I’m out of the office today, in Austin, TX (yee-haw!) at the Stack Overflow Dev Days – Austin. There are a few more around the country coming up, and if you’re a developer, I’d go check it out, just for the speakers. I’m not sure you’ll learn a ton about how to be a better developer in any of these events, but I think you’ll be inspired.
That’s part of why I’m going. After all, the lineup for Austin has talks on
Of those, maybe 2 or 3 are applicable to my career. I’m not likely to pick up tips that I’ll use next week, though I may learn a thing or two that I could use in the future. There’s a better reason in my mind to go to an event like this, going to hear some well known and well respected speakers:
Being around smart people is exciting
It’s actually more than exciting; it’s inspiring to me. Coming away from an event like this I’m sure I’ll be excited again about my job, and I’ll have ideas that I can apply to my job. Or I’ll be thinking about how I might try something new in my job.
I’ll also be going to see how the format works. How they handle a one day event with multiple speakers to see if this is something that might work in the SQL Server world.
So I’ll be mostly out of touch today, and not responding to messages, but I’ll post some notes and updates when I get back and hopefully a few pictures.
One of the reasons that I think the PASS Summit fits well in Seattle is the support that they get from Microsoft. The proximity of the conference to Redmond means that many, many more Microsoft employees, particularly SQL Server developers, come over for a day or more during the Summit. I think that's a great point that outweighs the poor Seattle weather in November, and the need to travel so far for many people.
Yesterday PASS released the lineup of Microsoft people that will be coming to speak at the Summit. They include keynotes from Bob Muglia, Ted Kummert, Tom Casey, and David DeWitt, who will talk about the future of the platform. It's not often that they release any huge information, but there are usually some fun demos from the product managers.
There are also some great pre and post conference sessions on Monday and Friday. Some are supposed to be from Microsoft employees, and you can see the full list here, but it has not been updated to show any new sessions.
The general sessions have been updated to show some new Microsoft items, including a number of best practices sessions from the SQL CAT team and a few deep dives. The SQL CAT team usually has some good information, and they are worth talking to if you get the chance.
If you can get to the PASS Summit, I'd recommend going. SQLServerCentral has a great opening night party that you can attend as well. If you use the "SSC3D" registration code, you'll get a ticket for free in addition to $100 off the registration price. If you've already registered or have another code, you can paypal $30 to sjones@sqlservercentral.com for a ticket.
I'm happy to announce that SQLServerCentral is sponsoring a track at this year's SQL Connections conference in Las Vegas, Nov 9-12, 2009. We're supplying the speakers, and picking the topics. If all goes well, we should be continuing this for future SQL Connections conferences.
You can see the sessions in our track and read the speaker bios. Myself, Brad McGehee, Joe Celko, Brian Kelley, and Grant Fritchey will be speaking on our track.
I've never attended the Connections events, so this will be a first for me. It's also the week after the PASS Summit, so I might be a little worn out, but I am looking forward to meeting some new people. Brad has been to this conference a few times and he says there isn't a lot of overlap with the PASS Summit, so it should be a great experience for me.
We'll have lots of swag, and it should be fun. No casino party (this time), but we'll likely sponsor a happy hour or other event one of the nights.
I saw recently that Brent Ozar wrote a blog about justifying the cost of attending the 2009 PASS Summit. I tend to agree with the reasons that Brent listed and think he presented a good case, but I thought I should give a few thoughts from my perspective. PASS has their own ROI page as well that you can check out.
There are a lot of people that think a conference trip is a boondoggle. I think the people that think this are usually the type of people that would take advantage of the time to make it a boondoggle, but I could be wrong. What can you tell them? Read on.
I've been lucky enough to attend dozens of conferences in my career. Working for SQLServerCentral I'vet typically been to TechEd and the PASS Summit most years, but I've also added in the Microsoft BI Conference, the Business of Software conference, and a few more. At corporate jobs I've also attended a few user conferences for specific vendors, the Microsoft PDC, Comdex, and others.
That's rare, in my opinion. Most employees never get to attend a conference. A select few seem to go more than once, and I think I know why. Actually I think there are two reasons:
That might sound like one reason repeated for emphasis, but there are two reasons here. The first, they're motivated, means that these are people that ask to go, which is the all important first step. I've learned in my career that not much is given to you. If you want something (a conference trip, a raise, a new monitor), you need to ask. Not a lot of employees are willing to even try to ask, and fewer still know how to ask. I assume you can do the former, I'll leave the latter for another blog post.
The second reason, these people are motivated, is a result of their professionalism. The people that work hard, that go the extra mile, that solve problems, get things done, and are effective (one of my favorite words), are motivated to do well in their careers. This type of employee reads technical books in their off-time, they go to user groups, they try to improve their skills and do a better job, and often they also help others to get better along the way. Either by mentoring, teaching, and coaching, or by just setting a great example.
These people are built to do a good job and sending them to a conference does two things.
While a lot of companies don't seem like they give a pile-of-the-stuff-I-shovel-out-of-horse-stalls about whether you stay or go, often managers to care. Not because they love you, but because if you're a good worker, their performance will suffer if you go.
And the trip is less likely to be a boondoggle.
I've been to many conferences and it's rare that I've taken a day off, or even a session off to go goof off. I'm usually listening to speakers present, talking with colleagues, or in general working on my career or business. I've longingly looked the pools in Fl , the beach in LA, the ...., well Seattle, and thought I should take an hour or two and do something else.
