I read The Deceived a few weeks back and enjoyed it, even though it was the 2nd book in the series, and finally got around to reading first the one. Interesting to learn more about the characters, though even here I feel I’m missing book zero. Hopefully at some point the author will take us back in time and show more of the lessons that were learned early on. This book was fun, though I think I liked the Deceived better – maybe that’s only because I read it first, but it felt like in the second book it’s more focused on ‘cleaning’. The story in this one starts with him being attacked at home and then becomes a strange journey to unravel two interlocking puzzles. Some of it a little over the top, some of it pretty interesting, all pretty good fun.
I’ve got him on my list of authors to watch for more.
I’ve had this on my list of things to talk about someday, a recent post on almost the same subject by Sacha Chua along with my recent experience at the PASS Summit made me decide now was the time to write it!
Professionally I’m outgoing, most of the time. It’s hard to succeed in business if you’re not able to speak to groups, hold your own in meetings, and project some energy/power. I suspect few working with me or meeting me at a conference would consider me shy (though I’m often told that I appear serious – I am!). Some of that comes easily to me, some requires real effort, one of the reasons I put a lot of effort into my networking skills this year.
For the first few days at an event like PASS I’m out and trying to participate as much as I can, talking to old friends and meeting new people, but usually around the 3rd day (which is often day 1 of the event since I typically arrive early) I’m just tired of being outgoing, ready for some quiet time, where quiet time can be a conversation with people I know or just looking out the window for a while. I suspect I’m not the only one like this, and it’s a useful thing to understand – if you’re talking to someone/trying to meet/etc, and they seem a little withdrawn, it might just be networking overload.
As the title suggests, personally I’m more of an introvert, less likely to push to meet people, less likely to join in events where I’m not as comfortable. There are times when I push to be outgoing, but it’s a struggle against genetics as far as I can tell.
Of course most people aren’t going to know this about me, nor will I know how they interact with people either, beyond whatever signals we send. In practice we all do the best we can and try to meet halfway. About all I can see is that understanding my own behavior has taught me to look a little deeper when I run into someone that seems to be too loud, too happy, too withdrawn. It’s rarely rudeness, more often a default behavior which I don’t understand.
Not sure I explained it well, looking forward to your comments!
In a recent blog post Brent Ozar questioned why PASS decided to relaunch the SQL Server Standard given the failure of other content related projects. A good question, so I’ll devote this update to answering that question as best I can and talking about our plans moving forward.
First though, a little history! The Standard actually got started back in 2003. Brian, Steve, and I were thinking on ideas to add value to SQLServerCentral.com and we had in mind a simple printed newsletter, but then Brian started looking at the prices of full color printing and the next thing we decided to try a magazine. Ambitious even then. One thing let to another and we ended up partnering with PASS, a relationship that continued through 2007 when we decided to refocus – and at that time we gave PASS ownership of the magazine. Steve did most of the work during our magazine years along with a great copy editor, but it was always a struggle to get content, I think we were paying $100 for an article at the time. PASS continued it for a while, but announced at the end of 2008 that it would be discontinued due to the rising cost of production. A bit sad to see it end, was good for PASS to have a journal.
Fast forward just a little to the beginning of my term on the Board and one of the things Wayne asked me to do was to see if I could still do something with the Standard in electronic version, in any format that would work. I thought about it some, discussed with a few volunteers and a few advisors, decided to try it as:
What drove those? The first was sustainability. I knew first hand the kind of workload that managing a magazine generates, and I knew it was going to be very hard to get content on an ongoing basis. I also knew that I couldn’t define my portfolio as ‘just’ the magazine, we had other things to look at and clearly Wayne saw it as broader than that. Next was looking to involve volunteers. Back in the print days there was almost no volunteer involvement, and I think it’s good to involve people in PASS, let them earn some ownership. At the same time, it had to be something that a volunteer or three could manage, and something that looked liked a good challenge. It makes sense to have PASS members working on content and doing tech reviews, but not copy edit or layout, we could hire someone as needed for those skills. And finally, paying an interesting amount of money would make it easier to attract authors, because without content it doesn’t work!
