Voice of the DBA

Author: way0utwest

An Open Letter to PASS and John Q Martin
Dear Mr. Martin and the PASS Organization,

In the spirit of advocating for change in a public way, I’m writing this letter to ask you to revisit your policies and processes and embrace the transparency that we, members of the PASS organization, deserve with regards to the SQL Saturday events.

I am directing this to you, Mr. Martin, after seeing your tweet, with the hope that you will follow through and not only provide feedback, but conduct a root cause analysis that updates future decisions. I also am hoping these are not merely words, but also the beginning of some action that you take and about which you publicly disclose the results.

A change was recently made to the SQL Saturday site that requires speakers to register for an event before their submissions can be approved. I realized this when a fellow speaker posted a note on Twitter. While there are potential implications here that are disruptive for event organizers and speakers, those are worthy of a separate debate. In fact, they are worthy of debate.

Today, I examined the PASS blog to look for an announcement. This what I saw.

The last update is from Mr. Fritchey, noting how much PASS wishes to express their affection for SQL Saturday. I appreciate the Board of Directors, most of whom are fellow speakers, may feel that way, but I’m not sure the organization believes this. Again, a separate discussion.

Early on in the life of SQL Saturday, a few people had to make decisions, but those decisions were publicized, with conversations with organizers and speakers. When fundamental changes were made, we announced changes publicly to ensure that others were informed. We setup a board of advisors to help ensure that change was made in a more open way, and to solicit feedback. Andy continued to provide updates later, even as PASS has declined to do so.

That doesn’t seem to have been done any longer. As I scan through the blog, I see no announcements of changes to SQL Saturday. The last posts were from 2016, when the 600 mile radius was announced and then a subsequent post explaining the reasoning.

Once again, almost two years later, PASS lacks transparency and vision. There are no discussions on slack that I find, NDA or otherwise, no emails I’ve received, no list of changes or updates.

What I would request is that you use this as an opportunity to improve governance at PASS. Examine the timeline of when this decision was made, the timeline, and look for opportunities to engage, or at least inform, the membership of PASS of changes. There should be milestones that require
- an announcement of potential changes, NDA or public
- a roadmap – is there a public one? Even one without dates.
- a roadmap update
- an announcement of an upcoming change
- an announcement of the change, publicly
- an update to the FAQ
I appreciate that there may not be funds for future changes, though there are obviously some still in progress. However, this is separate from funding. This is a process and governance issue that should be addressed.

It’s also simple common courtesy.

Sincerely,

Steve Jones

PASS member since 1999
April 18, 2018
Machine Learning Challenges

If you know someone well, you may think that you can predict what they’ll do in a situation. Those that know me might think that if I go to New York, I’ll make time to run in Central Park. That’s a good bet, and the last 7 or 8 times I’ve gone there to speak, that’s what I’ve done. However, that’s a very small data set, and you might not want to attach a high level of confidence to that prediction. There are certainly times that I’ve gone to New York and not run in Central Park.

Machine Learning (ML) is a field that tries to make predictions about some data, based on previous known actions or results. By inferring relationships between lots of data and known actions, the ML model can guess what might happen with future data inputs. Lots of companies and fields are experimenting with ML techniques, with some of them working quite well. Others aren’t faring as well, and there is a lot of research underway to better understand the entire field. One possible explanation is emergence, which is discussed in this piece.

If it’s raining, I likely won’t run. If it’s 20F, but dry, I will. Those that know me would inherently consider the type of weather as a new factor that has a high level of predictability for me. Time in the city, location, whether my family is with me, these are all other factors that would come into play. With enough data, and enough factors, you could likely come up with a model that predicted the likelihood of me running in Central Park when I visit New York City. It might not be perfect, but it would be good if you had enough data.

However, that’s a very simple item, and few decision points. Would that work for a larger data set? I bet it would. If we were able to collect data from lots of 5k events, we could perhaps predict how many people would register show up. There are certainly more factors at play, and since we can’t control things like weather, the prediction might not be that valuable. Though if we could change the amount of resources the day of the event, maybe that would help reduce costs or make the event more successful.

I think ML is a valuable tool that can help with quite a few problems, but in many cases, we just don’t know enough about the complex factors, such as emergence, that might impact us. I know our SQL Saturday organizers would love a model that helped them decide how much food or drinks to order for an event. My view is that there are likely too many unusual factors, but I wonder if we could start a data gathering project to come up with a model. Perhaps we should gather marketing metrics, registration metrics, and more, with the intention to predict the number of no-shows. Even if it wasn’t useful, it might be a fun project for people in this industry.

Steve Jones

The Voice of the DBA Podcast

Listen to the MP3 Audio ( 3.6MB) podcast or subscribe to the feed at iTunes and Libsyn.

April 17, 2018
Webinar: 6 Principles of the GDPR and SQL Provision

On April 24, I’ll be hosting a webinar that talks about the GDPR and how you can help ensure compliance in your development environments. I’ll talk about some of the issues and show how SQL Provision can help.

The GDPR is complex, but it certainly does ask us to protect and prevent issues with data from development environments. There are many ways you can try and ensure you don’t have any issues, and I’ll show one with Redgate tools.

Register today and I look forward to talking with you next week.

April 17, 2018
In Depth Learning at the PASS Summit

This past week the pre-conference sessions for the 2018 PASS Summit were released. There’s a good list of topics and speakers, returning and new presenters, that you can choose from. If you’re planning on attending the Summit, I would review the options and if any of these are relevant to your position, I’d bundle the cost of a session into your request for Summit funding. I’ve seen plenty of people ask for the registration fee without a pre-con and then try to negotiate additional funds later. Do yourself a favor and ask for everything at once.

Are these sessions worth the time and money? Most are, and a single day packed with information is often easier to digest than a full week. However, you’ll still have days of random learning slots during the regular conference, so plan on spending a day learning and then shifting into a different mode for the rest of the conference. There is a lot of information presented in an all day session, and you’re likely to miss some of it. Most presenters provide a good set of materials to go with the class, but you should plan on taking lots of notes and then spending a few hours here and there across the next month reviewing and practicing what you’ve learned.

I’ve often found that a pre-conference session is the best way for me to dive deep into a topic that I haven’t had the time to investigate on my own. Time is a precious resource and finding time in my busy work and family life is hard, especially for a full week class. I’d still like to get to a week long sqlSkills class, but I can’t seem to find the time. Maybe after next year when I have no more children at home and fewer commitments.

I used to take a computer to classes, but the last few years I’ve moved back to paper and pen. I find that sketching out notes by hand is quicker and easier, I ignore typos, and somehow the act of writing cements things in my mind more. I’d recommend you try both, though certainly having your phone around to take a picture of something is incredibly handy at times. I’ve tried OneNote and a digital pen on a laptop, but again, it’s not as quick or smooth as pen on paper. The one thing I did like is that I could add pictures to my notes.

A conference is a large investment, whether you make it or your employer does. Adding in a day of training on a topic is often a relatively small incremental increase. It’s worth the time and cost, if you’re already going to be gone for multiple days. I’m not sure if I’ll get to a pre-con at the Summit this year, but I’m hoping to get a day of watching and learning on a single topic in at one of the events I attend this year.

Steve Jones

The Voice of the DBA Podcast

Listen to the MP3 Audio ( 4.0MB) podcast or subscribe to the feed at iTunes and Libsyn.

April 16, 2018