I joined PASS in 1999 and attended the inaugural Summit in Chicago. It was in the lower level of a hotel just on the river, I went to the last White Sox game of the year, and got to see Kalen Delaney speak about this newly released SQL Server 7.
I was excited, eager to grow my career, just starting to write, and I learned a lot from my 3 days in the windy city. I met a lot of interesting people and have felt that PASS helped grow my career and even motivate me to start this site.
Over the last 8 years as I've worked with PASS in various contexts, I've often tried to come up with suggestions and ways that the organization could grow and promote DBAs in a positive light. I believe in PASS and think it's a great organization for DBAs.
There's a "however" here, as there is for most things. Over the last few years I think PASS hasn't taken advantage of the excitement and growth surrounding SQL Server 2005 to really build their organization. And I'd like to see that happen as would many other people.
DBAs suffer from not being appreciated in many organizations. Just look at the descriptions on the web for our job or even open positions. They're all over the board and so many managers have no idea what value we bring to an organization on a regular basis. PASS could help us better define what we do, how we can be used, and why we're worth so much money 🙂
My business partner, Andy Warren of End to End training (and former partner in SQLServerCentral.com) has written an open article today that gives some suggestions for how PASS can grow and help the community. It's not really intended to knock the work done by PASS, but more to create some debate and try to see where we can grow PASS from here. And he'd like to see your comments and suggestions.
If you're not a member of PASS, and you're a DBA, you should be at least a free member. It would be nice to see you attend the conference, participate in local user groups, or help grow our profession out to others. You might disagree, but I really think that with a strong organization behind us, DBAs can only become more respected, appreciated, and hopefully, compensated.
Steve Jones
The Voice of the DBA
Today's podcast features music by Everyday Jones. I really like the music and acoustic feel of this band. They're starving musicians on tour. Check them out in New York this week.
The podcast feeds are available at sqlservercentral.podshow.com to get better bandwidth and maybe a little more exposure :). Comments are definitely appreciated and wanted. You can get feeds from there.
- Working with PASS - Audio, MP3
- Working with PASS - Video, Flash
- An Hour In Time - Yesterday's video. I messed up the link in the newsletter, so if you're wondering what happened, here it is.
Someone called me the "Voice of the DBA" awhile back and I liked it. I'm looking to rename the show to that unless there are complaints, criticisms, or a large general outcry.
I've done video the last few days, but it's a big time consuming process and it's gotten me a bit behind on other things. I will probably drop to three times a week unless there's a lot of interest to keep going everyday. If you like it, tell the boss!