PASS Orientation Committee

Last year I was having dinner at the PASS Summit and having a great conversation with Adam Machanic (blog | twitter). One thing that Adam pointed out to me was that the average user experience for someone at a PASS Summit was to attend by themselves and rarely interact with others. “They come alone, they [...]

Who Is Responsible For What?

In my previous life I was a production DBA which meant my primary responsibility was recovery. I also took my job role to be that of a general SQL Server expert. I stayed general because no one person can possible be an expert in every facet under the SQL Umbrella. A few years ago I [...]

When 24 Hours Is Not Enough

Many of you have some awareness regarding the 24 Hours of PASS events that I have helped to promote previously. When I was asked to help arrange for the upcoming event I targeted the list of current Summit speakers. This made logical sense to me since we want to make it a Summit preview. So [...]

SQL Saturday #51 Nashville Recap

I returned from Nashville yesterday, having been there for four days to take part in SQL Saturday as well as the most recent in-face PASS Board meetings. This was my first ever trip to Nashville and I had really just one goal in mind as a tourist: to find some good music. I managed to [...]

This Blog Post Won’t Explain Anything

This week the PASS Board voted on and accepted the slate of candidates that was put forth by the Nominations Committee and I can’t get the image of Colonel Jessup out of my mind. People want answers. People want the truth.

But the funny part about all of that is when they do get the truth, [...]

Is It A Problem?

Last week I used some local user group meetings as tune-ups for my talk that I am giving this Saturday in Nashville.
[Sorry that you had to find out this way Seacoast and SNESSUG. It's not easy finding out you were being used, but you were. And thanks for the bacon pizza, I can let myself [...]

24 Hours of PASS v3.2

Just about one year ago PASS launched a brand new concept in training: 24 consecutive one hour presentations done live by remote presenters around the globe. I still remember the PASS board meeting when Rick Heiges (blog | twitter) suggested the format. Some were skeptical but overall we mostly said “Do you think that can [...]

Return of the 24 Hours of PASS

In case you missed it I wanted to let everyone know that we are planning on doing our third 24 Hours of PASS. I sent out a call for abstracts recently to the people that have been selected to present at the PASS Summit in November (about 70 people in total). I got back about [...]

SQL University – Database Design/Development Week

Welcome back to another installment of SQL University. This week we will be talking about a topic that is often overlooked: database design. On second thought, “overlooked” may not be the correct choice. I think a more accurate description would be NULL. That’s right, I just said that database design is an unknown entity to [...]

Community Communication

During my last night in New Orleans for TechEd I was approached by a man who stopped me and said, essentially:
“What makes you guys so special?”

The man was Rob Collie (blog | twitter), and he was asking about the SQL Community as a whole. And I really had no answer for Rob. We talked about [...]