But those were all a means to arrive at something I consider more important; giving our members a place to showcase their skills. Writing isn’t as easy as it looks, and there is a lot of difference in writing a blog or short article than a 4000 word article that will be picked apart by a tech editor and copy editor. It also means putting it in front of some very critical peers, so it takes a certain amount of confidence to give it a try. It’s ambitious, but I hope over time that getting published in the Standard is a nice career milestone, something that looks good on a resume and something seen as worth doing. That’s something a professional association should have and encourage.
Brent asked why this would succeed when other projects have failed. The answer is we don’t know yet. I’ve tried to build something that is as minimalist as possible while leaving plenty of room to grow (we can do more issues, and multiple articles per issue if needed), and I have dreams of adding back editorials, advertising, minutes of meetings, and more – if…we can generate the content on a recurring basis. I’ve tried to stack the deck a little, asking Grant Fritchey to take the lead as editor, because I know Grant is passionate and has a voice in the community, and supplemented that with Brad McGehee, another well known voice and a great person to manage the tech editing process. Maybe a better question is why earlier projects failed, and my answer would be a combination of things – a lack of a true champion, asking for donations of effort when other sites pay for the same effort, and no sense of making a difference.
We’re just getting started and we’ll have lessons to learn I’m sure, but I was thrilled that Tom Larock jumped in to write the first article for the revised format. It’s available for free download now (requires login) at http://www.sqlpass.org/LinkClick.aspx?fileticket=bX8_hcbYJ7U%3d&tabid=236&mid=1275, and I encourage you to share it with others.
So you could say the Standard is a dream that we’re trying to materialize. We can grow the next generation of authors, we can add substantive content to sqlpass.org, give our members one more reason to read the Connector to find out about our latest issue, challenge our volunteers to make a tough project succeed.
What’s interesting about a project like this is we can’t make it succeed. If it was just a matter of hard work, well…then I’d make the bet without hesitation! But to make this work requires something tougher than sweat equity, it’s going to take us making the Standard a desirable goal for every author and aspiring author in the SQL community. An interesting project isn’t it?
And finally, don’t think I’m letting you off the hook here. People often ask me how to contribute to PASS, and here’s an easy opportunity – write something for us. No, we don’t take first time writers, but we’ll coach on you how to get to us, and we’ll do what we can to help you through the process. You can earn $500 for doing the work and you’ll earn it, and you’ll have made a positive impact on PASS. It’s coming up on time to write goals for 2010, so why not add this as a goal?
Last Monday was my first day back from the PASS Summit, planned for (and was) a slow day, just starting to catch up and figure out what needed to be done for the week. Tuesday morning was one of those where I just wasn’t focused, always frustrates me when I have a block of time to do good things and can’t get in the groove. Decide to go home for lunch, not long after that realize I’m tired, thinking maybe a residual from a long week in Seattle, decide to rest some. Rest for a few hours, worse instead of better but too late for a doctor visit, and not sure I’m sick yet anyway.
Tuesday night alternating fever and chills, couldn’t stay warm. Miserable night. Wed morning crushing headache is the main symptom, but in general not feeling well. Debate sleeping more or going for medicine. Not opposed to going, but why can the doc come to me? Drag out of bed, go to the nearest clinic, barely standing. They swab my nose, do some magic test, announce that I have the flu. Clarifies saying that for many people the red line on the test stick is usually light, on mine it’s a firm red line. Do I get a prize for really having the flu?
Prescribed Tamiflu and whatever else I want to take, rest, stay away from everyone until the fever is gone. Drop the prescription, home to crash again, my wife gets the medicine an hour or so later. By then the fever seems to have broken, take the medicine, drink more, back to sleep. Wake up, medicine, sleep. Sometime Wed night awake to find I’m soaked in sweat yet not cold – good? Seem to have turned the corner. Only had a subset of the symptoms, but definitely have me out of action.
