SQL PASS Twitter Bingo: The rules so far…

Sorry for the late posting on this, but it’s been a heckuva day 🙂 Anyway, we (Brent Ozar, Blythe Morrow, several others and I) have had several logistical discussion about how Twitter Bingo will be played at PASS Summit 2009, and I thought I would post what we’ve discussed so far.

The goals!

The goal of the game is to increase networking opportunities between the SQL Twitter community and face-to-face PASS Attendees. Our hope is to a) strengthen existing relationships between SQL tweople, and b) encourage new people to start using Twitter and contribute to the social interactions beyond Summit.

What is NOT the goal!

To win fabulous prizes. Quest and SQLServerPedia are putting together some encouragement for new people to play, but the focus isn’t on “winning”; it’s on community interaction.

“Squares” and players…

Squares will be the volunteers who agreed to have their Twitter avatars placed on the cards. Squares may certainly play the game by printing out cards and pursuing other squares, but at this time, squares are discouraged from entering the prize drawing (Sorry about that; the prizes are fabulous, but not that fabulous). Again, we want to encourage new people to join the community; if you’re a square, you’re already there (ooh, that was a horrible rhyme.)

How will players mark off squares on their cards?

Each square has a code word; when asked for that code word, they should provide it to the player, who can write it on their card. I realized that code words will probably be shared among players, but again, the goal is to encourage community interaction even at the risk of minor “cheating”. We may come up with a more secure scheme next time, but this time, it just seems easier for Quest/SQLServerPedia employees to validate code words.

Arlene Gray (@whimsql) suggested that she write her code word on the back of her business card; I think that’s a great idea.

How will players know where to find me?

Twitter is an option 🙂 If you can, tweet your location throughout the day using the hashtag #sqlbingo.

Brent also suggested that if you’re a speaker, you may want to ask squares in the room to stand up before you begin your session, so players can identify them. We’re also planning on asking squares to print out a small badge to tape to their regular conference badge showing their avatar and username.

Where do players get their cards?

We’re going to ask players to print out their own cards and bring them with them; we’ll also have some cards available at the Quest/SQLServerPedia booth. Blythe Morrow also suggested that we use the PASS help desk booth as well.

How do players play?

We’re planning on adding this to the card:

Here’s how the contest works: print out 3 Bingo cards. Try to meet as many people as possible that are on your card each day. Each person has their own code word, and you have to write down their code word in their space on the Bingo card. When you get a straight line (5 people in any direction) on Tuesday, you can drop off your card in the SQLServerPedia booth in the exhibit hall. Each day, we’ll draw 2 winners and email them with their prize package – things like signed books, gift cards, and more. On Wednesday, it gets tougher – you have to have two straight lines filled out. On Thursday, you have to have a blackout – all spaces covered! Only one entry per person per day.

Who’s a square?

Below is the list of squares:

Square	SquareUserName
Andy Leonard	AndyLeonard
Aaron Bertrand	AaronBertrand
Aaron Nelson	SQLvariant
Adam Machanic	AdamMachanic
Allen Kinsel	sqlinsaneo
Andy Warren	sqlAndy
Arlene Gray	whimsql
Bill Fellows	billinkc
Bill Graziano	billgraziano
Blythe Morrow	blythemorrow
Brent Ozar	brento
Brian Kelley	kbriankelley
Colin Stasiuk	BenchmarkIT
Denny Cherry	mrdenny
Eric Humphrey	lotsahelp
Geoff Hiten	SQLCraftsman
Grant Fritchey	GFritchey
Jeff Rush	JeffRush
Jeremiah Peschka	peschkaj
Joe Webb	JoeWebb
Ken Simmons	kensimmons
Kendal Van Dyke	SQLDBA
Lee Anne Pedersen	leeannepedersen
Lori Edwards	loriedwards
Mike Walsh	Mike_Walsh
Mike Wells	SarasotaSQL
Pat Wright	SQLAsylum
Peter Schott	paschott
Peter Shire	Peter_Shire
Ross Mistry	RossMistry
Rushabh Mehta	rushabhmehta
Steve Jones	way0utwest
Stuart Ainsworth	stuarta
Tim Benninghoff	bugboi
Tim Ford	sqlagentman
Tim Mitchell	Tim_Mitchell
TJay Belt	tjaybelt
Todd McDermid	Todd_McDermid
Tom LaRock	SQLRockstar
Trevor Barkhouse	SQLServerSleuth
Wendy Pastrick	wendy_dance
Wesley Brown	WesBrownSQL
William McKnight	williammcknight

