Archives for May 2011

As you may already know, I’ve gone crazy for speaking at SQL events.  I can’t get enough of it. If I had the means, I would be hitting SQL Saturdays all over the country.  It’s only logical, therefore, that I submitted the maximum of four abstracts to the PASS Summit. I have no idea what my odds are of getting chosen; I dare not even guess.  For a very short time, you can up those odds by “preferring” (voting) for my sessions here.

To give you a better idea of what I’m hoping to speak about, I’ve listed the abstracts below, along with a little blurb about why you should vote for it, and ultimately, and hopefully, attend.

“Ben, why didn’t you tell me?”: Reporting Services Lessons Learned the Hard Way

Level: 100

What is it about? 

Like Luke Skywalker, sometimes we wish we had received certain information a little earlier. In this session, we’ll cover ten tips — gleaned from real world lessons — about Reporting Services that will help you skip ahead on the learning curve. Attendees will learn simple tricks to quickly test report subscriptions, keep the Reporting Service from falling asleep, jump-start new report creation, and more.

Why should I care?

If you’ve ever wished for the SSRS equivalent of an “Accidental DBA” or “Top 10 Mistakes DBA’s Make” session, your wish is granted. Imagine you were taking over your first Reporting Services instance from me and I had one hour to give you tricks to make life with RS easier.  That’s what you’ll get in this session.

Bump, Zoom, Flip: Precision Report Design

Level: 200

What is it about?

Do you feel stuck with the default appearances of your report objects? If you’re ready to take complete control of your report visuals, this session is for you.

Attendees will learn to control the finer points of Reporting Services report objects through the manipulation of properties like PointWidth, CustomInnerPlotPosition, WritingMode, StripLines, and more. We’ll also go off the beaten path into the strange and seldom-visited underworld of the Grouping Pane known as Advanced Mode.

Why should I care?

Because you care about the little things. Because to you, reports should look like your resume: impeccable. Because there’s too much white space around these charts.  Because you want complete command over how your reports look.

Data-Driven Subscriptions with SSIS

Level: 200

What is it about?

Do you have the need for data-driven subscriptions, but no room in the budget to buy Enterprise Edition? If so, this session is for you. We’ll cover how you can deliver reports, by both file share and e-mail, on a limitless number of schedules, all using one simple package.

Why should I care?

Because you don’t have Enterprise Edition, but you have more reports than you can easily administer using Report Manager.  Although I’ve taken out proprietary stuff, this setup is nearly identical to one I’ve run in production for over a year.  Plus, I’ve added some enhancements that weren’t part of the package the last time I presented it. If you’ve been thinking about creating your own data-driven subscription framework, you’ll want to see this first.

Developers are from Mars, Report Servers are from Venus  

Level: 100

What is it about?

Do you remember what it was like to fall in love? Wasn’t it wonderful?

Lately it just hasn’t been the same. There’s just no spark anymore. You’ve been stuck in the same old routine, doing the same old charts and tables. Maybe Reporting Services won’t tell you what’s wrong. Maybe you’re even thinking about seeing other reporting products.

In this session, Doug will re-ignite your passion for RS by reminding you how reports perform best, what RS has been trying to tell you (but you haven’t been listening), and show you some new — and easy — tricks you may not have known RS can do. You’ll leave knowing more about troubleshooting with the execution log views, understanding how to better design reports for performance, having a plan to deal with unwanted blank pages, and more. After this session, you’ll want to spend some time alone with your new old flame.

Even though this is a 100-level session, it’s still useful for people in the 200-300 range.

Why should I care?

Business Intelligence should be fun, but it’s hard to have fun when you get frustrated.  Think of this session as couples therapy for you and Reporting Services.  This is an upbeat session that’s meant to help you understand why Reporting Services doesn’t always behave the way you expect it to, and how you can develop a great working relationship with it.

Of the four sessions I’ve submitted, this is my favorite because I get to tap into some of the reasons people hate SSRS and not so much convince, but remind them it really is a great product.

“Tick tock, Clarice.”

Time’s running out.  Head over to the PASS Summit site and give these and other sessions you like the thumb’s up.  Thanks for your consideration!

I readily admit when I see a comment card, there’s a 99.9999% chance I’m not filling it out.  When I buy a product on Amazon.com or another site, I don’t go back and post a review unless I feel a very compelling reason to do so (read: never).  And it’s rare that I will give feedback to a restaurant other than telling the server I enjoyed my food.

