Reflections on SQL PASS Summit 2010

Attending Orycon immediately following SQL PASS Summit was not exactly the best thing for me to do especially since I managed to lose my voice part way though SQL PASS and still haven’t managed to fully recover from the damage despite taking both Monday and today as vacation days from work.
SQL PASS Summit was very educational, and I wish I had the time to personally document all that I learned. However, thanks to my bout with illness, I do not have the time to write all that I should. Fortunately for the rest of us, many SQL PASS Summit attendees already blogged about the highlights and they write much more coherently than I do.
Here is a brief list of the live blogging of SQL PASS Summit events, classes, keynotes and suchlike (in the order I stumbled upon them, rather than in any order of priority or importance)

• SQL Belle’s blog on the Women in Technology Luncheon at SQL PASS Summit, PASS Summit Day 1 keynote and classes she attended, her discoveries on the day prior to the start of PASS Summit (aka Day -1).
  
• Jen of MidnightDBA’s blog includes the PASS Virtual Vendors Area, Pass Day 3: Keynote Live Blog, Pass Day 2: WIT Luncheon, Pass Day 2: Keynote live Blog, Pass Day 1: Keynote Live Blog, and of course video of the MidnightDBA groupies PASS Meetup.
  
• Brent Ozar blogged about Keynote day #1
  
• Strate SQL blogged about Dr. David DeWitt’s amazing keynote about SQL Query Optimization on the 3rd day of SQL Pass. The blog page also includes the links I forgot to write down for the URLs Dr. DeWitt mentioned during his talk.
  
• Grant Fritchey on Keynote Day #1 (part 1, part 2, part 3) , Keynote Day 2, Keynote day 3.
  
• SQL Rockstar, aka Thomas LaRock, blogged on what he did last week, the first keynote, and the Women in Technology Luncheon.
  
• Replays of the Live streaming video of the keynotes from SQLPass site: Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, and WIT Luncheon.

Various neat things were announced at SQL PASS Summit, including

• New path to obtaining the Microsoft Certified Master (MCM) certification for SQL Server 2008.
  • Brent Ozar wrote a summary of the changes for those who want a quick bulleted list of the changes rather than the full program description.
    
  •  Paul Randal and Glen Berry also blogged on the MCM announcement.
    
  • Many posted the all-important link to the MCM readiness videos, which is required viewing for all MCM candidates.
• SQL Server Denali Community Technology Preview was released, and all attendees received a CD containing SQL Server Denali CTP1. Brent Ozar was one of the first to post a blog about Denali and its high availability features.
  
• SQL Server Tools code named “Juneau” – SSMS BI functionality now available in BIDs.
  
• SQL Server 2008 R2 Parallel Data Warehouse
  
• Microsoft “Atlanta” (online service providing proactive alerts for SQL server 2008+). Official site here. Brent Ozar expresses his concerns about Atlanta in a blog he posted within minutes of Atlanta being announced (fast blogger!).
  
• Project Crescent – web-based reporting tool

Random photos from SQL PASS Summit 2010. Generally speaking, the photos were taken outside the hours of the classes at social events because we ALL were actually paying attention to the speakers rather than snapping photos. The following are photo albums posted by various attendees.

• Lucid 77’s photostream with sqlpasspics tag
  
• Brent Ozar’s photostream
  
• The “official” flickr “SQLPass” tag series of photos

Wednesday was SQLKilt day. Many of the male attendees showed up wearing kilts in support of the PASS WIT (Women In Technology):

• Lucid 77’s photostream

Stuff from other evening happenings

• SQL Chicken’s inside view of the SQL Server Central Party on Monday evening

SQL Karaoke:

• SQL Chicken’s live streaming iPhone video set from SQL Karaoke, including “11/10/10 9:48 PM singing”, “11/10/10 11:18 PM” (the Elvis song singing guy is actually quite good), and of course “11/10/10 10:47 PM”,  proving yet again that Karaoke is singing better left in the shower.

I got to sit next to Brent Ozar in a panel at SQL Pass. He snapped my picture as I was trying to peek into his birthday gift bag:

(hyperlink to original of photo)  He tagged it “Celebrity  Sighting at #sqlpass and tweeted my photo to everyone. I guess I’m a Celebrity now. Wowza.

Girls Need Good Mentors

Although frequently in elementary schools, girls are ahead of the boys in math, Why is it that by the time they go to junior high school or high school so many girls shy away from or even declare they hate math? I suspect that to some degree what pushes them away from mathematics is what I'd call "bad role models". That is, they meet various older women who are anxious about math and they copy the behavior of those women.

Who are these role models? Females in their family and teachers. Most elementary school teachers are female - in fact, in the elementary school I attended, the only male teacher there was the gym teacher (this may have changed over the years.). Just for fun, I googled something similar to "Gender profile of teachers" and got back a number of interesting articles. One from Florida was a 2003 report showing approx 90% female elementary and approx 60% female secondary teachers. Boston.com talked about Massachusetts schools becoming desperate to recruit male teachers to provide role models for boys since so few men teach these days.

I also found a report that backed up my theory about female teachers passing math anxieties on to their female students. The report also stated that for some reason the boys were not influenced by the math-phobic teachers)

How did my interest in math and science survive the bad influence of the math-phobic teachers / role models? I was fortunate that both my parents were math / science teachers and they continuously reinforced not only the value of knowing math and science but also the fun (can you say "home chemistry experiments"?) of it all.

What can we do for those who don't have good math/science female role models in their lives? What else can we do to help influence the young girls to encourage them to pursue technical professions? Where are the highly technical females hiding?

One good place to not only find strong female role models but also something that appeals to youngsters is in Japanese Anime. Unlike American cartoons - where the smart and competent characters are portrayed using negative stereotypes -- thick glasses, ugly, terrible in sports -- Anime heroines are beautiful and amazingly competent in everything from sports to music to academics. Best of all, they are astoundingly competent with computers.

Here's a brief list of anime with strong female leads (character name when I can think of it in parens) :

• Serial Experimanets Lain (Lain)
• Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuuustu (Nagato Yuki)
• Rideback
• Mission E (*not* the 1st series, 'Code E,' but the second series called "Mission E")
• Black Lagoon (Revy)
• Ghost in the Shell (Kusanagi Motoko)
• Pumpkin Scissors (Alice)

(I’ll add more as I think of them. )
I’d also recommend David Weber’s Honor Harrington series as something for young ladies to read in their spare time.

SQL Pass Chalk Talk

In Mid-November, I’ll be debuting at my first professional presentation at the SQL PASS Summit in Seattle, WA. During the last SQL PASS  Women In Technology (WIT) Virtual Chapter meeting (we meet monthly via telephone), Meredith Ryan-Smith asked for volunteers to be panelists with her at the Chalk Talk she would be leading. I volunteered hoping that I would have some useful tidbits to contribute to the 40-minute session entitled "Energizing the Next Generation: Encouraging and Inspiring Young Women to Choose Tech Careers,”  which is scheduled for Noon on Tuesday 9 November.

If you look at the statistics from recent years, fewer women are choosing technical careers than ever before. We’re hoping that through this Chalk Talk, we can steer more women toward choosing technical careers.

As the date of the SQL PASS Summit approaches, I’ll be posting some of my thoughts on this topic, so stay tuned!

Lady Runa dressed as Ada Lovelace, a lovely lady who was also one of the first computer programmers.