That’s all for now; I’m sure more will come up as I think about it 🙂

All aTwitter about PASS Nominations

Lots of interesting conversations about the PASS nominations happening on Twitter today; if you are not up to speed, you’ve got a lot of reading to do. I’ll try to sum up as best I can:

Some people applied to be nominated for board positions; a nominating committed approved 4 applications for 3 open positions.
3 of the 4 positions are well-established members of the SQL community; one is a bit more controversial.
All 4 candidates have been invited to express their opinions on various forums, and all have been “interviewed” by Brent Ozar on his blog. Links are below.

If you haven’t read these interviews, you need to. For the most part, they’re pretty insightful, and they suggest what direction each of the candidates is moving in when it comes to PASS. Matt’s candidacy raises some interesting questions about the nomination process, and the role of the Board in determining the direction of PASS. It also raises some definitional questions about what PASS is, and what it should be. I applaud him for his comments on Brent’s blog, because it takes a lot of guts to stand up under fire (even though I disagree with some of his positions).

EDIT: I should have also stated that I applaud ALL of the candidates for their willingness to engage the members of PASS, including the first step of applying for the job.

Before I go too much further, let me say that this post is intended to be an indictment of myself; I did not apply to be on the Board, nor did I even express much interest in the nomination process before today. I also didn’t even blink before I voted; I picked the three candidates that I felt comfortable with, and was going about my business until the conversations began on Twitter today. I will not be so lax in the future.

What bothers me most about Matt’s candidacy is not his position, nor his background, nor the responses he gave to the questions asked of him; it’s the fact that he’s the only candidate that the community seems to have engaged in this fashion. Granted, many of the questions asked were for him to clarify how his professional expertise would make him a good fit for the Board, and those are legitimate questions. There were also other questions that were asked to help clarify his vision of direction for PASS which would have been suitable for the other candidates as well. All of that’s fair game, but why didn’t we challenge the other candidates as well?

When I asked the question on Twitter, the general response I got was that “we know the other candidates; we don’t know Matt”. That may be true, but even though we know someone, that should give us the opportunity to engage them on a deeper level than the “dark horse” candidate. Instead, we as a community let 3 out of 4 candidates express themselves with little or no interaction from us, and instead focused on 1 controversial candidate. I am not suggesting that Matt should not have been questioned; I am suggesting that we should have taken more advantage of the opportunity to get to know the other candidates better.

EDIT: As pointed out in the comments below, Matt was not the only candidate to engage with questioners; I didn’t mean to overlook the efforts of the candidates to make themselves approachable, but I did want to point out that many of us didn’t take them up on that offer.

Again, I’m pointing the finger at myself as much as anyone else. I should have applied for the position; at the very least, I should have asked more questions before casting my vote.

2009-10-16 by Stuart Ainsworth PASS SQLServerPedia Syndication The Social Web 13

Maker’s Schedule, Manager’s Schedule, User’s Schedule

During the recent SQLSaturday #25 in Gainesville GA, we had an open session at the end of the day which we treated like a “Meet the Experts”. During the discussion, Cliff Jacobson referred to an article detailing the difference between the Maker’s Schedule and the Manager’s Schedule.

Here’s the link for your reference: http://www.paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html

It’s a quick read, but I’ll sum it up for you

There are two types of schedule, which I’ll call the manager’s schedule and the maker’s schedule. The manager’s schedule is for bosses. It’s embodied in the traditional appointment book, with each day cut into one hour intervals. You can block off several hours for a single task if you need to, but by default you change what you’re doing every hour… But there’s another way of using time that’s common among people who make things, like programmers and writers. They generally prefer to use time in units of half a day at least. You can’t write or program well in units of an hour. That’s barely enough time to get started…

I would argue that (at least in our shop) there’s a third schedule: the User’s Schedule. Some managers ARE users, so their time alternates between the Manager’s Schedule and the User’s Schedule, but for the sake of this discussion, we’ll keep this separate.