Thursday I feel a little better, start thinking I should be working again. Go to the office about 2:30 to try to get some stuff done, by 3:30 exhausted and have to go home, eat some, sleep again, then feeling better (again!), watch some tv, get a better nights sleep.
Fri morning I feel almost human, eat a light breakfast and watch some reruns on TV. Still doing ok, so decide to go get some fresh air and lunch, try to work some. Manage a few hours, call it a day, just in time I think. Trying to finish up some notes I need to deliver for PASS, struggling. Ah well, go home, try to rest. About 6 pm I have a call with Blythe at PASS HQ and not hard to tell I’m still sick. Typically I can filter out just about any background noise and think in paragraphs, poor Blythe often had to wait for me to finish building a sentence. Felt like Superman sitting next to kryptonite, couldn’t stay focused. Try to do the the things I thought were most important (hard to tell by then), call it a day.
I’m writing this on Saturday morning having coffee at Panera after a good nights sleep. Still not 100%, but clearly better, doing some prep work for an 1130 call, then heading back home to rest some more. Have to work some tomorrow (having lost most of 4 days) to be ready for Monday. Not fun. I wouldn’t say worse than other times I’ve had the flu, just one of those things you have to endure.
So why write about being sick? For those of you not sick, it’s a reminder that all the vitamins and hand washing in the world can’t always ward off illness. For those of you who have been sick, you’re not alone! More seriously, for those not sick – especially managers – think of it as a reminder that having the flu isn’t just a day off with the sniffles. It’s a few days of just being sick, and it’s not an instant recovery either. It’s made more complicated when you add in the family, trying to keep them from getting it to, having you drop out of family life for a few days, and often the added complexity of one or more of them being sick at the same time. When that employee or team member returns, remember that it may still be a day or two before they are back at full throttle, that’s just how it has to be.
New friend David Easley shared two sources for hot sauce that I wasn’t familiar with:
I like some spice here and there, lately I’ve been on a wasabi kick. Thinking maybe it would make good holiday gifts, anyone have recommendations?
I grew up watching baseball on TV and playing it too, and for reasons I don’t recall my Dad’s favorite team was the Cincinnati Reds. Every Saturday afternoon was baseball time. I followed along a lot, loved learning the history and the stats, and of course right there in my formative years was when the Reds were at the top of their game. I got to see them play in person only once, at a spring training game in Orlando (back when Orlando had spring training!) and the part I remember most was Pete Rose getting a hit that hit the pitcher right in the helmet, knocked him down but no injury, Rose went out to check on him (though not a lot of sympathy I thought!).
Somewhere after that I moved away from the game, and I guess even today I’m not sure why. Was never interested in playing pro, but I think I developed different interests, game changing maybe. Since then I go to a game or two in spring training, but rarely watch during regular season. Live games are relaxing, on TV they try to entertain, and I don’t think it needs any help!
Anyway, as I’m apt to do I was checking the new book shelf at the library and ran across the book, thought it would be fun to read. It was fun, though if you didn’t have the connection probably not nearly as interested. I’d heard the stories over the years about the friction and rivalries, and most of those are illustrated here. Maybe the biggest surprise was Sparky Anderson, definitely more of a character than I had realized. Never realized Johnny Bench was as cocky as he was (helps if you can live up to it!), and was surprised to find that a lot of the supporting cast triggered vague memories as well. Lots of interesting stories, reasonably well written, and for a while I was transported back to less complicated days.
If you’re not familiar with them, Wikipedia has a pretty good set of notes at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Big_Red_Machine, and I found a picture of the team back then to include.
I also think – though it’s hard to know – that watching them play as a team helped create my own love for playing on good teams, for work or fun. I’ve never had the chance to work with a team with 8 superstars and I’m sure it would have it’s challenges, but also fun to see what that kind of team might accomplish
I’m sure you know what I mean when I say that I feel like my ability to task switch and be creative has been degraded lately. Fixing that means a break, and while a good four day weekend can work wonders, it’s not the same as a real break. Of course the challenge of working mostly solo is that if I don’t work, I have to do it before the break or when I return. That’s not quite as much fun as just walking out the door without a care in the world!
