker gets red carded in the previous year following their session (heaven forbid, but you never know) – do you think they would be invited back? I would hope not, regardless of the content they would provide.

As speakers in the SQL community, we are largely a very goal oriented, driven bunch of people. We might even be a tad competitive. It’s not lost on me how fortunate I am to have been selected this year. Looking back to previous years when my submissions didn’t make the cut, I know now that while this was something that I wanted, I wasn’t ready. I might have been grumpy about it, but that didn’t make me any more ready for this monumental task. For all the seasoned PASS Summit speaker veterans that were not selected, you of all people know how competitive this is. You also know that your time will come again.

Selected or not, I hope to see everyone at PASS Summit this year. If you haven’t registered yet, and need a discount code, I got one of those for ya!
LSDIS97QR

The price for PASS Summit goes up after June 29th so if you are planning on attending, get registered now!

Note: I am on the board of directors for the North Texas SQL Server User Group and this is our code. Registering with this code benefits our group. There are other discount codes out there but I just gave you this one. Like, right now. See? There it is. So go register and use it!

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Posted in Speaking, SQL PASS, SQL PASS Summit, Uncategorized

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Being a Speaker

Posted on April 1, 2018 | 2 Comments

Back in 2013 I attended my first PASS Summit. I was a first timer and Bill Fellows was my “big brother.” I had no clue what I was getting myself into. This is my story on how I became a speaker.

At my first summit, thanks to Bill, I was meeting people just about from the moment I got there. Bill knew lots of people. He’s tall and bald and hard to miss. And wears shorts. Everywhere. Regardless of temperature.

Where was I…oh yeah…speaking. While at summit that year I met and talked to many people. A few of them asked me “Have you ever thought about speaking?” I politely replied that I hadn’t, but I really wanted to ask them if they had forgotten their medication that day, or if they needed to be examined by a professional. Me – a speaker. LOLOLOLOLOLOL! Bless their hearts!

But then I thought about it. Why not speak? What would I talk about? What was something cool that I had done that people would want to know about? Could I do this? I showed people how to properly gift wrap a present in speech class (oh yes I did…and there is a right way…and you’re probably doing it wrong) – could I teach them something that would actually have some career benefit?

Yes. Yes I could.

I started to think about what I could talk about. I submitted a session to a SQL Saturday event later in 2013…and I was not selected. I didn’t know it at the time but I had picked a topic that was rather niche and would not have a real following. I found this out when I went to the event (yes, I still went…I was going to this one regardless) and talked to the organizers. This also allowed them to know who I was, so when I submitted again, they would be able to put a face with the name.

The following year I submitted a panel to a different SQL Saturday…and they picked it! This allowed me to get my feet wet while having some other more seasoned speakers there to help drive the conversation. In the weeks leading up to the event, we met and ironed out the details of what we would talk about. During those meetings I learned a lot from them, and they helped make that first session for me a success.

As a speaker, there are good days…and not good days.

A few months later I did my first solo session – and it did not go well. This was a tough pill to swallow. What happened? Simply put, my session didn’t reflect my abstract. I was disappointed in myself. It takes a few days for me to get over things like this, but since this was my first solo attempt, it really made me question whether or not I wanted to do this. Could I be good at this? I went home and re-wrote the session. Then looked at it and re-wrote it again. The next time I gave this session it went much better, and my feedback reflected it.

I love things that challenge me. Speaking does this, and does it in ways I would have never imagined. It takes me out of my comfort zone. No matter where I am for the foreseeable future, I will be speaking.

Speaking has taken my love of learning new things to the next level. Not only am I learning for the sake of a problem or making a business case for something, but now I am learning with a goal or being able to facilitate the learning of others. When I refine my skills, my session material gets better too.