What is the User’s Schedule? Basically, users only know of one time: Now(). Now is when they have to get their work done, and Now() is when the software breaks. When their work gets interrupted, they have to resolve the problem before they can move on.

Why is this important? Because when Users need a resolution, they don’t want to hear it’ll take a week to implement; they want it fixed Now(). When they request a feature, they want to know it’s being worked on Now(). Obviously, this is unrealistic for Makers; good code takes time to write, time to test, and time to document. When a Maker skips one of those steps, it’s usually because they’re attempting to work on the User’s Schedule.

Now() is not necessarily a bad time; Users are not attempting to screw the Maker out of task completion. The User really believes that Now() is when the Maker wants to know about the issue, so that the Maker can fix the problem before it gets too severe. Notifying the Maker about the issue as soon as it happens is the User’s method of helping.

So how do we reconcile these three schedules? Programmers need to meet with managers (they determine priority) and users (they determine requirements); in fact, the Agile Manifesto states that

Business people and developers must work together daily throughout the project.

How do you keep the conversation focused on the scheduled deliverable and not the bug of the moment? You have to keep moving forward, but you also have to be willing to acknowledge the Manager’s need for status reports and the User’s need to report issues and request features. I am no expert in this, but these are the principles I am starting to implement in my own schedule.

I’m working with Management to find appropriate times to schedule status reports. I’m trying to fit them in either right before lunch (either the meeting ends on time, or I may get a free meal out of it), or in the last hour before the end of the day (sometimes meetings go long, which is unfortunate). This takes care of the Management/Maker disconnect.
To avoid addressing issues Now(), I have started closing my email, forwarding my phone, and setting my IM status to Do Not Disturb (note: for a feature in Office Communicator, I wish I had a way to set different statuses for different contacts; DND doesn’t raise an alert, but I wish I could let my boss through) for 45 minutes out of every hour. The last 15 minutes, I stop coding, and check email, etc. This keeps my finger on rising issues, but is less interruptive than constant contact. Of course, I work remotely most days, so I don’t have to deal with Spring-Loaded-Butt Syndrome (and I’m not talking about hinges).
When I do contact users to deal with the bug-of-the-moment, I try to reassure them that the a) bug is being recorded, and b) will be prioritized. We use Team Foundation Server, which is OK for a bug tracking system. The biggest problem that I see in my current environment is that Users don’t often follow up with Managers to make sure that the issues are prioritized.
When discussing features for rollout, and the User attempts to bring up the bug-of-the-moment, I ask them to hold off on that discussion until the end of our stated objectives, and I encourage them to write it out. By writing out the issue, they begin specifying the core elements of a bug report/requirements document.

Is this perfect? No, but it’s a start. I’d be interested in hearing what your ideas are on the subject, and what steps you have taken to coordinate Maker’s time, Manager’s time, and User’s time.

2009-10-16 by Stuart Ainsworth Development Methods SQLServerPedia Syndication 0

PASS Summit 2009 – Twitter Bingo Players

Last call! If you’re planning on being at PASS Summit 2009, and you have an active Twitter account, and you’d like to be sought after by millions of screaming fans (OK, that last part’s an exaggeration, but there will be people looking for you), please let me know by Friday, 10/16/2009. So far, the following tweeple have signed up to be squares on the card (please check your handle for accuracy; I’m a lousy typist):

@stuarta
@BrentO
@WesBrownSQL
@RossMistry
@lotsahelp
@mrdenny
@AndyLeonard
@peschkaj
@sqlinsaneo
@Bugboi
@billinkc
@williammcknight
@leeannepedersen
@paschott
@SarasotaSQL
@SQLDBA
@AdamMachanic
@SQLvariant
@whimsql
@kbriankelley
@SQLRockstar
@kensimmons
@way0utwest
@BenchmarkIT
@sqlagentman
@tjaybelt
@GFritchey

UPDATE (I either missed these, or they saw this post and wanted to play):

@SQLAsylum
@SQLServerSleuth
@loriedwards
@SQLCraftsman
@Todd_McDermid
@wendy_dance
@Peter_Shire
@blythemorrow (who should definitely be the center square!)
@sqlAndy (who MAY actually post something<G>)
@rushabhmehta
@JoeWebb
@billgraziano

UPDATE II (last call<G>):

@AaronBertrand

Although we have more than enough players to fill up a card, we could use a few more so that we’d have a truly random configuration. We’re still working on some of the logistical details, like how you’ll be recognized as a payer when you don’t look like your avatar, but this is coming together.