The PASS Summit is actually a break of sorts, a total change in routine, and a chance to hear new things, get energized about the tech side of things. But the trade off for me is the travel and the time away from home, neither my favorite things. Then it’s into the holiday season and the end of year flurry of stuff to do. So…when to take the break?
There’s no good time, but as of now my plan is to take four weeks off, the last two weeks of December and the first two weeks of January. I’ve got some cabinets to build for the workshop, tools to buy, landscaping that badly needs attention, books to read, and we’ll see what else. It won’t quite qualify as a vacation or sabbatical as I’ll still have to monitor email and deal with the odd problem. Not perfect, better than not doing it.
It’s something to look forward to, a break from the relentless grind of work (as it seems right now!).
A few weeks ago I was looking for a few branded items, happened to run across drink coasters at 4imprint. Minimum order is 500 at .25 each, free setup. Not cheap, but perhaps an interesting way to deliver a message. I’ve used 4imprint before with no problems, not affiliated with them in any way. Sample card below, and more information at http://www.4imprint.com/group/75/Coasters/product/1822-SQ-C/High-Density-Pulpboard-Coaster-Color-4-Sq.
I think they’d do well as an item to throw in an event bag, not sure people would like them as a business card replacement. As I’ve tried the half size Moo cards the initial reaction is good, then they all seem to say – literally – that they worry about losing it! These are considerably bigger at 4” square, but then you hit the opposite problem, won’t easily fit in a lot of pockets or business card holders.
A short post today, ran across http://www.lifeoptimizer.org/2007/03/08/66-best-quotes-on-time-management/ when I was looking for ideas for my Moo cards. Quotes are fun and sometimes useful, but also all too easy to just find a quote that fits what you want to do. Yet, it’s interesting to think that time management has been an issue for a long time, well before the advent of the PC and email.
I was up early again on Friday morning to have breakfast with Patrick Leblanc (SQLLunch man), and then off to a four hour Board meeting, then a few more shorter meetings, finally finishing up the day at 4 pm with a trip to the bookstore and the mall for a few gifts to bring back. Back to World Grill about 5:00 pm for dinner with Wayne, Rafael, Kendal, Mike Wells, Rick Heiges, John Welch, and a few more that came and went, then back to Sheraton to pick up our bags for the ride to the airport. Rick and I were flying together, him up front in the nice seats, me way in the back, but he did treat me to joining him in the Delta club pre-flight and if I traveled more I’d have to get a membership, nicer chairs and real desks to work at. Arrived home at 9 am on Sat, and now still trying to get back on normal schedule. Good to have weather in the 80’s again!
Hard to recap the week in a few sentences, but I’ll try!
It’s hard to describe how immersive an experience it can be. I took my wife to dinner Sunday night and walking through the restaurant I was mildly startled to realize I was looking around for people I knew, and expecting to see some. For 6 days I was hard pressed to go 5 minutes without seeing someone I knew, now back to the lonelier life of the DBA!
Now the question for me is; how many other attendees had that same great experience, and what can do to try to make sure they get it next year?
I’m trying to pay more attention to things that cause me stress and how I deal with the stress. It’s helping some to work on the self awareness, but some of the reactions seem to be baked in, very hard to change some things that I perceive as stressful. As I’ve looked at my reactions, it seems like I see two different things:
One way to identify stress is to substitute the word frustrated. Not a perfect match, but a good way to get away from the negative connotation of ‘stress’. One example of stress for me is being on a tight but doable timeline and then having something unexpected and unrelated intrude. It’s not always as easy as pushing something back, and the instinctive stress reaction doesn’t help productivity.
Now it seems like that once the situation is over, goals met, that the stress would be gone. Instead – at least for me – it takes time for the stress to drain away. Given a few weeks of tranquility my stress index goes back to near zero, but I don’t usually get weeks, maybe days. Then when the next stressor comes along, instead of starting at zero I’m starting at 10, which makes it harder to get through the situation, and then when done without a longer recovery, maybe the next time I start a stress situation at 10 instead of 20. Over time that can really add a level of background noise/pain that hurts the ability to respond well to minor levels of stress.
