I’m late announcing this here, but I’m pleased to announce my friend Jack Corbett is joining me in leading oPASS (the Orlando SQL Group). Part of that is Jack being kind enough to pitch in knowing that I’m spread thin, but a bigger part is that he’s been steadily getting more involved in the local SQL community, PASS, and of course a lot of participation here at SSC.
In general I wouldn't say that co-leaders is a good thing, but I think it makes sense for chapters. It provides a nice fallback if one person gets bogged down (we all do), they both go on the Chapter mailing list, and it’s a way for the newer person to get a feel for the job and decide if they should stay. Right now Jack handles finding speakers and being the main greeter at meetings, I work on sponsors and do most of the messaging. Jack is handling most of the updates to the site, I manage the mailing list to remove the bounces. Jack will be writing up the minutes, though I will try to post as well.
I also think it’s healthy for Orlando to have someone new coming in, new ideas, new enthusiasm. The next step if we can make it work would be to find someone to replace me in the next year or so, making Jack the King and providing a chance for someone else to increase their participation. Regardless I’ll be at the meetings and continuing to contribute, but I think a progression plan is as important for chapters as it in business. The different – a big one – is that in business promotion means more money!
We’ve got a great meeting coming up with Todd Holmes doing a mini presentation on Backup Basics, followed by Jorge Segarra doing an hour presentation on Policy Based Management. We’ll do our usual discussion, networking, and pizza tossing, plus a discussion of the upcoming SQLSaturday on Sep 15th. Hope you’ll attend if you’re in the area, and bring a colleague too!
It’s been a couple months since we set up the OPASS group on LinkedIN and we’ve had some people join, decided to take the next step of uploading a list of all our members to send invitations. Of course it’s not quite that easy! Over time our list had degraded, today I had to delete 118 bad accounts and a few unsubscribe requests, but I finally got that done and that should give us a clearer picture of what we have.
I exported the three fields they request (firstname, lastname, email) to a CSV and gave it a try, it only recognized the email address on the test parse. Went back and added a header row with values of firstname, lastname, emailaddress, and it worked fine. I like that they give you a preview so that if something is wrong you can fix it. Once loaded you enter a message for the invitation that is sent to the list. One part I didn’t like is they don’t prompt you to pre-approve the list. You might or might not want to do that, but in my case I did so it meant I had to upload the list again to set the pre-approval – or end up saying “yes” to what will hopefully be a lot of people joining!
I mentioned last week about closing down sqlgroups.com and trying to decide on a new home for oPASS.org. We did a quick look at alternatives including just using LinkedIn, but ultimately decided we’d dog food it a bit and use the PASS solution. Interesting so far, I don’t know much about DNN so at times I scratch my head over reasonably simple things, but it’s there and it looks like we moved our member list over ok. From a new admin perspective I think we (PASS) definitely needs to do more to make the start up phase easier – at least a checklist and some notes, maybe a bit of video.
In practice a chapter site doesn’t need a lot of functionality or a lot of updates, just announce meetings and events, provide links to downloads from presentations, and not much else. We’ll still be using LinkedIn as our main method of networking (no link on the site yet). The biggest thing I don’t see yet is how to allow members to opt in/out of some mailing lists we would like to define, maybe those are groups/roles? Don’t know yet.
One thing on my list to investigate is what would the pro/con of having our LinkedIn group set up as a subgroup of the PASS group. As long as we get the same functionality we have now, seems like better than being totally separate.
Almost forgot the link – new site is http://orlando.sqlpass.org.
Chad Miller will be doing a presentation on Powershell and we’ll have our usually round table discussion afterward – often the best part of the meeting! Details at www.opass.org.
Our most recent meeting was May 12, 2009, and we had 23 attendees. We started off the evening with news of upcoming events (SQLSat Birmingham, SQLSat Pensacola, Day of DNN) and setting a date for our kickoff meeting for our next SQLSaturday Orlando (May 23 at Chipotle in Altamonte if you are in the area). From there we spent some time talking again about networking, and here is a quick result of the informal survey:
We then spent about 15 minutes actually networking, with the goal that we had to meet three new people. You never know how that will work out, but instantly everyone jumped in and there was this terrific buzz in the room. I think part of it was setting the stage, might not have gone as well if we hadn't chatted about networking first. At about 5 minutes in I called out for everyone to meet their second person and everyone smoothly moved around. I made a couple introductions and tried to say hello to all the new attendees while it was going on, and then it was time for the third rotation. We had only one person who only met 2 people (I think due to the first two being interesting conversations) so we introduced him to a third person at the end. As I think about it more I think it's critical that we do set the stage to tell people that we are all going to do this for x minutes, pulls them into the game. From a user group perspective, I still believe the big win is to make it as much about networking and catching up with friends as it the technical presentation.
