I am on the slate this year along with some great candidates. Many folks in the community have written about various candidates and some have endorsed as well. See the various blogs below.

2012 Board of Directors Election Blogs

Oct 11: Running for the PASS BOD: Doing It for the Bacon – Wendy Pastrick
Oct 10: Changing the Status Quo – Sri Sridharan
Oct 10: Getting Things Done on the PASS Board – Allen Kinsel
Oct 10: PASS BoD Polls Close This Friday – Rick Heiges
Oct 10: Rock the Vote… or Something – David Stein
Oct 9: SQLPass Elections – Who I’m Supporting and Why – Jen Stirrup
Oct 9: What Have I Done in 2 Years on the PASS Board of Directors – Allen Kinsel
Oct 9: Interview with a #SQLPASS Candidate – @NTSSUG’s Sri Sridharan – Jen McCown
Oct 9: My PASS Board Vote – Ryan Adams
Oct 9: SQLAuthority News – A Conversation with an Old Friend: Sri Sridharan – Pinal Dave
Oct 8: PASS – Campaigning Is Tough – Allen Kinsel
Oct 5: Vote in the 2012 PASS Board Elections – Chris Webb
Oct 2: 2012 PASS Board of Directors Elections – It’s Time to Vote – Kendal Van Dyke
Oct 2: Evolving PASS – Allen Kinsel
Sept 27: It Is That Time of the Year – Sri Sridharan
Sept 27: Why I Care About Voting for the Board of PASS? – Laerte Junior
Sept 26: I’m Running for the PASS Board of Directors – Again – Allen Kinsel
Sept 26: PASS Board of Directors Election – Making Progress – Rick Heiges
Sept 21: PASS Elections 2012 - Grant Fritchey
Sept 20: Podcast Interview with PASS Board Candidates – Denny Cherry

Good discussions have happened here.

http://www.sqlpass.org/Elections/Discussion.aspx

And the candidates pages are available here.

http://www.sqlpass.org/Elections/Candidates.aspx

If you don’t have your ballot and you were a member of PASS as of June 1st 2012, send an email to michelle.nalliah@sqlpass.org requesting your personalized ballot.

Read through as much as you can ( it is a lot of information ) and make an informed decision on who you want on the PASS Board that serves your best interests.

                                     You have the POWER. Use it.

We were talking about his work, his stress levels, work-life balance etc.  He has been a Chip design Engineer with this company for over 14 years now and had reached a point where he is bored with his job but it is a well paying job. He is scared to change jobs at this time. He has too much at stake and the sole income earner in his family ( wife + 3 kids), the risk to be without a job or start several levels lower ( on pay and position ) on a new career was pretty risky.

I spent some time understanding his situation and we slowly started talking about career options. So I spent the next 30 minutes asking him to  build a reserve fund, get trained on an ERP like SAP Manufacturing etc. where he can use his current knowledge. We then went on to more details at various details, about how he can find another role in the same company, working with his manager and get the company to pay for training among other things. At the end he was very comfortable about next steps.

I don’t know if he will really go do some of those things that I suggested. But I think I succeeded in making him “Challenge the status quo”, go and try something different.

As I think more about it, I find myself challenging  the status quo more often. To help with the attendance at the after events @ SQLRally 2012, I wanted to do something different. I experimented on the school bus idea to provide a shuttle service between the venue and the attendee networking event. People loved it. It was a calculated risk, but it paid off. 

Another example was our SQLSaturday #56 BI Edition. After the success of our first SQLSaturday #35,  I was thinking about how we can do something different and still be impactful. That is where the idea of the BI edition took birth. I talked to Sean (Midnightdba) and he really liked the idea. Then we pitched it to the entire group. We could have done another similar SQLSaturday but that does not  change things, that does not help us learn about the BI market.  Considering this was the 2nd SQLSaturday in 12 months, we wanted to keep it low budget( under $1000), low overhead, low volunteer effort and we succeeded in that. We sold out 400 registrations in 12 hours of opening the event. At that moment, I knew we struck gold. We are now having our 2nd SQLSaturday – BI edition this Saturday (10/13/2012).

