Social Commentary

#sqlpass is over. Some thought, comments, and reviews.

The 2009 SQL PASS Summit has ended.  Our friends and extended family have made there way home, or are on there way home.  As I sit in the airport on Saturday on my way home to Southern California it seams like a good time to put down some thoughts about this years PASS Summit.

I posted some blog posts about the keynotes on Tuesday and Wednesday as well as some photo’s already so I’ll try not to rehash to much of that information here.  I attended a wide range of sessions this week.  Some where good, some weren’t so good, and some were very, very funny (twitter commentary).  Most of the sessions that I attended were public, but a few where insider sessions for MVPs, TAP customers, etc and were covered by NDA, so I can’t talk about those.

The Sessions

I would say that the most talked about session of the summit was the Buck Woody (twitter) comedy show.  Also know as his very informative and very funny sessions which he gave on Thursday afternoon.  I wasn’t able to catch Bucks sessions in there entirety, but I was able to sit through most of them, and they were both funny and very informative.  I wish that I was able to be that kind of speaker.  Hopefully some day I will have the skills to do so.

The last session on Thursday was my presentation on “Storage for the DBA”.  I was honestly expecting a very small group to attend, as it was the last session of the day on the last day.  Which is normally not a good place to be presenting.  However with the summit being Tuesday through Thursday, most people didn’t leave until Friday so we were able to keep a lot of people there.  This along with the excellent topic selection (or at least I think it was excellent, but I’m biased) let to a packed room with people standing in the back.

During my session we had some great questions, and we covered a lot of topics.  My session this year was presented as a community session so it was 75 minutes.  Next year I think I’ll submit it as a spotlight session so that I’ll have 90 minutes.  As I review the revamp the slide deck over the next few months I may end up making it a two session presentation so that there is enough room for everything, and plenty of time for questions, maybe even a pre/post con which would give a ton of time. to really make that work though I think I’d need to get a hardware vendor to loan out some equipment so that we could do a hands on.

One this which I thought was a little strange, was that during the first ever Board of Directors Q&A panel discussion, only 16 people attended.  I was expecting a much fuller room to grill the board members about things which people had questions about.

The Summit it self

Personally I always have a great time at the PASS Summit.  However some people don’t, and this is something that we has a SQL Server community need to correct.  I was speaking with some of the board members Friday night at the hotel bar and they told me that 40% of the summit attendees were attending for the first time this year.  This is an amazing number of people coming for the first time.  However attendance was down from last year by ~6-8%.  With this many new people the question becomes, where is everyone from last year?  With 40% of the people being new this year, one would think that we would have a massive attendance growth.

There were some complaints which were over heard in the halls of the hotel that people didn’t know what to do after the summit’s official activities were over.  I can remember back to my first SQL Summit a few years ago and it was hard to find out where the after parties were happening.  It helps if you know a lot of people as the more people at the summit that you know the easier it is to find the parties.  We as the attendees who have been to the summit several times need to do better and making the new attendees feel welcome and show then the ropes.  Here they are in the strange city with a couple of thousand people they didn’t know, knowing that there’s a good time to be had, but just not sure where it is, or who to talk to in order to find it.

I spoke with some of the board about this, so that we can try and come up with a better way to make it easier to identify people so that the first timers can find the people who have been coming for a few years, and the people who have been coming for a few years can find the first timers and get them involved. No decision was reached (decisions really shouldn’t be made over been at 1am) but we got all the ideas down on a list so that they will at least be talked about my PASS HQ, and the board.

PASS can help some with this, but PASS can’t schedule every second of the day.  Even if they could would we really want them to?  Lets face it scheduled parties are fine, but dull.  It’s the after parties at places like Bush Garden (the karaoke bar) or at the Tap House which really make it the event that it is.  Now these aren’t scheduled parties, and the certainly aren’t sponsored parties (most of the time), but of all the after hours events that I went to this week these will be where I did the most networking with people I didn’t know, or that I had only met online.

I think that SQLServerPedia and PASS tried to help get people talking to each other via the SQLBingo, and I met a few people this way, but not nearly as many as I was expecting.  I think that this could have really helped the new people to the summit get to know the longer time attendees if we had some people playing looking for the squares.  I think that most of the squares did a decent job letting everyone know where they where during the week, but we need more visibility for people who aren’t on twitter, or who can’t use twitter from there cell phone to find people.  As an example most of our foreign attendees don’t have data plans on their cell phones so they can’t follow the twitter streams during the day without using their laptops.  The same goes for anyone using a corporate cell phone as it will be locked down so that they can’t install any twitter applications which would prevent them from participating.  I think that the monitor in front of the PASS HQ booth was a good start to this, but I think that we need one dedicated to SQLBingo next year (I’m working under the assumption that we try the SQLBingo one more time) which is constantly showing the SQLBingo feed in real time, no matter what comes across it.  (I’m not sure how many people noticed but the real time twitter feed which was up at the PASS HQ booth went away after the first day or so.)