We stopped for pizza and soda, and then moved to our guest speaker, MVP Plamen Ratchev. I've gotten to know Plamen well over the past year and he's been a great supporter of SQLSaturday here in Florida, so it was a bonus to have him available to speak to the group. He did about 75 minutes on plan caching, parameter sniffing, and plan freezing. Very nice presentation, some good questions during and after, and I think everyone was pleased with the material. Plamen stayed afterward for an hour to answer questions and enjoy our post meeting social time, lots of good small conversations.
Good meeting, and maybe I learned a bit more about how to facilitate networking, though there is still a ways to go.
We just had our bi-monthly SQL group meeting (www.opass.org) with Kendal Van Dyke presenting The Truth About Disk Performance & Configuration, a presentation built from his recent blog posts which in turn were based on some detailed testing of disk performance. We met on Wednesday instead of our usual Tuesday, and whether it was that or the topic (which I thought was interesting) our attendance was only 16 - I had hoped for more!
Afterward several stayed to talk and we had more good discussions on blogs and blogging, networking, MVP's, and more. Another topic that came up both during and after the meeting was how to build the next generation of leaders, both for user groups and for SQLSaturday. I'll be doing my third SQLSaturday in Orlando this year, and ideally I'll be training my replacement to take over in 2010. It's a big commitment - maybe not as big as you'd think, but still pretty big, and after putting so much effort into it I want it to be someone that will keep it going. Same thing for the user group, how do we get people to step, or even prepare them to think about stepping up? No great answers so far.
Our next meeting will be in May, date and speaker to be announced.
Our next oPASS/Orlando user group meeting is coming up soon on March 11, 2009, and as usual is held at our office in Altamonte Springs. Our guest speaker is Kendal Van Dyke, doing a presentation based on his recent blog posts about disk performance. Food will be sponsored by Vaco.
Hope to see you at the meeting!
We had our first oPASS meeting of the year last week with about 18 attending. Jonathan Kehayias was our featured speaker, doing a a nice presentation on common performance issues. Always a topic of interest, and we had lots of good questions during the presentation. I also spent about half an hour leading a discussion about the value that PASS might/should bring to DBA's and about networking. On the PASS side I think everyone wants to find value, less clear about how to provide that value. As I discussed some preliminary ideas about blog aggregation and discovery most agreed that it would be useful - but not compelling! The networking discussion was by far the most interesting. I've written about networking several times recently with more to go, so this was also research - where to go next? As expected every sees networking as a good idea, but only a couple believed they were effective at it.
One question I was asking in the conversation that continued after the meeting was "does the average DBA really need to network (outside of their employer)?" Not as easy a question as you might think to figure out! More soon on that.
The meeting also was a reminder that networking conversations can pay dividends in the strangest ways. We moved around to discussion of social networking, and my friend Kendal asked whether the PASSPort had an API to allow tools to connect to it (because he uses such a tool to consolidate his social presence). I don't the answer yet, but if not I can see it being a challenge - most social networkers are fairly serious about their networking/tools.
Our next meeting is March 11, 2009, no speaker scheduled yet. We always need speakers, if you're interested in visiting with us drop me a note.
We had our meeting on November 11, 2008, with 27 people attending. Our featured speaker was Jessica Moss, SQL MVP and BI consultant doing a presentation on new features in Reporting Services 2008. Jessica was very involved in the Florida technical community before moving out of state for work last year, and it was nice that we got to invite someone back that some of our attendees knew. She did a nice job showing off the new features and got the crowd to give up a few questions, but I think for many it was their first exposure to RS, not just RS 2008. All the better, plenty to keep them interested.
Part of the pre-presentation discussion was about the upcoming PASS Summit, and that led (again) to a discussion of PASS and it's mission. Out of that then developed a discussion about what benefits they thought a national organization might bring to them - with few answers. We ended up also discussing certification, and everyone agreed that for a cert to be worth pursuing it had to be perceived as valuable by HR and others outside of IT (to affect the hiring process) and that it would have to guarantee some level of competency. Definitely something I would like to see PASS do, but I think the first part is actually more challenging than the assessment - hard work to convince managers that any cert has real value.