The reason I go into details to say all this is because I want people who are voting for me  to know that I will try something different if I get elected to the PASS BoD. I will look hard at what we are doing and find ways to do something different(better), something more impactful to the community. Some risks might pay off and some might not. But if it is worth challenging tweaking, changing the status quo, you can count on me to do just that.

It is also the time when the process to become a PASS Board Member kicks in high gear. My applications are done. If you want to take a look at it, click here.

This is my 2nd attempt at trying to get on the PASS Board. Last year I finished fourth after all the final votes. This year, I just hope to go one rank higher – a step in the right direction and hopefully not the other way around.

Some folks asked me, if I am asking for trouble by putting myself on the ballot again. The answer is NO. I addressed this on my blog after last years elections, and I still stand by it ( Copy pasted below ).

I am striving for a greater cause, to make PASS an organization that can help people with their SQL Server careers, to make PASS relevant to its chapter members, to make PASS an organization that every SQL professional in the world wants to be connected with. Just because I did not get elected or appointed does not mean that these causes are not worth fighting. Giving up upon failing the first time is simply not in me. If I did that, what message would I send to those who voted for me? What message would I send to my kids?

At the end of the day, I am a volunteer. I am here of my own free will, to give back to the community from which I have gained so much from; not the other way around. My will power is strong and even stronger is my desire to do whatever it takes to make PASS more successful. This experience has made me tougher than ever before, because in the eyes of the 781 ballots cast for me, I meant something.

It is a wonderful time to be associated with the SQLPASS community. If you are not a PASS member, I suggest that you become one right away. You might not be able to vote this year but you will be able to next year.

Click here to register to become a PASS member. 

Find a local PASS chapter and reach out to their leadership team. Join the next Chapter meeting. I am sure the folks in the local community would welcome you.

Going back to my election campaign for this year…

You can read about myself, my platform and my career highlights here. And while you are there, do check out the other candidates as well. They all are standing up for some really good causes. Pick the 3 candidates who you think would represent you when the ballot comes out tomorrow.

Last year, during my campaign, I asked people to join a call and so they can directly ask me questions. The first few calls went great and I got a few interesting questions out of that, I am going to do that again this year.

So I will have a call every Tuesday and Thursday between now and when the elections are over. The call will be at 7:30pm CST. So if you have a question you would like to ask me directly, I hope to see (hear) you there.

So the schedule will look like

Thursday – 9/27/2012 – 7:30pm CST

Tuesday  – 10/2/2012 – 7:30pm CST

Thursday – 10/4/2012 – 7:30pm CST

Tuesday -  10/9/2012 – 7:30pm CST

Thursday – 10/11/2012 – 7:30pm CST

For all days,  Dial-in Number: (712) 775-7400 and  Access Code: 303134

I know this time might not work for everyone. So if someone wants to schedule a call with me directly, I would be glad to do so. Please send me an email to ‘ sri at ntssug dot com ’ and I would be glad to schedule a call directly with you.

In closure, I would like to say, Thank you for all that you do for the SQL Community. Thank you for caring about the SQLPASS elections. Thank you for taking time to read my blog. Now it is really that time of the year and all the candidates need you to vote, so please go vote ( when the ballot comes your way on 9/28/2012).

Venue Information

Dallas Convention Center
650 S. Griffin St.
Dallas, TX 75202
877-850-2100 or 214-939-2700
Website
Directions

Driving:

For those driving, you can choose to drive directly to the convention center. Self-parking at the Dallas Convention Center is available for $12 a day. The main garage entrance is on Griffin between Memorial and Canton St. View the downtown parking map for other parking options.

Flying to Dallas:

There are 2 major  airports in the Dallas area. DFW ( Dallas Fort-worth International ) and DAL (Dallas Love field ).