My passions have found an outlet with speaking. It’s thrilling and sometimes frustrating. When you are speaking you never know what’s going to happen. Sometimes you have a lot of questions from the audience. Other times you have none. Sometimes you don’t know the answer. As much as you practice, it doesn’t change the fact that as many times as you give a certain session, no two of those are alike because no two audiences are alike. The one thing that is consistent is that the more times I am able to speak, the more people I am able to reach and help improve their SQL Server skill sets or adopt a new skill set with PowerShell. I don’t know where speaking is going to take me, but for now, I’m down for the ride to find out.

If you are interested in speaking, and would like to find out more, here are a few blog posts I found on this subject.

Paul Randal (via Grant Fritchey) – I think this one lays it out pretty good.

Cathrine Wilhelmsen – A really good post on when things don’t go as you had hoped.

Thomas La Rock – Once upon a time, he was a mere SQL fanboi.

Kevin Hill – On starting to speak and then after his first time speaking at SQL Saturday.

These are what I could find. If you have a blog post on speaking leave a comment and I can add you. 🙂

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Posted in Speaking, SQL Saturday, SQL Server

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It’s About Time for…#SQLSatOrlando!

Posted on September 27, 2017 | Leave a comment

Next week I am returning to Orlando not only to visit the mouse at his house, but also to speak at SQL Saturday Orlando! Last year was my first time there and I had a great time. This also happened after the event was pushed back to November 2016 because of Hurricane Matthew.

This year I will talking about deadlocking and blocking – something that is an issue for so many DBAs. Whether this issue is indexes or bad code…or you have been trying in use indexes to cover up bad code, blocks and deadlocks can happen in even the best environments under the right circumstances. If you are going to be at SQL Saturday Orlando come to my session where we will talk about detecting and preventing these arch enemies of the DBA!

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Posted in DBA, SQL PASS, SQL Saturday, SQL Server, Uncategorized

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PASS Board Elections – Voting Deadline is TODAY!

Posted on September 26, 2017 | Leave a comment

In case you have been under a rock, or buried in work, or otherwise occupied, the PASS Board elections are going on and end TODAY! There are some amazing candidates (thanks to the selection committee for all of their work in bringing us this fine list of folks) running for a handful of seats. Big question – have you voted yet?

When you vote you are exercising your voice and opinion on who from the SQL community best represents your views on the direction and future of the PASS organization. That said, the total number of people voting during each election cycle has steadily declined, with fewer that 1000 people voting last year.

With this being one of the easiest ways to be involved with PASS, you would think that these numbers would be increasing. If you have not voted yet, go check out the candidates. If you look at all of them, and just can’t decide who to vote for, give that Chris Hyde a second look – while it might seem like personal bias, I honestly feel he is well equipped for this position and will represent PASS and the SQL community with the same enthusiasm and vigor he has brought to the Albuquerque user group and all the other locations where he has spoken for user groups or SQL Saturday events (including the North Texas SQL Server User Group).

The voting deadline is 12 noon PST today (2pm CST). If you haven’t voted yet then put that query down and get to it!

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Posted in NTSSUG, SQL PASS, Uncategorized

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Holy Blocking Chains, Batman – I’m Speaking at PASS Summit!

Posted on July 29, 2017 | 2 Comments

For the first time ever I will doing a general session at PASS Summit this year.

Waiting for an email with news one way or the other last week was angst ridden, to say the least. After receiving no notification with the first wave on Tuesday, I got even more anxious and tried to occupy myself with work and other things. I didn’t want to get excited over something that wasn’t even a thing yet.

Then late Friday – acceptance.

Yeah, that’s right. ME!

It didn’t sink in right away. I had myself so convinced I wasn’t going to get selected. Maybe my head and heart were still bracing for the disappointment that was not to happen. Why would I be thinking this way? This is the third time I have submitted and the first time I have had a general session accepted. I did have the opportunity of doing a lightning talk last year. I also got to compete in Speaker Idol, which was an amazing and valuable experience that is only available to those that have not done a general session before. More on this later.

