I have a stack of technical books I have not yet made it through on my desk at work. I also have at least a dozen in PDF form on my phone and my tablet, as well as dozens of blog posts waiting for me to wade through them. I could argue that I don’t have time to read them all, but what I really mean is that I need time to comprehend them as I read them. It’s that feeling of “my brain is full” that so haunts many a college student.

Today I took part in a Cowboy Action Shooting competition, which is a lot of fun and I highly recommend it if you’ve ever wanted to be in an old western movie. Upon returning home, I discovered a checklist on my tablet that was supposed to remind me to grab several things to take to the shoot with me, including the things we forgot such as earplugs and sandwich makings. It helpfully attempted to remind me yesterday, but I was busy trying to replace the stereo in my buggy and didn’t look at the tablet. So this got me to thinking – what am I forgetting for the PASS Summit?

This morning I coordinated a “Lessons Learned” meeting to cap off the consulting engagement I’ve had the opportunity to be the technical liason for. We talked about what we think went well on the project, what we think could be done better in the future, and gave and received feedback to/from the consulting group. I think the meeting went well, but it really drove home to me how difficult it can be to communicate criticism constructively and tactfully.

As is wont to happen, an interesting but tongue-in-cheek question was asked earlier today on Twitter:

Curiosity: are there members of #sqlpass who are not in good standing? What would you have to do to lose your status of good standing?

As a developer in a data warehouse, I sometimes find myself tasked with doing small-scale plugs to our data for various scenarios. Most of these are due to source-side plugs that we for whatever reason didn’t handle correctly, but not always.

About a year ago, I became aware of an organization called the Professional Association for SQL Server. This organization has as its mission to “Empower data professionals who leverage Microsoft technologies to connect, share, and learn through networking, knowledge sharing, and peer-based learning.” As the year progressed, I became involved with our local PASS chapter and started meeting members online through Twitter and attending Virtual Chapter webinars on a variety of topics. I truly feel that I would not have advanced as far as I have today were it not for the influence of PASS and the SQL Server community – and unlike some other associations or technology groups, it truly is a community.