From DFW Airport to Dallas Convention Center

A map of the DFW airport can be found here.

http://www.dfwairport.com/imap/index.html

Car Rentals

The Rental Car Center is located at 2424 E. 38th St, DFW Airport, TX, near the south entrance of the Airport and is served by 10 companies. Location Map (may require download)

Arriving Passengers: After collecting your baggage, follow the Rental Car signs to the designated pick-up area on the lower level of the terminal. From there, board the Rental Car shuttle bus. Buses run 24 hours a day, depart every five minutes and reach the Rental Car Center in approximately 10 minutes.

Public Transportation

Public transportation provided by the Airport and TRE helps you get to the Dallas Convention Center from the DFW airport for about $3.50.

Take the Remote parking South shuttle from DFW airport to the Centerport TRE station. Take the commuter rail from the Centerport Station to the Union Station in Dallas. The Dallas convention center is a couple of blocks away from the Union Station. Tickets for the commuter rail must be purchased at the station. There are self service kiosks that provide tickets.

More information on using TRE can be found here.

Note: For those staying back after the event, there is no commuter rail service on Sunday.

Taxis

Flat rate of $40 + extras ( expect $50 ) for a taxi ride from DFW airport to the Dallas Convention center.  You can find more details here.

Tip : Due to construction, there will be traffic around the North Entrance of the airport. Typically going to the convention center and back, you are most likely to use the South Entrance of the airport. If your travel in/out of Dallas requires you to go via the North Entrance, give yourself an extra 30mins for congestion near the airport.

From DAL Airport to Dallas Convention Center

Dallas Love field Airport is a regional airport and is the home of Southwest Airlines. The parking map here also provides you a terminal map.

Car Rentals

There are Car Rental shuttles that take you from the airport terminal to a short 5 minute drive the Rental Car location.

Taxi Cab Service

Taxi Cab service is provided on the upper level across the street from the baggage claim wing of the main terminal building.

City Shuttle – (214) 760-1998
Super Shuttle – (800) 258-3826
Yellow Checker Shuttle – (972) 222-2000

I have never travelled via cab from DAL airport to the convention center area so don’t have first hand experience of cab fare. My guess $20-$25.

Public Transportation

DART provides public transportation between Dallas Love field Airport and Dallas Convention Center for about $1.75

DART Bus Route 39 operates between Dallas Love Field and Inwood/Love Field Station, providing a link between DART Rail Green Line and Love Field Terminal. Frequency of service between the Inwood/Love Field Station and Love Field Airport is every 20 minutes seven days a week.

The Green Line provides service to downtown Dallas. Transfer to the Red Line or Blue Line at any one of these four stations — West End, Akard, St. Paul or Pearl. From there take a Red Line or Blue Line to hop off at the Dallas Convention Center Station.

This entire trip should cost not more than $1.75. Make sure you take a transfer ticket as you hop off Bus 39. That transfer ticket is valid till you get out at the Convention Center Station.

More details on DART from DAL airport can be found here.

If you have any further questions email  sri at sqlrocks dot com

Times have changed. As we embark on another journey here in the DFW area with SQLRally, I am amazed at how learning has taken a different paradigm in little less than a decade especially with PASS and SQL Community as a whole. There are now professionals who have come out of their shell and willing to teach and literally give you their years of experience and knowledge in just a matter of a few hours.

Whether it is a day long pre-con that really gets you immersed into the technology or you decide to grasp over a wide width of topics at the main event, SQLRally brings to you what you want your cup of tea (learning) to be. Apart from this, you have the opportunity to network with 500+ SQL professionals who represent many countries and are there at the event with a wide variety of experiences. And this is a huge plus to folks in the North Texas Area – this event is local.

SQLRally pre-cons offer a unique opportunity to get some deep dive training; no matter what your level of SQL background is. Some of this learning content typically costs thousands of dollars and/or years of experience to get.

This is an opportunity you do not want to miss. There is something for everyone. I urge you to learn something new, impress your boss with you new skills, show value to why you should get that next promotion in your company.

Here are my recommendations.

For the beginner DBA.