Another thing which needs to change is the location of the PASS HQ booth.  It’s location my the registration desk is fine for Monday, but after that it should be moved to the top of the escalator on the fourth floor so that it is sitting right where 95% of the attendees will be walking by.  As it is now the only time anyone would go near the booth would be for breakfast or lunch.

I wanted to do stuff, but I couldn’t find out where anything was happening

I would agree that it can be tough to find out what is going on after the official stuff is done.  The typical DBA doesn’t really have the right personality to just walk up to people and talk to strangers and make new friends.  For some people this can be down right scary.  But I promise you that we won’t bite, and we won’t make fun of you for coming up to us, and we won’t send you away because we don’t know you.  The bulk of the people at the SQL PASS Summit are very approachable, and very friendly.  Those of us that have been coming to the summit for a few years know each other so we naturally gravitate towards each other in groups of 20-50.  However we are always happy to cram a few new people into the taxi with us and go drink and make asses of ourselves at the karaoke bar, and no drinking is not required we had plenty of people who don’t drink for one reason or another (religion, recovery, etc) with us.  Heck, I sang for the first (and probably last) time this year (it did take a lot of Jaeger to get .me up there though).

One of the problems with all the after parties being unofficial parties is that there isn’t really a way to find out about them without talking to people.  I’ve pitched an idea to have a couple of screens put out which would have meet up information posted on them as that info is seen on twitter or as people tell PASS HQ of an after party.  This will cost PASS some money as the monitors aren’t free, but if it gets people meeting each other and coming back year after year then it is money well spent in my mind.

A question for you

Of you, who have been to the summit and didn’t go back, I ask a question.  Why not?  What where you expecting from the summit that you didn’t get?  What turned you off of coming back to the summit?  Please feel free to leave me a comment here, or a private email to me directly via dcherry AT awarenesstech DOT com would be just fine.  Obviously I’m not on the board so I can’t make any changes myself, but I know people that are and I’ve got not problem calling them and telling them that my readers didn’t come back because of this.

What do you mean you haven’t been to PASS?

So you’ve read this far down, but you’ve never been to the SQL PASS Summit.  What on earth are you waiting for?  Yes I know it is a pricy event to attend.  You’ve got the entrance fee, the hotel and airfare costs to deal with so the whole thing can run a few thousand dollars (US) to go to, but the education and the experience are well worth it.

If you haven’t been to PASS, I highly recommend it.  If you’ve been before but had a bad experience speak up.  That way it can be fixed and hopefully you’ll come spend another week with us.  If you go regularly like me, then I hope that I was able to meet you (please don’t be offended when I don’t remember your name, I met easily 300 or more people and I’m really bad with names to begin with), and if not lets work on that at next years PASS.

See you in Seattle next November,

Denny

How do you know when it’s time to refactor that database design?

Software developers love re-factoring code.  And why shouldn’t they.  It’s quick (sometimes) and when done correctly it’ll reduce the amount of code, and speed up application response time.  DBAs like re-factoring code as well.  We get the same benefits when done correctly.  Re-factoring the database schema on the other hand, is a frigging nightmare.

Changing around code is easy, moving 100,000,000 records from one table to another in a timely fashion isn’t.  It sucks, big time. Continued »

No, I will not do your homework for you

If you are a computer science major, or taking a computer class of some sort, then by all means use the Internet for research.  That’s what it’s there for.  If you’ve written some code and it’s just not working correctly then by app means post your question on a forum (with the code) and ask what you are doing wrong.  Someone will be more than happy to point you in the right direction. Continued »

Me and Twitter

Personally I don’t get most of the social networking sites / products / whatever you want to call them. Continued »

Did you know?

Hopefully you have seen one of the “Did you know” videos that are on the web.  If you haven’t I highly recommend that you do.  I’ve included the four versions which I’ve found below.

I’ve found these videos quite interesting to watch, especially as you watch the different versions and see the numbers being updated and changing over time.  After you watch theses I invite you to talk with people about the message that you got from these videos.  I look forward to your comments either here, on Twitter, via email, or in person.

For those that don’t know the first of these videos was created by Karl Fisch for use at a beginning of the school year meeting.  You can read up more about Karl on his site and more about Shift Happens.

The original (which I uploaded to YouTube to make it easier to view).  In this video he refers to AHS which is the school he teaches at, or at least he did at that time.

To this 4 minute and 55 second version.

To this 2007 version which is 8 minutes and 19 seconds long.

To the most recent 2008 version which is 5 minutes and 16 seconds long.

UPDATE: (Yeah I know 4 minutes after I published the origional)

Some other video’s by the same group of teachers.  The first is What If

And the second is 2020 Vision

What the hell is wrong with people?

I ran across the post A Culture of (Potential) Assholes: Sexual Harassment in IT on twitter today, and all I could think was “What the hell is wrong with people?”

Before I go on, I’d like to go on the record with a few things.  I’m a guy, and have on occasion been called a pig (I try and keep these occasions as few and far between as I can).  So I’m not above treating people like crap, but this is just so far beyond acceptable.