As a user group watcher, what struck me tonight (again) was how the attendee list changes based on topic. Most of the hard core DBA's didn't attend tonight, and some of the regulars did. I agree with managing your time carefully, but I wonder if the increasing focus on a few narrow areas hurts many in their career long term. Could also be that I'm not doing enough to make it more than just technical, to engage them socially as well.
Several years ago during the first iteration of the Orlando SQL Server Users Group I talked a friend into attending. It was a small group of 10 or less most months, and we strugged for speakers. I had been probably 6-7 times when my friend attended and gotten comfortable - enjoying seeing new friends. When I asked her the next day about the meeting, the feedback was disheartening - we hadn't done a good job of introducing her to the group, the presentation was so-so, and nothing about the visit made her want to return. Does that suck or what?
That lesson has stuck with me, so when we reformed the group after a hiatus last year I've tried to work extra hard at greeting everyone and asking who was new at each meeting. Probably I could still do better, but it's better than it was before and it's fun to see people return a second time.
But there's always another lesson. Recently I had an email from someone who had heard about our group and wanted to know what to expect. That's really an incredibly good question. We're all human, and as humans the majority of us are nervous about new social situations. I emailed back the format of our meetings, details on the food, and asked them to be sure to say hello to me when I arrived if I wasn't the one that greeted them at the door. Our new person did show up for the meeting, we got to talk briefly, and at the end of the meeting I checked back to see if we had met the expectations I set in email, and clearly we had in his view, so I'm hoping we'll see him again.
So one task is to get something on the web site that better sets expectations, and I'm even thinking of a special raffle or gift for first time attendees. Another - harder - is to get our regulars to learn that lesson too, and change their approach from 'come see the great technical presentation' to 'come meet a great group of SQL professionals'.
I've just posted minutes of the August 2008 user group meeting. We had two great presentations, a short one from Dolores Tofel on how she uses Access with SQL Server, and a longer one from Amy Styers of EMC on the Top 10 Storage Mistakes. Details at http://opass.org/content/showcontent.aspx?contentid=509.
Attendance was down from our usual, 19 present. I attribute that mainly to forgetting to send out the final 'day of' reminder email. Reminders work, as far as I can tell it's not possible to send too many of them! Still, 19 is far from bad, and shows how much we've grown in the just over the year since we restarted the group.
Our next meeting is Sep 9th and will feature Jack Corbett discussing the basics of Profiler. Jack has a nice blog post about the Aug meeting posted as Disk Aligment and frequently posts on SQLServerCentral. Nice guy and a blog worth reading.
We've got two technical sessions scheduled for tomorrow night. The first is by long time oPASS member Dolores Tofel discussing using Access with SQL Server. This is a 15 minute presentation that is part of our effort to build more local speakers and get them to share their experiences from things they do every day. The main presentation is by EMC and will discuss SAN performance as it relates to SQL Server - I'm expecting a crowd!
Free pizza and soda, and it's a really nice group to hang out with. We'll be adjourning to Fridays afterward to have some social/work time.
Details at www.opass.org.
SQLSaturday #5 in Olympia is progressing nicely. 85 registered, venue locked in, and work under way for fund raising via sponsors. Speakers still needed! If you know someone in that area that might be interested, please forward the message. We're waiting on final confirmation, but it looks like SQL query writer extroadinaire Joe Celko will be doing a presentation at the event. Brad McGehee and Buck Woody have also signed up to present. Both Brian and I are engaged with clients the Friday prior to the event, debating the logistics of trying to catch a 7 pm flight Fri night to be there for Sat, and then fly back Sun to teach on Mon. Challenging for an anti-traveler like myself. Steve Jones lives much closer and hates to travel about as much as I do, but a good email campaign 'encouraging' him to attend might work!
Brian is also leading a SQL Launch event on September 12, 2008 in Jacksonville. This will be one huge room, plus two side rooms for 12-15 presentations on SQL 2008. We're hoping for a good turnout, but ti's the first week day event we've hosted (I say we, Brian is doing the work!). We are hosting on SQLSaturday.com though, because it's slowly turning into a very nice tech event management platform, if someone biased towards our implementation of SQLSaturday. Speakers for this event will be by invitation only due to the short amount of time to the event.