UPDATE (AGAIN): Rough draft of card is up: http://sqlserverpedia.com/bingo/

2009-10-14 by Stuart Ainsworth Conferences SQLServerPedia Syndication The Social Web 12

YAY! Somebody likes me…

I just got the email today; Red Gate friended me. Or, rather, I am now a Friend of Red Gate. What does this mean? I try to think of it kind of like a NASCAR patch; I now have a perpetual sponsor for all of my various presentations in the SQL community. I don’t know what else to say other than “THANK YOU!”

Seriously, I love Red Gate’s products, and have been a big fan of theirs for a long time. Their SQL Compare product just works, and it works well (unlike the sometimes-challenging implementation in Visual Studio’s Database Developer). I bought SQL Prompt with my own money because I saw it as a major time saver.

I’m very jazzed about this.

2009-10-14 by Stuart Ainsworth SQL Server 1

SQL Saturday 25; reflections

Another SQLSaturday down! This was my second one to organize in a year, and it was much different than the first event we held in April. I learned a lot this time about managing the event, so it’s time for another wrap-up post 🙂 (YAY! You know you’re excited!).

Before I go to far, I need to express a huge THANK YOU to the faculty and students at Gainesville State College and the Institute for Environmental and Spatial Analysis, particularly Allison Ainsworth (and yes, we’re related). I’ll explain more about their role in a bit, but they really made the event flow flawlessly and their presence helped make this event a huge success in a number of ways. I’d also like to thank my daughter Isabel, who (like a typical twelve-year-old) alternated between being bored and excited about being there. She was constantly in motion throughout the event, and she made me very proud.

I also want to thank our sponsors: Interworks and RedGate, as well as our hosting user group AtlantaMDF. Without their involvement, there would be no SQL Saturday, and I hope that we can continue this tradition in our area for a long, long time.

Basic stats

103 registered; 75 attendees
12 faculty and student workers
3 tracks; 14 speakers

What worked well…

Faculty & Student Volunteers rocked. Having someone running the show who did not have a vested interested in seeing the speakers was a great asset; if you can partner with a local school and work out a deal to have student workers, DO IT!. The team at GSC worked very hard, and while they managed to sneak in a few sessions, they didn’t expect to see all of them. This was very different from the Alpharetta event earlier in the year where I felt guilty because several volunteers were unable to attend sessions.
Attendee Volunteers were awesome. I had several attendees who were very willing to proctor the sessions they were in (thus relieving the student workers of that responsibility). They handled speaker time, took care of announcements, and made sure that the sessions flowed smoothly from one to the next.
Lunch! Lunch was a bit of an accident, really; we had made arrangements with Sonny’s Bar-B-Q to provide the meal, but had neglected to follow up until right before the event. We were expecting box lunches, but because of the timing, they provided us with a buffet. This happy accident was actually OK, as our costs were lower, and the amount of food provided was enough to ensure that everyone was well-fed. In general, everybody ate well (breakfast, lunch, and a snack).
Speakers! Just thumbing through the evaluation forms, I saw a lot of positive comments. I also heard a lot from the attendees about how well the speakers did in general. We had several first-time speakers at this event, and I think they handled themselves very well.
Facility. I had several attendees compliment me on the choice of the facility; even though GSC is a bit of a drive from downtown Atlanta, several people seemed to indicate that the spaciousness of the floor plan was worth the drive.