I don’t know that life can be stress free. Or that it would even be healthy. But if I can see fewer things as stressful and develop methods of relieving cumulative stress, I see that as a pretty big advantage. Now to figure out how to do it!
A few random thoughts:
We’re losing three good people as of the end of the year, but I thought now would be a good time to mention their names and add a comment or two from me:
I appreciate all that each of you did and the things you did for PASS. I know it was hard work and not everyone saw all that work, but you’ve moved things forward and I hope the rest of us can continue that work. Thanks!
Started the day at 6:30 at Top Pot with a meeting about SQLSaturday over coffee and it really ended up being a discussion about chapters as much as anything. Jack Corbett, Kendal Van Dyke, Rob Hatton, Pam Shaw, Patrick Leblanc, Tim Mitchell, Greg Larsen, and Stuart Ainsworth joined me. I love their passion for community! I see them as the next generation of leaders – get to know them!
8:40 am
Bill Graziano doing the keynote, started by thanking Greg Low and Pat Wright for their contributions to PASS for serving on the Board for the past two years. Then they did a great slide presentation with music showing pictures of Kevin Kline, then brought him up on stage to say thanks, brought Wayne Synder out to give him a thank you award. Very emotional Wayne starts talking about a picture of Kevin of sleeping – hard to describe, Wayne crying with emotion – kudos to Wayne for showing what he feels about how much Kevin has done over the years (Kevin served on the original board back in 1999 and continuously since then). Then reviewed existing board members and the new ones, then the new Executive Committee (Rushabh, Bill, Rick H).
European Conference April 21-23, 2020 in Neuss Germany, PASS Summit in Seattle next year, Nov 8-11, early bird rate is $995 through Dec 2009. Talked about the location of 2011 conference not set yet. Showed a picture of PASS HQ staff.
8:50 am
Patrick Ortiz from Dell. Rough start, presentation about SQL in the Enterprise, DR, etc. Honestly not very good so stopped taking notes. Sorry Dell.
9:18 am
David DeWitt, Technical Fellow, Data and Storage.32 years as Computer Sci professor, joined MS in March 2008, runs Jim Gray Systems Lab. Very engaging, joked about the server fans spinning up yesterday. Talking about growth/speed trends, seek times not getting much faster compared to other factors, need a lot more drives to keep CPU’s busy, SSD’s the big hope for changing that. This is really a presentation that’s worthy of a keynote – interesting, technical, no sales pitch, recognizes we get the base concepts already. Right now we try to avoid random IO, expensive. Memory is in Peoria, 200 cycles to access compared to 20 for L2 cache. Green stuff is bad (gotta be here, it’s the stall on the chart he is showing). Talking about column store vs row store, advantages to column store are only retrieving data needed to put into cache. Stopped writing to pay attention!
Missed a planned meeting due to bad scheduling, keynote went later than I thought it did. My fault, annoying!
Went back to the hotel to drop off my bag, back to the convention center for more networking, then off to a lunch meeting, then back for some more chat before a 2 pm meeting and another at 2:30, then spent some time wandering, looked in on Buck Woody’s session which seemed to go very well, then started working on preliminary dinner plans, meeting people at 6 pm and go from there. Finally headed back to the hotel, it’s funny that the conference just quietly ends, seems like there should be a closing ceremony!
So it’s dinner tonight, then a board meeting in the morning, one more meeting after that, then some time to relax before heading to the airport about 7p for a 10:30 flight that puts me back in Orlando at 9am Saturday – doesn’t seem like it should take long.
It’s been a good week, think I hit my goal of meeting 50 new people but it started to blur, definitely did better than in previous years. Looking forward to getting the event DVD’s so I can enjoy the technical side of the content back home. Things went very smoothly, PASS HQ did a great job this year!
