After running two sql saturdays and a third one coming up I have had exposure to a wide range of comments and experiences. Most of them, am glad to say, have been positive and encouraging. There are however, the few – among speakers, attendees and volunteers that are really irksome and indifferent. Buck Woody wrote… Continue reading Code of Ethics around free events

I have two people from out of the US in my first timers group for PASS Conference 2011 – one from South Africa and another from Australia. There are people from several countries attending the conference, from all over the world. It is a huge effort for someone to travel several miles, take time off from… Continue reading Not in the Bacon League

‘This community thing is not for me’ I got an answer like this from a long time friend of mine. He was a regular attendee at our user group meets, attended the PASS conference a couple of times, and now was running his own consulting company and doing well. He had had some bad experiences – his speaker… Continue reading Right and wrong reasons to attend

My first PASS summit was 7 years ago,at Gaylord,Texas. I was an accidental DBA of 3 years, back then. I was not in a happy place, career wise. I had worked very hard to develop good DBA skills and was doing well managing their database servers. They had assigned me another role that was unrelated to my… Continue reading Excuse me…I am new!