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Starting in July, the Professional Association for SQL Server is bringing Karla Landrum on board full-time.  She’ll be involved with Chapters, Regional Mentors, and SQL Saturdays. Since Chapters and RM’s are part of my portfolio as PASS Director of Global Chapters, I couldn’t be more pleased.  Karla brings passion, the ability to motivate the PASS community, and a whole lot of direct experience.

Karla Landrum

Karla has been a PASS Chapter Leader in Pensacola, Florida, and VP of Community Outreach for OPASS in Orlando.   She’s been an incredibly busy, enthusiastic, and effective PASS Regional Mentor.

To mention a few things, Karla helped recruit other RM’s, organized sponsorship from various publishers, and helped new Chapter Leaders get their new Chapters off the ground.  She’s organized multiple SQL Saturdays , including SQL Saturday #72 in Honolulu, and the one coming up on June 4th in Pensacola.  Karla has also inspired others to get their SQL Saturdays on the schedule, including the one on September 17th in my hometown of Kalamazoo, Michigan.

Here in San Francisco, I’ve also been inspired by Karla.  I’m happy to report that SQL Saturday Silicon Valley is scheduled for March 3, 2012.  I’ll be organizing that event, along with a team of committed volunteers, and Karla, of course.

If you want to keep up to date on PASS Chapter happenings, just follow Karla on Twitter.  Welcome @KarlaKay22!

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We’ve finally been able to determine that the PASS Summit 2013 will be in Charlotte, NC. The decision process has been in the works for a long time, and I think it was a well thought out process.

Long-time PASS members know that we’ve held the last three Summits in Seattle, and that we’ll be in Seattle for 2011 and 2012 as well. However SQL Sever folks on the East Coast are faced with a long trip every year.

The reasons PASS has traditionally held the Summit in Seattle are pretty simple. About 300 members of the SQL Server product team are able to attend.  Plus Seattle is affordable, as conference cities go, and the venue is the right size.  PASS HQ is nearby in Vancouver – and we have the formula down.  We can put on the world’s premier SQL Server and BI conference, with consistent quality year after year.  The vast majority of PASS revenue comes from the Summit. Therefore moving the location elsewhere has significant risks.

At our January board meeting, there was much discussion about whether we should simply hold the Summit permanently in Seattle.  However, many members of the board felt that the community calls for somewhere in the East should be respected.

PASS HQ got proposals from the cities in contention, and presented their findings to the board.  Based on ranking of everything from venue proximity to hotels, nightlife, and pricing,  we narrowed the list to two finalist cities, Charlotte and Dallas.  From there, HQ negotiated contracts with both cities, “grinding the pricing all the way down,” as Judy Christianson put it.

Last week we reviewed the final proposals. Dallas ranked high in many categories, including Microsoft’s Dallas-based SQL Server Escalation Support Team. But at the same time, Dallas is also one of three finalist cities for the 2012 SQLRally.

Finally, high ratings in many categories, and substantially lower prices, led us to award the 2013 Summit to Charlotte. We hope this decision will result in another fantastic Summit, including the high attendance we consistently get in Seattle.

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I just got back from the 2011 SQLRally in Orlando. It was a huge success by all accounts. A lot of very dedicated volunteers, along with the terrific folks at PASS HQ, created an event where attendees learned a lot and the PASS community became even more tightly connected.

SQLRally is a two day regional conference, positioned as larger than typical SQLSaturday events, but smaller and less expensive than the PASS Summit coming up in Seattle this October.

This was the first SQLRally. We joked that it was “The Best SQLRally Ever.” It was, and it might hold the title for a while, at least until SQLRally Nordic, which will be in November 2011 in Stockholm, Sweden.

SQLRally Nordic will be followed by another in the U.S. in 2012. Dallas, Denver, and Nashville are the cities under consideration, and the local chapters are working hard to win this Olympic-style host city competition.

In Orlando I also participated in the PASS Board meeting, where a lot of good work was done. It’s a pleasure working with this terrific PASS board.

Many thanks to Tim Mitchell for shooting a lot of great photos in Orlando. Here’s one of Andy Warren (@sqlandy) and me. You can see that Andy has the Florida thing down!

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