Up at 5am today, worked for a while, then down to breakfast at 6am with Brent, Colin, Denny (and wife!), Tom, and Tim. Good conversation, good food, expensive breakfast (at the Sheraton). Then over to the convention center to see what was going on, had coffee with Kendal, Patrick Leblanc, Greg Larsen, and then up for an informal meeting with the sql bloggers we could gather, just trying to start a dialog about how we can communicate better with them. Very early on that, but interesting. Then wandering around the main room chatting with a few people, enjoying the time
Rushabh Mehta, VP of PASS, started off talking about finances. Financials are available on the site, login, go to governance page. Mentioned again that attendance this year was only down 9%, pretty good given the economy. Encouraged participation in PASS at chapters, volunteering, speaking. Talked about how many volunteers make PASS happen, had all the volunteers present stand – guessing it was 75-100 people.
Wayne Snyder, President. Started by saying the board serves the members. Recognized outstanding volunteers:
I love Wayne keynotes, Wayne does Wayne very well!
9:00 am
Back to Rushabh, 7th year we have the Women in Technology luncheon (how to get more women engaged in tech). MVP’s wrote SQL Server MVP Deep Dives, royalties to charity. Q&A today with the PASS Board today at 4:30 pm. Party tonight at Gameworks tonight, sponsored by Microsoft. Tom Casey will answer questions on Twitter, @ms_sql_server.
9:06 am
Tom Casey, GM, Business Intelligence. Comments on PASS; 2 dedicated BI tracks, 41 sessions on BI last year, 50 this year, 20% selected BI as focus last year, more than 30% this year. Long intro.
Talked about empowering users, the spread of info throughout the business. Powerpivot for Excel and Sharepoint (used to be Gemini) (2010).
Amir Netz – Demo of Powerpivot, 100 million rows in Excel on a laptop.Seems fast. Has Analysis Services running in process, compresses data. 20g of data, compressed to 133 mb. Underlying data in reports can be exposed as data feed, consumed by PPivot (not screen scrape). Has RelatedTable function to do lookup, returns table, SUMX aggregates table. Automatically finds some relationships. Showing new feature called Slicers in Excel, click fields and chart object shows up, but they seem to align and size well. Data can be uploaded to Sharepoint, live preview of Excel view of that data in Sharepoint. Now going to 2nd machine, Win7 touch screen. Accessed doc via Sharepoint, then running server side. Can use gestures to navigate (assuming you have the touch screen!). Harder to read demo, just a camera on it instead of direct from PC. Another demo, mildly confusing, reports in Sharepoint. Nice visual way to go back/scroll through report for various time periods (good demo there).
10:00 am
Back to some report demos. November CTP coming soon and Office 2010 beta as well. New resource center, www.microsoft.com/technet/bicenter. End of keynote.
From there I met Brent Ozar for coffee and a long chat, great fun, the first time we’ve had a chance to talk at length. Worth the time if you can corner him!
Had lunch in the main hall, wasn’t as much fun today with no birds of a feather, but did get a chance to get some feedback on business cards. In general people like the half size moo cards initially, but then worry that they’ll lose them. What can you do?!
I had another meeting scheduled for after lunch that was rescheduled, so went back to the hotel for a break and to work a little, back over to the convention center about 3 pm to network, then head to the Q&A session at 4 pm. It was the first time that I know of that the Board took open questions and I think it went well, Joe Webb moderating. Attendance lower than I hoped, but lots of good discussion. As you might imagine we were a little nervous going in – imagine an open forum where anything can be asked in any way and knowing that if you goof on the response, there’s the twitter sound bite of the day! In general you win at these type of forums by being direct, honest, thoughtful, and non-defensive. Can’t answer all the questions, or please everyone, but you can engage them to understand their concern. I thought the attendees treated us very fairly and tried just as hard to engage us. I’m really hoping this will become a yearly tradition.
After that, around 6:30, we left to get ready for the MS sponsored party at Gameworks. First class, tons of food, three hour pass to the games, free drinks too. Eventually we headed out for a sit down dinner and wound up at Changs, too tired to go further. So far not doing well on my quest for ‘Seattle’ food, but having fun anyway.
Called it a day about 10 pm as I write these closing notes, have a meeting early tomorrow!