How to be a DBA – A Utility Belt of tools
Database Administration (DBA)
Tjay Belt (Imagine Learning)
Chris Shaw (AMS)

Demystifying Database Administration Best Practices
Database Administration (DBA)
Argenis Fernandez (Coinstar)
Robert Davis (Idera)

For the mid level DBA who wants that senior job.

Storage For the DBA
Database Administration (DBA)
Denny Cherry (mrdenny.com)

How to Perform a SQL Server Health Check
Database Administration (DBA)
Brad McGehee (Red Gate Software)

For that Sr. DBA who wants to take his skills to a new level.

Leadership and Team Management Skills for the Database Professional
Professional Development (PD)
Kevin Kline (Quest Software)

How to Perform a SQL Server Health Check
Database Administration (DBA)
Brad McGehee (Red Gate Software)

For a BI professional.

99 Tips for Tuning and Enhancing Analysis Services
Business Intelligence (BI)
Greg Galloway (Artis Consulting)

For the geeky Developer in you.

Relational Database Design Workshop
Development (DEV)
Louis Davidson (drsql.org)

Look the the Q&A that the pre-cons speakers answered here.

http://www.sqlpass.org/sqlrally/2012/dallas/Agenda/PreConference/PreConPreviews.aspx

Sign up for a pre-con today and take your SQL skills to new heights.

http://www.sqlpass.org/sqlrally/2012/dallas/Agenda/PreConference.aspx

General Sessions

If you did not catch the announcements, all 60 sessions for SQLRally Dallas  are now filled up.

The list of sessions can be found here.

Personally, I was shocked to get voted for not one but two sessions.

Data Governance 101 – Environment, Space and Security (Community Pick)
"Turbo charge" your DBA Career (Community Pick)

I thought long and hard about whether with my current workload at work, for SQLRALLY whether I should really take two sessions at the event. A quick chat with my boss and he made a few things easy for me and that definitely helped. Enough about me, lets talk about the event.

Pre-cons

Due to unfortunate circumstances, William Pearson had cancel his pre-con session – A Practical Introduction to PowerPivot. We thought long and hard about replacing that session with the next one from the voting results and ultimately decided not to replace it. However we did move one of the BI pre-cons from Greg Galloway to Day2. So we now have three pre-cons on Day 1 and four  pre-cons on Day 2.

List of pre-conference sessions can be found here.

SQLKaraoke

So many people have emailed me asking if SQLKaraoke will happen at SQLRally Dallas. When we originally applied for SQLRally Dallas about a year back, I had talked to a few places about hosting about 100 people for the SQLKaraoke. I had heard some good reviews about the place and I had visited some of the other bars in the same complex but never went into this one. So 2 weeks back, Tim Mitchell and I went on a scouting trip to check out what came as the first choice on my list. We were very impressed by the place.  Here are some details you might want to have.

Venue : Uptown Bar and Grill

Located at the intersection of McKinney Ave and Routh ave. It is a good 1.5 mile walk ~ 30 mins.

It is about $7-$8 cab ride from the Convention Center. It gets you right in the McKinney – uptown area amidst all the night life in Dallas. We think most people can share it or afford to travel by themselves.

Capacity :

This place has a very nice indoor and outdoor sitting area. Total capacity 220 people.

Overflow :

Right next door is sfuzzi  ( pizza + bar ) and Renfields ( Irish pub),  both are very nice places to hang out as well and can serve as an overflow area. Together they can all accommodate 700 people.

http://www.sfuzziuptown.com/

http://www.renfieldscorner.com/

Women in Technology – WIT

Yes, we will have a women in technology panel session at SQLRally Dallas. More details to follow.

Speaker Reception aka  Pre-Rally ?