Perhaps it’s paradoxical, but I feel a strong obligation to provide feedback to speakers at SQL events.  Here’s why.

In most areas of life, we vote with purchasing power.  If a restaurant has good food and service, I buy again.  If I really like my Panasonic TV, I’ll strongly consider another Panasonic TV when it needs to be replaced.  SQL presentations are different because:

1. In many cases, I paid nothing to attend except the cost of getting there.  If I’m lucky, the conferences with fees were paid by my employer.
2. Even if one or two speakers don’t meet my expectations, I’m probably going to attend the event again.
3. My decision to skip an event by a particular speaker is only loosely correlated to my opinion of their session.  For example, I have seen Steve Jones’ Modern Resume session and I thought I was great.  Would I attend it again?  Probably not anytime soon, but only because I want to hear something new or different.  It’s the same reason I won’t see Brian Regan (my favorite comedian) more than once every few years.  The jokes are still funny, but I’ve heard them already.  I’ll go see him again when he’s doing new material.

Therefore, the feedback we’re used to giving automatically — keep buying or quit buying — doesn’t apply well, if at all.  As attendees, what are our alternatives for giving feedback?  We could instead choose to share our thoughts face-to-face (tell the speaker we liked their talk), praise or flame the speaker/event on Twitter either in real-time or afterward, or we can blog about it.  Finally, we can give ratings and comments on feedback forms.  Feedback forms are the most common way for event organizers and speakers to gather feedback on their performance.

How Helpful Is Feedback?  It Depends.

The typical SQL user group and SQL Saturday feedback forms have a series of “rate from 1-5” questions, along with some open-ended questions intended to solicit comments. Switching perspectives to that of the speaker, here’s how I value feedback on these forms (ranked from most to least valuable):

1. Useful comments, positive or negative.
   Example: “You lost me when you talked about the execution log.  Too high-level compared to the rest of the talk.”
   Delightful.  The kind of comment I can use to improve my presentation.
2. Feel-good comments.
   Example: “Really enjoyed it!” 
   It makes me happy to read these even if there’s nothing in them to help me get better.
3. Feel-bad comments.
   Example: “Didn’t cover what I expected.” 
   While this is not explicit, at least it makes me look back at my abstract to make sure I kept my promise about what I would say and what I wouldn’t.
4. Good numeric feedback but no comments. Even though I know it’s nearly meaningless, it makes me smile to see 4/5 and 5/5. At least I know I didn’t disappoint these people.
5. No feedback submitted. I put in 40-60 hours’ off-work time — time I could be playing with my kids, sleeping, watching my PASS Summit DVD’s, gardening, learning to play piano, anything — to build, rehearse, and refine this presentation. You come and absorb it at no cost.  I ask for 1/1800th of that time back for your thoughts and some light stenography so I can make my next presentation to you better. You decline. Then you leave. Yes, that seems fair.
6. Bad numeric feedback but no comments. This is in no way helpful and it makes me look bad to those who would use these ratings to quantify the value of my session.  If you’re going to jab my overall score without telling me why, do us both a favor: Don’t fill out the evaluation at all.
7. Kick to the crotch but no comments.  I have yet to offend someone so gravely that they assault me, but I’ll throw it out there anyway: if you’re going to kick my bag in, TELL ME WHY! (That way, my restraining order against you is much more likely to be granted.)

When I deliver a presentation, I’m dying to get feedback that falls under items 1 and 2.  Feedback for items 3-4 are okay.  Anything else is not going to help either party.

Why I’m Ranting About Feedback

It wasn’t the blog posts by Aaron Bertrand, Allan Hirt, or Mike Walsh that got me stewing about poor feedback.  It was Scot Reagin’s presentation to the Denver SQL Users Group last month that got me fired up.  All I will say on this is that there were at least thirty people in attendance that night, and Scot presented on MDX – a subject that is not easily grasped by beginners.  Here is what little feedback Scot received in return for a first-class session.

“You can go about your business.  Move along.”

Having met enough other presenters, I can say with confidence that we speak because we love to.  We love sharing what we know and helping other DBA’s, developers, and architects do their jobs better.  We’re passionate about SQL Server and the SQL community.  And in case I haven’t made it obvious, we’re passionate about improving what we deliver to you. 

Whether or not we get good feedback in return, we’ll keep on teaching.  Hopefully, you’ll take a few minutes to teach us a little something too.