What needs improvement…

Sponsor recruitment. We only had a couple of sponsors, and I wished I had managed to contact more. Part of the difficulty was in approaching sponsors so soon after the Alpharetta event. However, I did have a few attendees remark that they missed having the opportunity to meet with the sponsors.
Prizes-for-evals. In each session, we had attendees complete an evaluation form for a ticket; this way the form could be confidential, and they would have a chance to win a prize at the end of the day. According to Allison, this was tough to manage (making sure that tickets and forms were collected at the end of each session). I also think it biased the evals; since people HAD to complete one to get a ticket, many of them simply circled all #1’s or #4’s.
Session oppositions. I had a couple of situations where I wished I could have touted the GIS sessions more than I did; at the end of the day, for example, most of the SQL Server folks went to the open spaces sessions rather than the GIS session describing the program at GSC. People have free choice, but I wish I could have found a way to encourage them to learn more about the hosting organization.
Student presenters. We had originally intended that there be a SQL Saturday #24 on Friday, featuring Student presenters. It didn’t happen, so we need to figure out a way to open doors to students at GSC (and other schools). We did have two presenters on Saturday, but I wish we had more.

What I would change next time…

Speaker polos; student worker T-shirts. We had speaker –t-shirts made up for the event, and we also shared them with most student volunteers. I had a couple of speakers remark that they missed the polos (but they understood it was a budgeting issue). It was nice, however, to see a sea of green t-shirts manning the registration desk, and helping attendees find their way.
More vegetarian options. No one went hungry; however, we had ordered vegetarian meals from a local Chinese restaurant for the attendees who had registered as vegetarians. We had a few people who thought they had registered as a vegetarian, but it didn’t list that way on the extract from the site (my guess is they never actually clicked the button). IF we do a buffet next year, we may do it as a Chinese buffet with additional vegetables.
Bill the event as a North Atlanta or Lake Lanier event. The space is great, and we’d love to make it a bigger event next year; however, we have to convince the Atlanta development community that it’s worth the drive, AND we have to figure out a way to get more sponsors involved. IF we could get a well-known keynote (or special topic) speaker to appear, that could boost our attendance rate, and boost the sponsorship.
Give away prizes during the last few minutes of a session. Let’s do away with the prize-for-eval; still hand out eval forms, and tickets, but let the proctor in each session do the prize pull at the end of the session REGARDLESS of whether or not they have a completed form. Hang on to all of the tickets for extra prizes at the end of the day.

Additional writeups:

A couple of blogs have already made it around the net; here’s a couple of different perspectives on the day.

http://dyfhid.blogspot.com/2009/10/sql-saturday-25-and-epiphany.html

http://ammonsonline.com/jeffablog/post/SQL-Saturday-25-Fun.aspx

http://arcanecode.com/2009/10/10/sql-saturday-25-gainesville-ga-october-10-2009/

2009-10-13 by Stuart Ainsworth Conferences SQLServerPedia Syndication 3

Wrapping up for SQLSaturday 25

Whew. Just finished my presentation for SQLSaturday #25 (The Social DBA), and am now going through my short list of stuff left to do. This has been an interesting experience because of the help from the college; having volunteers take care of things like food and beverages has been both helpful (and a little stressful; I don’t hand off tasks well).

Anyway, here’s my short list, in case you want to know what’s involved with a SQL Saturday:

Pick up inserts for Name Badges and a roll of double-sided tickets
Take the table from upstairs to GSC
Design & Print badges for Speakers and volunteers
Design & Print tickets for big prize drawings
Print final registration list (with no-pays marked).
Print Veggie Lunch list
Print out Inserts for books
Print out evaluation forms.

BTW, we’re up to 105 registrants, as of today, even after having speakers and attendees drop out throughout the day. 24 hours to go. Woo-hoo!

2009-10-09 by Stuart Ainsworth Conferences 0

<facedesk>

So, I’ve been answering questions on StackOverflow for two days now, and I still like the experience. However, I have noticed a disturbing trend in several of the questions being asked that involve SQL Server. Here’s an example of one; I’ll give you the question, and my answer, and then tell you what’s bugging me.

TSQL Generate 5 character length string, all digits [0-9] that doesn’t already exist in database

What’s the best way to do this?

I need to generate a 5 digit length string where all the characters are numeric. However, I need to be able to do this ‘x’ amount of times (user variable) and store this random strings in a database. Furthermore, I can’t generate the same string twice. Old strings will be removed after 6 months.