The first year I submitted I had been writing abstracts the same way I normally did for SQL Saturday events, not knowing there was more involved for a PASS Summit abstract. I logged in and was about to fill out everything for each of my sessions when I saw all these fields to fill out that I didn’t know about. I quickly got things written for them, along with my main abstracts, and submitted.

But I didn’t get selected.

The next year PASS offered a program for feedback on Summit abstracts. I thought “Yes, this is great! I will write my abstracts, get feedback, and I will be speaking at Summit this year!”

But I didn’t get selected for a general session.

Both times I was disappointed. Both times I did a fair amount of sulking and grumbling, but I am only human. In these cases, my best was beat out by others that were better. Kind of a hard pill to swallow, but I think these challenges are what make us who we are – IT professionals that are constantly striving to improve our own skills while creating content that will convey knowledge and better the SQL Server community.

Last year however, I was selected for a lightning talk and I finally got to participate in Speaker Idol. Doing my lightning talk on How to Keep Your DBA from KILLING YOU was fun and a great experience.

Speaker Idol? Wow…how do I put this? If you are a new speaker, and have not spoken at PASS Summit before (general session or better), throw your name in the hat for this! If selected, you will have the opportunity to get up and present something in five minutes, and get immediate feedback from a panel of judges, who also happen to be well known and experienced speakers in the SQL community. When this was first done in 2014, I heard about the brutality of the first round, so I made sure I was there for the subsequent rounds. Your audience for this? Mostly speakers or aspiring speakers. Don’t be surprised if the final round is standing room only. Or if there are acrobatics (lookin’ at you, Rob).

Moving on to 2017…

Earlier this year it was announced that the Summit selection process was changing yet again. There would be no feedback to speakers and you were also limited to submitting three sessions. There was also a list of topics, with some marked as “hot topics” or topics that PASS really wanted content on. It was also stated that they wanted new content. That session you had been peddling to every SQL Saturday that would have you? Not new content.

I took all this info and combined it with a ramped-up abstract writing and review process. What is ramped-up? Reading the sessions that were selected last year, and having a reviewer that is a seasoned PASS Summit speaker. It also helped that my reviewer was super critical. Once it was announced that submissions were being accepted I logged in and grabbed all the sections that I would need to fill out and got started on my abstracts, outlining details before writing anything. There was even one session I outlined while on a plane, that I looked at later to write up and decided it was COMPLETE GARBAGE…AND WHAT WAS I THINKING???

What did I learn from the PASS Summit submission and selection process this year?

  • Review, review, review. Write them early, review, come back later and review again. Have other experienced PASS Summit speakers review your abstracts. Don’t like their feedback or think they are being mean? Ummmm….they are trying to help you get your abstract to a level that is worthy of PASS Summit. LISTEN TO THEM!!! And buy them a beer.
  • Nothing is guaranteed. In a previous blog post I told y’all how to pull all the submitted session into a table and even gave you some PowerShell code to do it. I was able to compare that to the list of speakers selected and there were some amazing people that have spoken and PASS Summit before that didn’t make the cut this year. Sessions are reviewed and selected by human beings. This is a gamble, and regardless of how good of an abstract you have, you are at the mercy of the session review committee and what they feel is good enough for Summit. This is a monumental task, but they hunker down and get it done so that all of us can have an amazing selection of sessions to pick from.

I hope I get to see everyone at PASS Summit this year, whether or not they are speaking. Out of the conferences that I have been to over the years, I have found PASS Summit to not only be the best of them, but it was where I discovered that the #SQLFamily thing is real. If you are open to it, you can get hooked into groups that will welcome you and include you all because you are there for the same reason they are – to expand your knowledge and career in the area of SQL Server.

See y’all in October!

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Posted in Professional Development, SQL PASS, SQL PASS Summit, SQL Server, Uncategorized

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(UPDATED) PASS Summit 2017 Session Data (You know you want it…so go get it!)

Posted on June 3, 2017 | 8 Comments