We were first thinking about hosting a speaker reception on May 9th for speakers and volunteers – SQLSaturday style. Then I had an idea about extending this to everyone – even those who are not attending SQLRally. Why hold someone back ?  Let us provide an opportunity for speakers, attendees, volunteers to all get to know each other before the event. With so many new speakers, this would be a fantastic opportunity for speakers to market their sessions with attendees. Who knows, we might even get some walk-in registrations. Almost like a pre-rally event to  SQLRally. Hmm… should we just call this PRE-RALLY ? What do you all think about this idea ? Provide me feedback either on this blog or sri at sqlrocks dot com.

What did we do in the last 2 weeks ?

The last two weeks was the busiest so far with all the work related to Program Committee. We had about 270 submissions for SQLRally. We got about 8 volunteers spanning the Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas areas reviewing and rating sessions submitted by about 130+ speakers. Personally, I have logged about 46.5 hours in the last two weeks alone. I am sure the others have put in a ton of time as well.

After the ratings were done, topics that did not fall into the session categories outlined and duplicate topics were removed from selection.

The session categories were

• Business Intelligence (BI)
• Development (DEV)
• Database Administration (DBA)
• Professional Development (PD)
• SQL Server 2012 and Beyond (SS12)

Information on selection process can be found here.

Pre-cons

SQLRally Pre-cons schedule is now out. Schedule is here.  If you want to register click here.

General Sessions

40 out of 60 general sessions were selected through the panel.

20 out of 60 general sessions are to be selected from the community vote.

If you have not voted, click here.

Why are the sessions from #SQLRally Program Committee up for vote ?

Just to give you a brief background, last year Orlando did 100% voting for all submissions. We got feedback that it was a very time consuming process and so this year, we decided to do 75% selection via panel and 25% selection via community votes. Ultimately after we crunched the numbers, it was 66.66%  selection by a panel and 33.33% up for community vote.

It was clear that many of the people in the Program Committee were also excellent speakers, MVPs and some were regionally known very well and they all wanted to submit sessions to speak. We wanted to keep a transparent process of selection for the panelists and make sure there is no perception of favoritism.

For full disclosure, the panelists who submitted sessions (there were some who did not submit any sessions) and were put on the ballot are Ryan Adams, Sean McCown, Tim Mitchell, Sri Sridharan, Erin Welker and  Nancy Hidy Wilson.

There were 3 ways to approach this.

1. Nobody on the panel can submit sessions.

2. The folks on the panel can rate on tracks they did not submit sessions for.

3. The folks on the panel are just put for community vote and let the community decide.

Personally, I felt , approach 1 was really harsh. These folks are excellent speakers , slogging a lot of personal hours for this event and to deny them a speaking opportunity at this event just because they are volunteering was just wrong. So I knew the answer was either 2 or 3 or some new approach.

Regarding 2, the panelists were spread geographically across the region but were also people who knew each other very well over the years. So still there is still a chance that it  could be perceived as buddies rating and ranking buddies. And we wanted to eliminate this perception.

After much thought, we felt approach 3 was the best we could do for this scenario at that time. It may come across to some folks that this approach gives the people on the panel a slight advantage over some who did not make to the voting stage. But we were running out time and we felt this was the best approach given the time constraints to make a decision and move on.

This model is a work in progress. If you have a better idea, please share it with me directly and I will pass it along to the next person who will be in charge of running SQLRally.

Community Vote – Next steps.

We hope to aggregate results from the ballot and fill the remaining 20 spots open for SQLRally Dallas.

We will not be sharing the voting results # (specifically who got how many votes) in public but I will be more than glad to share feedback 1:1 under NDA to the extent that it will help the speaker judge how his/her sessions stacked against others so it can help them in the future.

A personal note to those who did not make it so far.

I know this hurts. Some of you have spoken a lot, are experts in your area and you are probably upset and confused why you did not get selected or put on the ballot. You all deserve to know some feedback on where you went wrong. I am more than willing to share details to the extent to help you get better in the future. We cannot make everyone happy with all the decisions we take, some are the right thing to do given the circumstances and might not necessarily look great on paper and potentially even look terrible a few days later. These decisions are hard and it sucks to be bearing the brunt of it. If your session is not on the ballot, I hope you do not give up. Learn from what did not work in your favor and see how you can actually make it work to your advantage. Again, take me up on my offer to share selective details with you and hope that helps you next time. To reach me, send a note to – sri at sqlrocks dot com.

