10 Reasons to Join a PASS or .Net User Group

I am a member and leader at multiple chapters of technology-based international professional associations, like PASS (Professional Association for SQL Server) and INETA. Through that affiliation, I have experienced many, many benefits that such a small percentage of our industry takes advantage of.

1. Great people – Attendees, speakers, organizers, volunteers, sponsors, and venue hosts. Attend regularly and I promise you will make life long friends.
2. A place to talk shop with peers, learn about other organizations and practices, scope out job opportunities, help others with their challenges, and mentor people new to the field.
3. Great content – free training, new technology previews, and deep dives into specific topics.
4. Access to experts – speakers almost always provide their contact info and give you permission to ask questions outside of the presentation. Get help on your challenges from other attendees during the social networking time. Sometimes you even get to meet Industry celebrities and national conference presenters, such as Brent Ozar, Brad McGehee, and Scott Guthrie.
5. Food and beverage
6. Free swag – books, software (Development software, Operating Systems, 3rd party tools, Xbox games, and more), hardware (keyboards, mice, web cams, etc.), training vouchers, discount coupons, quirky and unusual items (such as Bucky Balls),  travel mugs, tote bags, back packs, and the list goes on.
7. News and announcements about other events and happenings in the industry – training conferences like the PASS Summit and SQL Cruise, all day training opportunities, such as Day of .Net, Codemash, SQL Saturday, virtual training events, contests, free eBooks promotions, Job opportunities.
8. Save money travelling to regional training or events by carpooling with your fellow user group friends.
9. Opportunities to present – show off your own proficiency in your craft, get experience to prepare you to speak on regional or national level, establish credibility as a teacher/communicator.
10. Opportunities to be a board member or volunteer to hone your leadership and logistical skills enhances your career marketability. Also, volunteering or leading a local chapter or regional event is great way to prepare you to become a board member on a national scale, if that is of interest to you.

Really there are few reasons not to attend, join, volunteer, or lead a professional organization. If you’re interested in professional organizations in general, read my popular post about 10 reasons to join a professional association.

What have I missed?

SQL Saturday #67 Chicago

Most of the sessions I attended involved improving performance. Whether it was proactive (design for performance) or reactive (troubleshooting), most sessions included some coverage of indexes. Surprisingly there very little duplication of content by the different speakers. Because of the quality and relevance of the all sessions offered, it was difficult to decide which sessions to attend. Below is a brief recap of the ones I chose.

Sessions

Performance Tuning Made Easy with Thomas LaRock

Being a certified Six Sigma Black Belt, I appreciated the way Tom (blog|twitter) described a simple systematic process for performance tuning based on the Six Sigma DMAIC (Design, Measure, Analyze, Improve, Control) approach.

The Optimizer, Statistics, and Indexes with Grant Fritchey

Grant (blog|twitter) gave a great primer to the internals of the Relational Engine, the components of which have really cool names like Query Parser, Algebrizer, and Optimizer. He also spent more time discussing the Statistics histogram, which appeals to my six sigma senses, than I generally see in an hour long presentation.

WIT (Women in Technology) Panel: Energizing the Next Generation

This session seemed to have a balanced number of men and women in attendance. It was nice to hear the perspective of multiple women with different backgrounds sharing their experiences in the field. I’m really happy that most of their experiences sounded positive even in the face of adversity.

Refactoring SQL with Jeremiah Peschka

Jeremiah (blog|twitter) really highlighted the importance of using consistent naming conventions and common alias names. He touched on SQL unit testing and some open source test frameworks. He also showed refactoring examples such as, re-writing where clauses to move functions from the left side of the operator to the right side for performance gains.

Database Design Contentious Issues with Karen Lopez

This was one of my favorite sessions. It was interactive as the participants had to walk to the front of the room and anonymously vote (via post-it note) on a scale of 1 to 5 on our opinion/view of two issues which people often passionately argue about, such as, surrogate keys vs. natural keys. People that admitted to voting on the extremes (one or five) were asked to explain why they voted the way they did and open the topic for group discussion. Karen liberally made effective use of Canadian SWAG (like ketchup flavored Pringles) to persuade the edge-case voters to plead their case in the face of possible peer criticism. Karen (blog|twitter) expertly moderated the discussion and provided great pro/con examples on both sides even where it conflicted with her own views. It was both fun and educational.

Index Internals for Mere Mortals with Michelle Ufford

At a lightning quick pace, Michelle (blog|twitter) brought a great deal of insight to index internals. She showed actual representations of index pages and pointed out key elements of it, including the “uniqueifier”. She covered a great deal of information in the short one hour, but it was very clear, understandable, and educational.

Lunch

The lunch was provided by Meaty Balls. It was plenty of tasty meat and mushrooms for the price.

Check-in

The organizers offered a “Speed Pass” option where I printed my name tag, lunch ticket, and raffle tickets off in advance which meant I could sleep in a little before heading to Chicago.

Venue

The conference was hosted at the DeVry University Addison Campus which had great classroom spaces. There were ample power outlets available on the table tops for each attendee to plug in, if desired. I wish I had remembered to bring the AC adapter for my GPS for the trip home since my car lighter adapter stopped working before the trip.

Networking

I was within a SWAG keychain throw of several SQL Celebrities like Kevin Kline (blog | twitter) and Brent Ozar (blog|twitter). Brent was sitting behind me in three out of five sessions I attended - and no, I’m not a SQL Stalker.

I finally got to meet Wendy Pastrick face-to-face after several email and twitter conversations over the last year.

Credit-worthy

I’ve been running the fwPASS User Group for a few years and to do just an average job takes a surprising amount of time and effort. See my case study on continuous improvement in a professional association for more information. The organizers did an exceptional job that deserves more thanks than I can provide. I’m not sure if this is inclusive of all the organizers (which I copied from Doug Lane’s blog), but THANK YOU:

Wendy Pastrick (blog|twitter)
Ted Kruger (blog|twitter)
Norman Kelm (blog|twitter)
Jes Borland (blog|twitter)
Bob Pusateri (blog|twitter)
Aaron Lowe (blog|twitter)
Bill Lescher (twitter)
Rich Rousseau (twitter)