They story which is given on the thread is that a drunk “douche bag” (my words not his) walked up to a woman (which I assume he didn’t know) and gave her his room key telling her that she better he up to his room later.

I just can’t imagine doing this to someone.  Now maybe I’m a more evolved form of caveman, I don’t know.  Now, the original poster didn’t say which conference this was in his post, but I will because I think that it makes it even more pathetic that the creep said what he said to this woman.  This was the MVP Summit in Seattle.  For those that don’t know what the MVP Summit is, this is when Microsoft invites all the members of the MVP program for that year up to Seattle and show them all the shinny new things that they are working on.

Now I know that this is the first year that I’ve been an MVP, so some may think that I’m talking out of turn here, but too bad. I’m pretty sure that someone being an ass at the hotel isn’t covered by the NDA.

Why do I mention that this is the MVP Summit?  Because we were all invited by Microsoft to come meet our peers in the program, and the product groups.  One of the many things that you have to agree to when you become an MVP is a code of conduct.  While this code of conduct is pretty basic, and hard to enforce in the real world, when you are at the Microsoft Summit, its pretty easy for Microsoft to enforce it.  Rule #1 on the code of conduct is “No disrespectful behavior”.  There’s a breakdown which I won’t bother to go into, since that is pretty self explanatory.  (Don’t get me wrong I don’t think this sort of poor behavior would fly at any other event or time either.)

Everyone at the Summit is an MVP or a Microsoft Employee, so one would assume that the level of peer respect would be high.  Don’t get me wrong, there is a health banter between MVPs of different products.  The members of my product group (SQL Server) like to pick on the FoxPro and Access but we certainly have a respect for the MVPs of those products.

Becoming an MVP is hard work, no matter the product you represent.  Some of the MVPs catch a lot of crap for the products that the represent (XBox, Zune and Office probably catch the most crap from people).  Everyone who is an MVP got there for the same reason, they support their respective community and user base.  Without knowing any of the Zune MVPs (as an example) I know that they got to be a Zune MVP by providing steller support to the Zune user base.

I think that its just horrible to speak like this to anyone, especially someone you should be considering a peer.

I think, I’ve gotten off point, and I’m starting to ramble so I’ll wrap up with this.  The person who gave her his room key should be ashamed of himself.  And the guy who was sitting next to her who tried to make a funny comment and ended up WAY over the line should also be ashamed of himself.

I’ll leave you with this though.  If you can’t be bothered to respect people in public, then don’t show up.  If you insist on showing up, then consider this before you make an ass out of your self; someone who saw you may be a customer of yours, or a future customer of yous, or a future boss of yours.  Wouldn’t that suck to loose a big sale, or your that promotion because of some dumb ass thing you did when you were drunk on a company trip.  And no being drunk isn’t an excuse.  If you act like that when you are drunk, then you shouldn’t be drunk in public.

Denny

A response to a response to my post about Open Source Software

Shortly after I posted about a /. article on getting open source software to replace Microsoft software I got a few responses on Twitter, as well as a response from a fellow blogger here on the IT Knowledge Exchange John Little.

John posed a few questions in his post, which I wanted to address, as well as clarify my own statements a little bit. Continued »

Why are some open source people so adamant about doing a discervice to their users?

This isn’t a rant about open source software itself; please note the difference BEFORE bashing me in the comments or on the net.

However I recently saw a post on /. about how a university network admin wanted to start switching the university over to open source.

The only thing that came to mind was why on earth would you want to do such a disservice to your students?  While open source is great, most large companies (which is where most university students want to end up) don’t use much if any open source applications.  In the article he’s talking about replacing Office 2007 with Open Office.  Which is a fine idea for home, or for a business; however an educational institution should be more concerned with making sure that the students have access to what they will be using in the real world when they get into the job market.

Ideally I think that these students should have access to both applications, but they definitely shouldn’t be taking away access to the propriety software which the student will need to know how to use in the job market.  For example a student who is majoring in Business will probably need to know how to use PowerPoint, and the differences between PowerPoint and the open source equivalent.  However if all they are taught in school is the open source version, and they are asked to bring a presentation to an interview and give it, and the presentation doesn’t work in PowerPoint they will not be getting that job.

Many open source fans need to remember something.  While you may not like Microsoft and other close source companies (but lets be realistic, for the most part you don’t like Microsoft) these companies software are the tools that over 95% of companies use.  And while it’s great that you want to teach people that there is an alternative out there, if your role is to educate users you have to show them all the options.  If you choose to only show people the open source option, and not the propriety option then how is what you are doing any better than what you feel Microsoft does?  But if users don’t know how to use the tools which companies are providing then the users won’t be able to get jobs.  If people can’t get jobs then they can’t buy computers to run open source software.

And don’t think that if all the job applicants can’t use Office this will force companies to switch to an Open Source version.  This will simply give the companies more ammunition to send more jobs overseas where people are still being taught Microsoft products.

I guess the summary of this post is this.  If you want to teach open source, then be open about it.  Teach both ideas, and give your students a fighting chance to get that good job they were promised when they went to college.

Denny