[EN] After European PASS Conference 2008 and User Group Leaders Summit
On April 15th I was a speaker at the European PASS Conference 2008 (it was located in Dusseldorf, Germany). PASS (Professional Association for SQL Server) is the organization that unites and supports SQL Server user groups all over the world. Polish SQL Server User Group is the official PASS Chapter. The conference was well organized. Plenty of space in Swisshotel, great service and helpful staff, lots of famous speakers (e.g. Allan Mitchell, Greg Low, Bob Ward, Chris Webb, Rasmus Rusanu). I had my session titled Powerful Performance Monitoring in SQL Server 2008 just after lunch on the first day of the conference. The session was so so (I have to improve my English...). Fortunately I had some demo movies recorded because my Virtual Machine crashed a bit just before my slot. I really appreciate those attendees who were so patient and gave me a chance to have my first ever English presentation finished with minimal stress :-) Thanks guys. What's probably the most important about this event is that I met there some user group leaders from other countries (Andre Kamman from Netherlands, Christoph Stotz from Germany, Charlie Hanania from Switzerland,...). This can be a good start for user groups cooperation.
Unfortunately I had to leave on the next day (and thus I could not attend the session of my friend Damian Widera about Policy Based Management, but I'm sure he performed well). Anyway, PASS Conference was a great adventure!
On April 16th I left Dusseldorf and had my flight to Seattle. I was invited for User Group Leaders Summit (initially User Group Management Summit). The invitation came from Culminis and I am very grateful to Dave Sanders and other Culminis folks for this (and for sponsoring my T&E also). The event started on Wednesday with MVP Party in the evening. I must say I was really surprised by the amount of people I knew there. Lots of friends from TechEd EMEA :-) (greetings to Jeff, Niyi, Andy and Waleed) Also, Michael Jackson's and Kurt Cobain's covers were awesome :-)
The event itself was great. For two days about 40 people from around the world were discussing the most important topics that refer to user groups and communities. I met some Microsoft folks responsible for communities (greetings to Graham and Michelle). I found out about some new ideas and projects started by Microsoft - e.g. User Group TV (I was recorded by some guys from UGTV, so expect my short speach available on the Internet soon), some kind of reosource download website built on the connect engine and dedicated to communities (available in May), CodeZone.com portal for NORAM user groups and so forth (MOSS seems to be a good platform for user groups). I had an opportunity to suggest some of my thoughts and ideas. For example I tried to influence Microsoft guys to provide more information about Culmins, PASS and Ineta and their speaker databases to MCTs and MVPs. This can improve those databases and give us some additional possibilities to reach some famous speakers for our future events (I had some issue about getting a speaker for SQL track on C2C'08 conference). Also I suggested that Ineta, Culminis and PASS should motivate their representatives in the particular countries to report UG activities periodically and to make people more familiar with all community programs provided by those organizations. This can help Polish user groups to become visible for Microsoft and its partners supporting communities (all three organizations I mentioned in this note are not very familiar with Polish communities, but are very interested in getting some more information about them). What is also important all three organizations had some time to present their current programs and to talk about what they can do in terms of user group support. Moreover, user group leaders had their chance to provide some best practices and to give some feedback to Microsoft, Culminis, PASS and Ineta.
I'm looking forward to the next event like this one.
Below are some photos taken in Seattle and Redmond.
Legend:
Row 1
1. - Is it love? (Maciej and Niyi),
2. - MCTs, MVPs, friends (Niyi, Andy, Waleed)
Row 2
1. - MVP Party, Michael Jackson on the stage,
2. - MVP Party, Kurt Cobain on the stage
Row 3
1. - The lunch,
2. & 3. - Seattle
Row 4
1. - Me and Sanjay Shetty (Culminis Regional Lead APAC & EMEA, Microsoft Regional Director)
2. - There is nothing like a hot coffee in the morning :-) (Graham Watson, Microsoft)
Row 5
1. - Culminis folks talking about their program
