Well, I started the day pretty much as I ended the previous night, I woke up and immediately started working on my session again! By around 9am I decided that I really ought to head out to breakfast, and went over to the Sheraton Bar and Grill and proceeded to eat the largest amount of Bacon and Salmon that has ever been consumed in one sitting. The buffet cost me 20 Bucks, but I suspect my Salmon alone cost that much wholesale! Combined with two huge Orange juices and several hogs worth of Bacon, I was not only very happy but very full!
Right after Breakfast, I headed across the road for my first visit of the day to Starbucks at 600 Pine St. I’m going to buy Shares in that place, and their Salted Caramel Mocha really is to die for. Upon entering the premises, who did I run into? None other than the mighty Tobiasz Janusz Koprowski (b¦t) in all his Ginger-Bearded glory. After having a quick man-hug and a chat, I went into a corner to start working upon my session.
After finally setting up all my gear, I looked down at my buzzing phone to see that the SQLSaturday Leaders meeting had started! What a dope, I’d got my timings wrong so I hurriedly packed up again and headed over to it.
I will be completely honest and say that I was not really very happy with the way the meeting went. As happens every year, it was very American-centric SQLSaturday discussion (again), and some of the growth decisions and target (I think) are very badly judged. I tied to make a forceful point that PASS need to stop looking towards the USA and Western Europe for their growth targets (especially since they acknowledge that our sponsorship funds are beginning to dry up), and instead focus money and energy on those developing and emerging countries where it is also incredibly cheap to run events. Specifically, I mentioned the African continent, Indian continent, and Eastern Europe but I really wasn’t happy with the response (which was quite fluffy) and I think some others (who had a similar focus) felt the same way. I know this, because a few came up to speak with me afterwards, and we will (hopefully) put together a forceful plan and proposal to make something happen -with or without PASS. This said, I don’t want these comments to be construed or come across as being too over-critical of PASS or the Board, since it is clear to me that they do actually care, but I just think sometimes it is easier for them to go after the low hanging fruit and never try to pick the juicy apple hanging just out of reach (however misplaced I believe that to be).
With barely a couple of hours to go before my next meeting in the Convention Center, I hurriedly rush back to my hotel and spend the time working on my session. In what seems like just minutes of work, I am back in the conference room for the Chapter Leaders meeting. I felt this meeting was a complete waste of my time, and we went over the same old ground that we cover every year and never really seem to get anywhere. Sponsors, growth, tooling etc were just some of the things we discussed again and I guarantee that this will be discussed again at the 2017 meeting. I don’t want to sound too negative, but I just don’t feel we are ever moving forward with anything we discussed this year, last year or the year before (or the year before that).
After the meeting finished, I had only one hour before the Virtual Chapter Leaders meeting at 4.45am, and because I planned to spend the rest of my evening working on my session, I headed over to the Dragonfish Cafe for some amazing Sushi, noodles, and crispy pancakes and washed this down with two pints of an amazing beer called Scuttlebutt Porter. Forty-five minutes later I am back at the Convention Center again for my third meeting of the day!
I really enjoyed the Virtual Chapter Leaders meeting, it was a great turn out -but obviously slimmer audience than the others. I think this was conducive to a more productive meeting and Wendy Pastrick (as always) did a great job covering plans for 2017. I’m really positive about the way things are heading and the Virtual Chapters Portfolio seems to have a great future ahead of it.
It may come as no surprise to you that after this meeting I headed back to my hotel to continue work on my session, but I picked up (what I thought) was an Orange juice on the way. On my flight over I had eaten some Mango and had had incredible stomach pain for two hours, so when the same thing seemed to happen after drinking this Orange juice, closer inspection of the bottle revealed the dreaded word “Mango” in the list of ingredients. I spent the next two hours cramped in pain and then decided to go to sleep and wake up early morning to catch up on my session prep -so that is exactly what I did.
Not a great end to the day!
See also in this series:
7 Days of PASS – Day 3
7 Days of PASS – Day 2
7 Days of PASS – Day 1
Filed under: Community, SQLServerPedia Syndication