We're pleased to announce that SQLSaturday #8 will be held October 25, 2008 here in Orlando. We're going to run six, possibly seven SQL tracks, plus an additional two tracks devoted solely to Sharepoint. We're partnering with the local Sharepoint group on this, we'll handle the logistics, they'll work on finding the Sharepoint speakers and driving attendance to those tracks. There's probably a little crossover between SQL and Sharepoint, but I would guess that most will be interested in one or the other. Partnering made easy because SQL user group guy Mike Antonovich is also the leader of the Sharepoint group (and author of a Sharepoint book, a plug for a friend). Call for speakers is open and we're asking everyone to submit at least two proposals, one of which should be on SQL 2008, We want to build a very good mix of content.
On an administrative note, we're learning some good lessons via the Olympia event. We currently do a bi-weekly call with Greg Larsen and Russ Nesbit to check on progress, coach to the next step, and to see where we can assist. We're folding that back into our planning guide which will eventually be more of an e-book focused on community events. That's not to say we've learned all the lessons, clearly we haven't! For example, we consider building a sponsorship plan a key component because it needs to clearly communicate both dollar options and what the sponsor can expect. In effect, it's a contract. Right now that consists of grab one of the old docs, replace references to SQLSat # x with SQLSat # Y, change a few other things, and save. Not a huge effort, but we could make it easier, either via a wizard type UI, or just be capturing some information during the sign up interview and tailoring the doc to match. Right place for effort? May not be priority one, but I think for these type franchises to succeed we have to reduce the time investment and nail down a very good formula. Nothing wrong with diverging from or improving it, but that's for the entrepreneurs, most just want to run a good event while still doing their day job and getting some sleep.
We've discussed the idea of a SQLSaturday bootcamp, 1-2 days teaching people how we manage events down to the smallest details. Share lessons learned, talk about building relationships with speakers and other community gruops, etc. Logistically it's very doable, financially it's a tough nut. Easily $1k/person to bring someone to our office in Orlando for two days but we could leverage our time plus get a good group together, or its $1k for us to visit one city/area to run the same bootcamp (workshop perhaps a better name for it). The only other option is to try to co-locate at a larger event like TechEd or the PASS Summit, but for most the schedules are tight already and it would mean an extra 1-2 days away from home/office. That leaves online collaboration, my least favorite for this type of training. Not trying to make it sound unsolvable, just slightly challenging! If you'd be interested in attending such an event drop me a note or leave a comment, feedback always appreciated.
Our main presentation was on 'Unlocking the Power of SQL Compact' by Steve Lasker & Ginny Caughey. Went better than I expected (not that I doubted their presentation skills) because for most DBA's it's a little looked at/noticed area of the database world. They delivered a lot of detail and received quite a few questions, always a good sign. I was impressed that he took the time to show the various methods/speed of making data access calls, something we always want to show developers so they do it the "right" way. Presentation isn't posted yet but should be soon on Steve's blog at http://blogs.msdn.com/SteveLasker/.
We also borrowed an idea from Rodney Landrum and played the SQL Alphabet game, where you pick people randomly to come up with a SQL word that matches the next letter in the alphabet. Group had a lot of fun and got them relaxed and engaged prior to the main presentation. Worth trying at your next meeting!
Also had a chance to talk more with Steve/Ginny and some of the others after the meeting about LINQ, stored procedures, and alternatives. One idea Steve proposed was giving developers the ability to restrict access to the SQLCompact db to a user defined API implemented via a trusted DLL (assembly). Interesting, because the problem we all suffer right now is there is no really good way to keep local admins out of a database installed on their machine. He also wondered if putting all the data access code (not LINQ) in a DLL would be roughly equivalent to the value of stored procedures (assuming calls were parameterized correctly) so that a DBA could easily see 'what has changed' and then deploy the DLL. Interesting - not sold yet, but interesting. Another sidebar was on SQL in the cloud (Data Services) and why/when we would use it. For me the biggest fear of cloud based storage is the service level agreement (does MS really care about me enough to get me up and running quickly if something goes wrong?) and more importantly, connectivity - I lose my internet connection and my business is down entirely, hugely different than we you host your data internally. No easy answers there, will be interesting to see who adopts it and why.
Full minutes posted at http://opass.org/content/showcontent.aspx?contentid=480.
