Author: way0utwest

Continuing on with things that PASS does well, since I want to be balanced, I wanted to talk about volunteers.

I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but PASS gets a lot of volunteers. There are volunteers that run SQL Saturdays. Volunteers that run user groups. Volunteers that help out for both of those, and volunteers that handle all sorts of tasks for the organization from picking speakers to choosing board candidates and more.

In the past there have been people disillusioned with the usage and valuation of volunteers, but I have to say that I think PASS overall does a great job here. How else can you explain so many people willing to help out each year. They can’t all be treated poorly. Heck, most of them can’t be.

Every year at the Summit, volunteers are recognized with in meetings and with a party. There’s even an award for the volunteer: the PASSion award.

I greatly appreciate all the efforts of the volunteers, but I have to give credit to the organization itself for recruiting, managing, and using volunteers. There may be room for improvement, but without a doubt, something is being done right here.

Who is Mike in the business intelligence/analytics world?

Is it Mike White? If it is, he’s the guy I call for help with SSAS stuff. I’ve known Mike for years and he’s a smart guy.

Is it Mike Davis? He’s another smart guy. I don’t know him, but I read his blogs often, and he seems to know a lot about the BI side of things.

If it’s Mike Bag ’o Data, then I don’t know him, and I can’t vouch for his skills. I’m sure he’s a good BI/BA worker, and he deserves a conference to go to and discuss the problem and challenges he faces. I’ve linked to Tom LaRock’s description of Mike, and there’s a lot I agree with. In fact, I do think Tom is onto something.

I’m just not sure it’s something PASS should do.

I do think that analytics are important. I think this is a growth area in the data professional world, and I also think that lots of current DBAs better learn a bit more about how to support Mike, build tools or platforms for Mike, or transform into Mike.

I’m just not sure that PASS is the group to do this.

At least not in a way that it’s been done. The BaCON idea, which I suspect had a little inception from a for-profit company that’s a touch larger than PASS and gets to voice it’s opinion behind closed doors.

Now I like inception. I think there are plenty of times when I can’t come up with ideas on my own and it’s good to have someone suggest them to me. I can even take those ideas and run with them and make something of them.

However I’m just not sure I think PASS should be doing this, at least not at BaCON scale.

I attended the first Microsoft BI conference and thought it was a success. Lots of people, a disparate group of technical people, PMs, managers, and more. A great mix of content and I was looking forward to future conferences.

I wasn’t expecting the concept to be mismanaged and abandoned. I think MS lost its way here, combining the event with TechEd, then having it fall apart.

Or did it?

I think the concept was reborn, but by having someone else take the risk, and do the work. That’s fine, but if that’s what we want to do, then I’d like to start small.

Little BaCON

 

Have some small experiments, two slices, run a Business of Software, 200-person conference and build some momentum. See if you can grow the event with some new speakers and attendees outside your audience. Limit the exposure, and limit the work required. By all means, though, place the bet.

You see, I don’t have a problem with PASS doing more BI or BA work. I think it’s a good area in which to grow. I think there’s potential. I also think that most people would agree to making inroads in this area.

However the whole BA idea wasn’t well developed, and certainly wasn’t well presented to the community. A vast group of speakers and attendees weren’t sure what was happening. In fact, even after attending the event, a number of people felt confused about what the purpose was for the event. I think plenty of people thought it was this:

Time will tell if we get any players out there, but I can guess the purpose of the exercise, and I think it’s less about community and more about $$, though certainly there is some overlap.

I want PASS to experiment and place small bets. I want them to try new things. I certainly don’t want them to hoard their reserves and not improve their infrastructure or stagnate.

However I also want the organization to remember that the members are the organization. We’re not there to be pushed to manage some other organization’s agenda.

If there is a BA need, then someone should work on it. I’m just not sure that someone is PASS, at least not at scale.

Personally I’d much rather them expand into the BI area. We know this area, we know there are people dedicated to working in this space. In fact, I bet we could get a nice, 3,000+ person event every spring dedicated to BI. We could then have a 5,000 person Summit in the fall that’s mostly DBAs, the core audience, and includes some BI.

I bet we could grow the BI conference to 5,000 as well.

Imagine two 5,000 person conferences, bringing together data professionals. Maybe even have one of them on each side of the US each year.

Then imagine that we take an infant area, something like analytics, and grow it into a toddler at a small scale. Some of our current #SQLFamily won’t want to interact with the little one, but some will, perhaps a few hundred. However, it will grow, I truly believe that, and we can help it continue to move to 1,000, then 2,000, and who knows how much more.

We could even see PASS grow, with new funds to providing tracks or information at developer events, truly trying to expand the horizons of those that work with SQL Server and increase their competency.

We could do it. We really, really could.

If we’d learn to not work in secrecy, not spring the grand ideas on the community unexpectedly and then continue to defend the problems rather than embrace them and work to fix things.

If we worked from vision, transparency, and responsibility, I think we’d do better. Unfortunately, I think the structure of the organization leads to fear based decision making, and an overall perception of disappointment. I can’t help but think that the way things are set somehow takes good people and beats them down into something different in meetings.

I struggle with PASS as an organization, and I know many of you don’t care. However I hope you care about PASS as a concept and help work to make it something better.

If that’s with BaCON, that’s great. If it’s not, that’s OK as well.

I just would like more than the board to help shape decisions, and certainly more than a few bloggers spouting words at their screens.

I said that I’d write about some good things PASS does, and I’ll make it a point to do so. Despite my complaints and criticisms, I like the organization. I’ve been a part of it since October 1999, when the initial conference was in the basement ballroom of a hotel in downtown Chicago.

Since that time, I’ve attended most of the annual Summits. I’ve missed a few, and the last few years I’ve been on an every-other-year pace, but that’s my issue, not that of the organization.

The Summit has grown from a conference, like every other conference where techies gather to watch presentations, furiously scribble down notes, and then return to their hotel rooms to get a little late night work in for the employer that sent them away to a conference.

That first year was no different for me, though I did meet the amazing Kalen Delaney and managed to ask a semi-intelligent, reasonable question that she answered. I also had my wife, sister-in-law, and infant son with me. We watched the last game of the year at Comiskey Park, smoked cigars and enjoyed wine looking out over the river, and had a great few days in Chicago.

However something happened. I’d like to think that Andy Warren, Brian Knight, and I had a hand in it with our annual SQLServerCentral parties on opening night. Those grew from a line out the door of the reception hall in 2003, to the XBOX debacle and tv giveaway in 2004 to the casino parties with tons of prizes in later years. However we weren’t the only ones and PASS has grown to encompass numerous social events at the Summit and a community of people that greet each other with smile and hugs each fall.

We have more and more attendees that greet larger and larger groups of fellow attendees by name. We have runs, worship services, Women in Technology, kareoke and more, all of which almost overshadow the event itself. They don’t, and there’s lots of information being passed around, but the PASS Summit is way, way more than a conference.

Kudos to the organization, the HQ staff, and the various board members across the last 15 years that have worked hard to build (at times) and let evolve organically (at others), an amazing event.