PASS and Other Events

Dinner with the Board

AjarnMark — Sat, 10 Dec 2005 07:29:00 GMT

Opportunity is a funny thing... it comes along when you least expect it. I believe it was Thomas Edison who said, “Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.” Tonight was one of those nights. Not that the opportunity looked like work, but certainly that it could have been easily overlooked.

Bill Graziano had contacted me a few weeks ago to let me know he would be in town for the PASS Board of Directors meeting (Bill was elected to the board at the Community Summit in Dallas). So, we made plans to get together for dinner on the last night he would be here, which was tonight. And that is when Opportunity knocked.

When I got over to the hotel to meet Bill, he was talking with several other members of the board and other staff who all decided to go out to dinner together. Bill was willing to go off and do our own dinner, but he was interested in going with the rest of the group, and I thought it sounded like a good idea. Well, it turned out to be a great idea! There were about a dozen of us who went out to dinner together and we had a great time and good conversation. It was interesting for me to hear the board members' viewpoints on a variety of topics, including the community summit. And since I had been on the program committee last year, I was able to provide a different point of view on it.

Overall, we had a great dinner and it was nice to meet some of the board members in person. Many of them had to leave right after dinner to go catch red-eye flights home. Bill, Christoph (board member from Germany), Joe Webb, and I went back to the hotel lounge to keep talking. That got into some interesting stories as each of us owns our own business and we shared experiences and lessons. What a wonderful surprise opportunity the whole evening turned out to be.

It was great to meet each of you, and thank you for the work you all do to keep PASS running and for putting on the Community Summits here in the U.S. and the European Conference abroad. They are fantastic resources.

Update: Fixed spelling of Christoph's name. Sorry, Christoph!

Launch: SQL 2005, Visual Studio 2005, BizTalk 2006

AjarnMark — Wed, 30 Nov 2005 07:28:00 GMT

22 days after the big party in San Francisco, I was finally able to attend the local SQL Server 2005 / Visual Studio 2005 / BizTalk Server 2006 launch event here in Seattle. While not exactly a party, it was a good day of marketing and demos. And hey, the swag wasn't too bad either. There are about 300 of these launch events going on around the globe, with an estimated 200,000 participants. About 3,500 of those were registered for Seattle.

Since I have already seen many of the features of SQL Server 2005 at the PASS Community Summit, I decided to take the Developer Track and see what Visual Studio 2005 had to offer. At work, we have recently been talking about implementing a new issue-tracking system, some hassles with Visual Source Safe, and looking at the new Visual Studio Team System as a possible route to go. From what I saw today with the many different editions, using Work Items, and the new source control, I definitely think it's worth checking out. One interesting feature they demo'd today was that you could create Work Items in an Excel Spreadsheet and have that populate back into the system. I also found out that the Team Foundation Server is sort of a package-install. It includes a copy of SQL Server Standard (to be used only for the TFS), and SharePoint bundled with the Team System features. It really should be a stand-alone server, especially in a large development environment.

Of course the new features in .NET 2.0 were cool, such as Master Pages, the new GridView and DetailsView controls, and the built-in Login and Register controls for forms authentication. Apparently I sneezed at the wrong time and missed half of the demo on the Site Map DataSource, so I'll have to research it a little more, but they used it to create a quick navigation menu that they put on the Master Page. Oh, and don't forget the new Page_PreInit handler where you would need to put code if you were dynamically changing which Master Page that page is based on.

Plenty of new things to check out, which is why I'm glad they gave all of us SQL Server 2005 Standard Edition, Visual Studio 2005 Standard Edition, and a coupon for BizTalk Server 2006 when it actually ships (we did get the latest CTP). There was also a copy of the Release Candidate 1 for Windows Server 2003 R2, and of course the event resources DVD. Now, if I just had a spare month or so to dive in and really play with all this stuff, I'd be set!

PASS 2006 Hotels

AjarnMark — Wed, 30 Nov 2005 07:03:00 GMT

The last time that the PASS Community Summit was in Seattle, it was held at the Washington State Convention and Trade Center in downtown Seattle, and it will be again this year. The host hotel at that time was the Sheraton which is just a block down and around the corner. Since then, a new hotel has been built which is also about a block away, and appears to be attached to the Convention Center by sky bridge. It is the Elliott Grand Hyatt. The Grand Hyatt is in the same building as the Cheesecake Factory and the new location of Ruth's Chris Steakhouse.

Just thought you might want to know as you're making your travel plans. There are a few other good hotels also within walking distance of the Convention Center if you don't like these.

Blastoff! SQL Server 2005 Launches

AjarnMark — Mon, 07 Nov 2005 16:32:00 GMT

Well, today's the day! Today, November 7, 2005, a date which will NOT live in infamy, but hey, it's still kinda cool. Today is the official launch date for SQL Server 2005 (nee Yukon).

Of course this doesn't necessarily mean that you can get a copy of SQL Server 2005 today. But, soon, I'm sure. Then again, maybe you're like a lot of people I know whose philosophy is, “Great! Glad to hear it finally launched. Now we can start the countdown to SP1 (Service Pack 1), and when that launches, then we will consider actually upgrading our systems.”

Ah well, whatever your approach, it's here, and it's going to be a great update.

Oh yeah, today is also the launch of Visual Studio 2005 and BizTalk Server 2006. There are a whole series of Launch Events occurring over the next couple of months, so check local listings for a theater near you.