Pseudo-code
DECLARE @intIterator INT,
 @intMax

SET @intIterator = 1
SET @intMax = 5 (number of strings to generate)

WHILE @intIterator <= @intMax
 BEGIN

  -- GENERATE RANDOM STRING OF 5 NUMERIC DIGITS 
   ???

  -- INSERT INTO DB IF DOESN'T ALREADY EXIST 
  INSERT INTO TSTRINGS
  SELECT @RANDOMSTRING

  IF @@ERROR = 0
    SET @intIterator = @intIterator + 1

 END
I know this probably isn’t the best way to do it, so advice is appreciated. But really looking for ideas on how to generate the numeric 5 length strings.

I think this is a great question; the guy’s obviously looking for a list of randomly generated five-character strings comprised entirely of digits; this means there are only 100,000 possibilities. This question is tagged as SQL and TSQL, which means that he’s looking for a database-driven solution (I’m aware that there are several ways to skin this cat; I’m just showing you that he’s specifically looking for a SQL solution). Note, however, that he’s using a loop to create, validate, and insert 1 row at a time.

Here’s where a lot of reading lately on numbers tables comes into play; I think about this a bit, and post the following solution:

Here’s a set-based approach, using SQL 2005 syntax (would be a little easier with SQL 2008, but you didn’t specify). Also, if you had a numbers table, a large chunk of it can be cut out.

No looping, no duplicates, and should be nearly instantaneous (assuming the target column is indexed).

DECLARE @intMax INTEGER
SET @intMax = 5
INSERT INTO TSTRINGS
        SELECT q.nString
        FROM    ( SELECT    ROW_NUMBER() OVER ( ORDER BY ( NEWID() ) ) AS N2 ,
                            RIGHT(REPLICATE(‘0’, 5) + CONVERT(VARCHAR(5), N), 5) AS nString
                  FROM      –the subquery below could be replaced by a numbers table
                            ( SELECT TOP 100000
                                        ROW_NUMBER() OVER ( ORDER BY ( ac1.Object_ID ) ) – 1 AS N
                              FROM      Master.sys.columns ac1
                                        CROSS JOIN Master.sys.columns ac2
                                        CROSS JOIN Master.sys.columns ac3
                            ) numbers
                  WHERE     RIGHT(REPLICATE(‘0’, 5) + CONVERT(VARCHAR(5), N), 5) NOT IN ( SELECT    nString
                                                                                          FROM      TSTRINGS ) –check to see if reused
                ) q
        WHERE   q.N2 <= @intMax

A nice, tidy, set-based solution that I’ll probably keep in mind for generating passwords in the future (with a little work). So, what’s bugging me? Is it the fact that I have 0 votes for this solution? No, that’s not really it, because votes are kind of whimsical; some times you get them; sometimes you don’t.

No, what bugs me, is that out of the 6 answers posted, 3 of them involve CURSORS. For a SQL question. I know. Shock and horror.

Seriously, though; why do people still use cursors? I know that there are times when cursors are an appropriate tool, but you shouldn’t use them everyday. It’s kind of like buying those specialized drill bits for removing a stripped screw; for that specific application, they work great. If you leave them in your drill, and you try to use them in an everyday situation; guess what? You’ve stripped out a screw.

Let me be as clear as I can:

CURSORS SUCK, PEOPLE. HEAR ME? THEY SUCK.

There you go; I feel better now.

2009-10-08 by Stuart Ainsworth SQL SQLServerPedia Syndication 3

Becoming a better me…

This will be a short post, mainly because I’m in the home stretch for SQLSaturday #25; lots of little stuff to get done between now and Saturday. However, a few interesting things have been happening lately, and I thought I’d share some of them.

First, Microsoft announced its latest round of MVP’s. No, I didn’t get one; things haven’t been THAT exciting. However, I do know a lot of people who were first-time recipients, and that means that even though I don’t contribute nearly as much to the community as they do, I am brushing shoulders with them. It’s kind of like of being the geek in high school who tutors the quarterback; I’m not cool, but I know people who are.

