firm contact me since they found out that there was now a PASS chapter in

existence for the SC area. They wanted to know if we had plans to do a job board

of some sort for South Carolina, Charlotte, etc. It seems there is some interest

Anne Southerland handled the officer elections. Here are the Midlands PASS

busy folks, Andrew Abrams proposed the idea of seconds. If you're interested in

helping any of the officers, contact them directly. We're too small a chapter to

have formal committees, but one or two folks helping each of the officers means

we'll be able to get a lot more accomplished. Also, if you think you might be

interested in a position for the next year, it's a good chance to see what's

involved before throwing your name in to the nomination

that it's time to think about presentations for the PASS Summit this year. If

you are interested in presenting at the premier event for SQL Server, it'll be

discussion on Tools that was initiated by Bobby Dimmick. Red Gate is about to

release SQL Prompt version 3, but the beta is available as a free download. It

seems to be much improved over the previous versions from the folks who have

used it. Apex SQL has new versions of its software coming out. Also, we have

some folks who have used both Foglight and Spotlight on SQL Server from Quest

with good results. Also, a couple of folks are interested in the Capacity

tried to become a PASS member at the web site (http://www.sqlpass.org) but could only get the full member

price as an option. I remember having a similar problem for the MCP rate when I

renewed last year. I have sent an email to PASS HQ to determine if there's

something we need to do to take advantage of the reduced rate for

speakers starting with the February meeting. We want to have a mix of both local

chapter members and outside speakers for our meetings. One of the reasons for

having a PASS Chapter is to give local chapter members the chance to show their

expertise and help others. Therefore, if you are interested in speaking, please

let me know. If you don't have a particular topic that you want to speak on but

would like the opportunity to present, we can discuss and find something that's

a fit for you. If you want to do just a short presentation and not a full talk,

we can group several short presentations together, so that's an option, too.

and target outside speakers to the interests of our chapter members, if there

are areas of interest that you'd really like to hear more about it, let me know.

For instance, if your focus is performance tuning, we'll see about trying to get

some performance tuning gurus in. If your interest is in the CLR for SQL Server

2005, we'll inquire about speakers in that area. Basically, we want our outside

user group centered around SQL Server, that gives vendors a good idea of the

kinds of things we're involved in and the types of jobs and positions we'd be

interested in. In the next couple of months we'll be working to get sponsorships

both from vendors who are SQL Server oriented (or have tools in the SQL Server

space) as well as consulting and training firms in the area. At this point we

have no plans to charge local dues. If we get enough sponsorship, we can perhaps

reach out to some speakers from outside the local region who we're really

interested in hearing from, etc. Otherwise, to gain access to such resources we

may have to charge local dues like some local organizations do (such as the PMI

chapter and the ISACA chapter here in Columbia, SC).