EDIT: Fixed typos

PASS 2005: In-Flight Movie

AjarnMark — Wed, 12 Oct 2005 06:06:00 GMT

Lately, most of my flying has been between Seattle and San Francisco, which apparently is not long enough for an in-flight movie. On my way down to PASS in Texas this year, I took the red-eye so I was mostly interested in sleeping on the flight. And so it was with much anticipation that I watched the drop-down video screens when the flight attendant said they would be showing a preview of the movie so we could decide whether to buy earphones if we hadn't brought our own (fortunately, I had my iPod, so I was good to go).

But I just had to laugh when I saw what movie it would be that day. Here I was thinking it would be a recent release, and I hadn't been to the theaters for a while, so there was a good chance I had not seen it. But Noooo... The movie that we got to see that day was from 1974! Now, I realize that some of you were not yet born in '74, but you still may have seen this. It is a great comedy.

Take a guess. Here, I'll give you some clues...

“What a filthy job!”... “Could be worse.”... “How?” ... “Could be raining.” [starts to rain]

“Put...the candle...back!”

“Elevate me.” ... “Now? Right here?”

Got it yet? OK, here are some sure giveaways...

“Walk thees way” [gestures with cane]

“Frau Blucher” [horse whinneys]

“Abbie...someone”.

PASS 2005: Speaker Tips: -- FEWER Slides

AjarnMark — Tue, 11 Oct 2005 04:33:00 GMT

There were many great sessions and many great speakers at the PASS Summit this year in Texas, but most of the sessions I went to seemed to have one bad thing in common: too many slides.

Sure, I know it can be tough to gauge how long it will really take you to go through your whole presentation. And unfortunately, as computer geeks, we have a tendency to want to spell everything out, which leads to making a lot more slides than we really need. You can further complicate the situation by deciding to take questions throughout your presentation instead of at the end. Many of the speakers I saw who did not get through their whole slide deck, actually did cover almost all of their material, including items that were on later slides, while they were doing their talk. Unfortunately, because they did not get through their deck, it appeared to many in the audience that they missed out on some information.

So here's my suggestion for any future speaker...use FEWER slides and more commentary. And don't be afraid of getting done early, you can always open the floor for more questions. And honestly, nobody is going to be upset with you if you finish 5 minutes early, but if you go just a minute or two late, you'd be surprised how anxious people can get, especially if it's right before lunch or the last session of the day. Oh sure, if you only used 10 of your allotted 75 minutes, you might have some angry people on your hands, but if you use the majority of your time, you can finish early and keep everyone happy (and you'd be surprised how much better your evaluations would be, too). Remember, you want to leave them wanting more, not wanting to leave.

One way to pare down your slides would be to put some of the additional information in the speaker notes section of your slideshow, and make it available for download. And if you're really worried about finishing too early, then make a note or two for yourself about some “extras” that you can cover if you have the time, but leave them out of the main deck.

Oh, and one more thing...if you're going to be so bold as to open the floor to questions throughout your presentation, then learn how to control the room and keep things moving so you don't get bogged down in Q&A and never get your presentation completed.

PASS 2005: Presentation Downloads

AjarnMark — Thu, 06 Oct 2005 05:26:00 GMT

Remember that if you are a member of PASS (and if you registered for the Summit, you automatically became or extended your membership) you can download the speaker presentations. Login to the PASS web site, and then go to Conference Proceedings.

Reporting Services Calendar Control

AjarnMark — Thu, 06 Oct 2005 05:17:00 GMT

At the PASS Summit, I attended a session on Reporting Services Tips & Tricks. One of the things that I liked most was not a tip or trick, but a new feature coming in RS 2005. It's a calendar control for Date type parameters.

People have just come to expect these days that when they have to enter a date value that there will be some sort of calendar control right there so they can see a view of the month if they need to. It has been annoying that this did not exist in Reporting Services earlier. But soon, it will be here.

It has also been annoying that if your parameter is a Date/Time datatype that it would always display a time portion, even if you only wanted the Date. In RS 2005, it will now display only the Date if that's what you want.

HOORAY for simple improvements!

PASS 2005: D+2 General Session Part 2

AjarnMark — Fri, 30 Sep 2005 18:59:00 GMT

Well, I did decide to get up and go to the general session today, despite my concerns from yesterday. I decided that I'd let the Dell dude establish his own reputation. And I'm glad I did. The information he shared was not particularly relevant to the work I do, but for others it probably was. He was a bit more animated than the HP guy, and used other companies' experiences for his points rather than their own. But most importantly, he kept his presentation short. Good job!

Then, Jim Gray from Microsoft's Bay Area Research Center came in and talked about where things are going in the future, including the merging of objects and databases where he pointed out that people were asking the wrong question (”How do you put objects into databases?”) and should have been asking, “What kind of an object is a database?”. Subtle, but a HUGE difference. He also made some interesting predictions such as, “in 10 years we'll be dealing with Petrabytes as commonly as we talk about Terrabytes today” and that at that point, we will just store everything, reverting back to systems that are just INSERT and READ only, no updates, no deletes. Interesting idea.

By the way, for those of you wondering how much storage it will take to store “everything” the answer appears to be about 16 Exabytes (whatever those are). Fun talk, but my head was hurting from all the stretching he did.

PASS 2005: D+2 General Session

AjarnMark — Fri, 30 Sep 2005 13:15:00 GMT

Kicking off this morning is Wayne Snyder for PASS. He's crazy, which is just what we need to get the morning started. Wayne is definitely a sanguine personality, loves to have fun and not afraid to be goofy.

Special Announcement: Bill Graziano was elected to the Board of PASS. CONGRATULATIONS, Bill!!!