Speaking of those people, I had a brief email exchange with one of them to get a feel for how you become an MVP, and he shared with me his list of accomplishments over the last year. I know that the MVP process is completely subjective, but seeing what this friend of mine did over the last year helped me realize that a) I do a lot for the community in terms of organizing events and making sure that educational opportunities are available, but b) I don’t do enough technical writing and knowledge-sharing to establish myself as a SQL Server expert.

Do I want to be a MVP? Well, yes, that would be nice. It’s always a good thing to be recognized by your peers for contributing to the community. However, my ultimate goal is to be the best I can be at what I do, and that path just happens to coincide with some of the same stated goals of the MVP program. If I want to up the ante, and be a rock star, I need to find ways to share knowledge, not just networking skills (and still manage to keep my marriage and family intact), regardless of whether or not those accomplishments are recognized by my peers.

That brings me to my second point; I’m now sharing on StackOverflow.com. Brent Ozar’s been a long-time advocate for this site, and I finally saw the light. I like it; the interactive interface is richer than USENET, and the reputation system allows you a way of validating that the advice you’re getting (and giving) is good. Today is my second day of posting, and I’m already up to a reputation score of 216 (woo-hoo!)

Finally, Brent Ozar, Andy Warren, and Jeremiah Peschka have just announced the PASS Log Reader Awards. I submitted a couple of entries from my blog for their review, and I’m hoping that I’ll pick up a few readers in the process. I know a lot of database bloggers started this year, and while this is a competition, I’m hoping it’s more of a motivational experience for me. I need to write more technical content, and I need inspiration from others to do so.

2009-10-06 by Stuart Ainsworth Blogging is FUN! Development SQLServerPedia Syndication The Social Web 3

SQLSaturday 25 October 10, 2009 – Final Stretch!

Less than two weeks until SQLSaturday 25, and I have lots of stuff to wrap up; however, there’s been some exciting stuff happening in the last couple of weeks.

Attendance is up!

Attendance – Planning to Attend: 95 (as of today)

New Sponsor!

Interworks, Inc has really stepped up to the plate and become a Gold Sponsor for us! YAY! The more I hear about this company, the more I like about them.

Student Sessions!

Way back when I agreed to take on this project with Gainesville State College and IESA, it was our intent to make this a student-centered conference as much as possible; unfortunately, things haven’t gone according to plan. However, we do have two student presentations (and we’re waiting on a few more):

Patrick Taylor: ArcIMS and SQL Server

Jeremy Rylee: Feature Data Object

We’ve also got a full roster of other sessions, which you can view here:

Start Time	DBA	Development	GIS/BI/Special
8:30 AM	Trevor Barkhouse	Audrey Hammonds	Michael Stark
	Deadlock Detection, Troubleshooting, & Prevention	The T-SQL Trifecta: Enhancements for Everyone	SQL Server 2008 Spatial Data
9:45 AM	Neal Waterstreet	Robert Cain	Sudhanshu Panda
	SQL Server Backups	Introduction to SQL Server Integration Services	SQL Application in Geographic Information Systems
11:00 AM	Trevor Barkhouse	Julie Smith	Mark Tabladillo
	Leveraging SQLDiag for Efficient Troubleshooting	Cool Tricks to Pull from your SSIS Hat—	Data Mining Beyond Adventure Works
1:30 PM	Stuart Ainsworth	Sergey Barskiy	Dan Murray
	The Social DBA: Resources for Career Building	CLR integration	Data Visualization and High Value Low Cost BI
2:45 PM	Jeff Ammons	Robert Cain	College Students
	Data Persistence in a Web Hosted World	SQL Server Full Text Searching – An Introduction.	Student Showcase Session 1
4:00 PM	Chris Semerjian & Allison Ainsworth	Cliff Jacobson	More College Students
	GIS Certificate Program at IESA	DBA vs ORM: Strategies for Data in a Code Focused	Student Showcase Session 2

And, here comes the pain…

Stuff left to do includes:

Follow up with volunteers at IESA to make sure food is ready
Speaker dinner arrangements
Make sure Speaker shirts are on their way
Write my presentation – D’oh!
Make sure signage is done properly
Remember to breathe

2009-09-30 by Stuart Ainsworth Conferences SQLServerPedia Syndication 0

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