But I usually don't.
Even last year, sick, I skipped a couple sessions one day to sleep in and felt guilty. Maybe that's why I go to so many conferences. It's not a boondoggle for me, it's not a vacation, it's work. I recharge, I see friends, I might not be heads down coding or tuning, but it's work and I am learning things. I'm getting inspired or motivated to do more when I return to work.
Show your boss that you're this type of person, and I bet you have an easier time getting funding for a conference.
FYI, if you get funding for PASS, use the SSC3D code when you register. You can come meet me at our Monday night party.
I met Pinal Dave, whose blog I've followed for a year or so and just started to correspond with. A very nice note in his blog from the MVP Summit. And this picture:
I’ve been pretty lucky in my career to have the opportunity to attend quite a few conferences. I’ve attended one, and often more than one, a year, and I’ve had great opportunities to not only learn more about SQL Server and technology, but also to network and meet professionals from all over the world, many of whom have become good friends.
A few years ago my business partner, Andy Warren, was looking to both help the community and get more exposure for our training business, End to End Training. We were looking to sponsor local events in the Florida area, but didn’t have too many opportunities. So we created our own, which has come to be known as SQL Saturday. Our goals were to provide a high quality, free training event for people that lived in the area and might not get the chance to attend a PASS Summit or TechEd.
Andy has built a great system that makes holding one of these events much less difficult than it might otherwise be. By drawing on his experiences in Florida, he’s been able to help people in a number of other areas from Jacksonville, FL to Greenville, SC, to Olympia, WA hold events in the last 2 years. He’s provided technical assistance with a fully functional web application, mentoring with regular phone calls, help getting shirts for speakers and even liquidity in the form of funding to pay for a venue, lunch, and more.
I had the chance to attend SQL Saturday #8 in Florida last October. I was amazed to see well over 300 people show up on a Saturday to choose from 8 tracks and multiple sessions throughout the day on all aspects of SQL Server and related technologies. A nice speaker party afterwards, and the chance to sit around and chat with some passionate, intelligent SQL people. It was very impressive and I went back to my employer, Red Gate Software, to talk about the event with them.
A few weeks ago I was in the UK visiting Red Gate, and we decided to help support SQL Saturday and the community with a regular, committed sponsorship for events in 2009. We’ve decided that SQLServerCentral and Red Gate will contribute up to $1000 towards your event. We might even send a speaker along as well! I’m not committing to events since I try to avoid traveling too much, but you may be able to change my mind. If not, perhaps we can convince my colleague, Brad McGeHee, to come instead.
Red Gate is supporting these events as a vendor, and they’d like to get more exposure and sales for their tools. Attracting customers is something every business wants to do, but we want to do more than give you a flyer and try to sell you something. Red Gate believes its tools are a fantastic value for the money, just like SQL Server, and they provide a fantastic ROI. We think if you try the tools you’ll agree.
But we also believe that giving back to the community, and supporting both present and potential customers is a good way to do business. Running SQLServerCentral is one way to do this, and supporting SQLSaturday is now another.
Andy Warren has written a great blog post on what’s required to hold and event, and it’s not a lot. Two tracks, 100 or more people, a little signage, and that’s about it. We’ll let you run the event as you see fit and try to support you as best we can.
I hope that quite a few of you will take advantage of the SQL Saturday framework to host an event in your local area and I’m looking forward to hearing the reasons why I should come to your town.
The whole idea of having free events, bringing learning to people locally wasn't something that I was thrilled with. It's a lot of energy and effort, and there have been more than a few times that I questioned the wisdom of putting resources into these events. However once I've attended one I think this is a good thing for the community and while it might not pay back in terms of direct ROI at the event, I'm hoping the karma will do us good down the road.It hasn't taken much of my time, other than a few hours over the last year talking on the phone, or often, listening to Andy talk about the event and the details, hassles, and difficulties. It's a strange role for me, someone usually working on details. Here I have to listen and offer suggestions, think strategically, examine things with a more critical eye. I've learned a few things while doing it and to some extent it's rounded out my business experience and knowledge a bit more.The idea of a free event is interesting. My concern was that we were delving too far into the conference arena with 5-6 tracks per event and not getting any of the payback. It seems that building a local event that's free is a lot of work for relatively little payback. To some extent I still believe that, but I was amazed how many people Genuinely stopped by and thanked Andy for the event. More than a few of them really appreciated the effort, thanks speakers after sessions, and wanted to come learn. Taking time out of their Saturday to come learn a bit more about SQL. The speakers also seemed to appreciate the chance to speak and interact with people. In some ways I really think this gets closer to the community than any of the other events I've seen.And that's what it's about. Most people, or most IT workers never get to go to a conference. Quite a few go once or twice in their careers, but it's the few that get to go somewhere every year. I've been lucky, attending 1 conference most years, 2 quite often, and even 3 or 4 major conferences in some years. That's unusual and I appreciate that I've been very lucky.
So SQLSaturday provides a great chance for many people to get some training, some learning, at no cost to their company. It gives them a chance to experience a bit of the conference atmosphere and meet some of the professionals that work hard to lead the way and help others. I don't think that these events will displace conferences and large scale events, but I think they can really help more people get a chance to get motivated and excited about their career.
I enjoyed it, and while I'm not big on the travel, I'm sure I'll get to a few more of these events next year.