First, I want to thank all those who participated in the election process and extra special thanks to those who put their vote of confidence in me.  I am extremely grateful to the 5 folks (Andy Warren, Tim Mitchell, Erin Welker, Bryan Smith and Robert Steinbach) who gave recommendations on my application.

When I saw the final list of candidates on the slate, I thought that I would get about 10 votes and lose this election. When I saw the results with 781 votes next to my name, I was wowed and humbled.

After such a strong showing, I was hopeful that I would be appointed to complete one of the two positions that had come open. Bill Graziano called me two days before the formal announcement about the appointments was made and informed me that I was not chosen for the appointments. He did share the reasons and I was disappointed. However, I have decided to move on with my work with PASS and the SQL Community and specifically SQLRally Dallas.

The questions I face are – After my experience this year, do I have the courage to run again and possibly face these scenarios all over again? Is this even worth it? Can I be effective if I get on the PASS Board?

The answer to the first two questions is a Yes. If any of you thought I would give up because of this, then you do not know me well enough. The answer to the last question, only time will tell. I have been talking to many PASS Board members to help me learn from this experience and find the gaps I need to fill.

I am striving for a greater cause, to make PASS an organization that can help people with their SQL Server careers, to make PASS relevant to its chapter members, to make PASS an organization that every SQL professional in the world wants to be connected with. Just because I did not get elected or appointed does not mean that these causes are not worth fighting. Giving up upon failing the first time is simply not in me. If I did that, what message would I send to those who voted for me? What message would I send to my kids?

At the end of the day, I am a volunteer. I am here of my own free will, to give back to the community from which I have gained so much from; not the other way around. My will power is strong and even stronger is my desire to do whatever it takes to make PASS more successful. This experience has made me tougher than ever before, because in the eyes of the 781 ballots cast for me, I meant something.

http://www.sqlpass.org/sqlrally/2012/dallas/Speakers/CallForSpeakers.aspx

As part of the Program Committee for SQLRally 2012, Erin and I have been working hard along with the PASS HQ team ( Marcela, Anika, Alison) for the last 8 weeks. We have made some minor tweaks from what happened in Orlando and hope this is received well by the community.

Key changes

1. We will have sessions between 60-75min. How many of 60 and 75 min sessions is something that is still in the works. This was a big ask by many speakers in their feedback and we are glad to do something about it.

2. Approximately 75% of the sessions will be selected by the Program Committee and only 25% will be out for voting. We mainly did this is to make it simpler and easier from a process standpoint.

Finally, I know many of you personally asked me to allow 2011 Summit pre-con speakers to be allowed to speak at SQLRally 2012 – Dallas  and I was really hoping to be able to do something about it.  As I came to understand during this process, one of the goals for SQLRally is to develop new speakers and specifically the pre-con speaker pool. So, the rule to not allow a prior year Summit pre-con speaker from delivering a pre-con at SQLRally remains. As it stands today, this is a non-negotiable item to the host city. I am not 100% sold with this approach since I could see myself go either way. We still encourage all Summit pre-con speakers to submit for regular sessions.

Hopefully the community likes the tweaks we have made in SQLRally Dallas 2012.

So I am going to jump on a call  for 30 minutes on the following days to answer your questions and concerns. Bring it on.

Those dates are

Dec 6th 2011 – 7pm – 7:30pm CST

Dec 8th 2011 – 7pm – 7:30pm CST

Dec 13th 2011 – 7pm – 7:30pm CST

For all the above days, the conference bridge details are below.

Conference Dial-in Number: (559) 546-1000

Participant Access Code: 773316#

I understand if some folks cannot make those evening hours away from family/kids/other commitments  or probably because they are in a country where it is middle of the night at that time. For those folks, I would be glad to schedule a 1:1 conversation directly. Just email me at  – sri at sqlrocks dot com