There’s a lot of talk going around about what’s good for PASS Summit attendees. I don’t like to guess what they like – instead, I like looking at attendee feedback to see which sessions were voted highest.
As an example, let’s look at the Best of Summit 2014 list.
Should Speakers Be Able to Talk About Their Company’s Free Apps?
David Klee of Heraflux ran a great session on how to right-size your SQL Server VM. After talking for an hour about how much work you have to do to get this right, he finishes up by talking about a new option:
David said:
“I’m working on something with my company to automate the VM right-sizing estimation of a production’s SQL server, both physical or virtual. I hope to have a beta out hopefully by Christmas and Merry Christmas. Because life’s too short to do all these when you have fires to put out. The scripts will be available here by the end of the day. Keep an eye on my blog. I’ve got cards up here, if you’re interested in becoming part of the beta test crew come on up. Grab a card, I’ll put you on the list and as soon as we’re ready we’ll send out an announcement.”
Ooo – that’s actually against the rules. The PASS speaker contract stated:
You may not refer to your company’s products or services or products and/or services provided by any companies with which you have a business relationship.
And yet, attendees rated this session in the top 10, indicating that they’re okay with what David did. (And I am too – free tools make our lives easier.) In fact, I wish it would have been ready to show during the session!
Should Speakers Be Able to Show Another Company’s Paid App?
Erin Stellato did an excellent session on Five Execution Plan Patterns to Watch For. At 17 minutes in, she gave a demo of Sentry One Plan Explorer, a commercial tool with both free and paid versions.
I highly recommend Plan Explorer, and I use it in my own demos too. There is a real value in seeing how pros like Erin use the tools they use on a daily basis.
Here’s where it gets tricky: Erin works for SQLskills, a consulting company with a financial and promotional relationship with Sentry One, the makers of Plan Explorer. Technically, what Erin did was against the 2014 PASS speaker contract too:
You may not refer to your company’s products or services or products and/or services provided by any companies with which you have a business relationship.
I don’t think what Erin did is wrong – I think the rules are wrong. Attendees voted, and PASS honored that vote by keeping Erin’s session in the top 10 – despite the violation of the speaker contract.
Should Speakers Be Able to Show Their Own Free Tools?
Ola Hallengren’s session revolves just around his backup scripts:
Attendees loved it so much that they voted it in the top 10 of sessions overall. This question seems pretty open-and-shut. If you’re going to learn about someone’s free scripts, you can’t do much better than learning directly from them.
When attendees picked their 10 favorite sessions, at least 3 had product placement.
And heck, maybe more do – these are just the only three in the list I checked out of curiosity.
Either enforce the rules, or change them.
But don’t call me a bad guy when I’m the one who’s trying to honor them.
53 Comments. Leave new
I completely agree … all of these ideas (and actions) follow the fundamental ideas of Pass; bettering the community as a whole.
Dan – yep, it’s connect, learn, and share. It’s the very core of what PASS is – or at least, was, before this speaker contract came in.
Also no complaints here. I’m curious who has been complaining for them to make these kinds of rules.
Cody – the answer’s pretty obvious: vendors.
There are a couple of vendors who are very worried about any free solutions being discussed up onstage at the Summit. When attendees see free tools, these vendors worry that attendees won’t want to spend money on tools anymore. They’d love to go back to the dark ages of everyone working in dimly lit cubes, reading Books Online, wishing there was a better way.
There is. It’s called the community, and we’re here to help each other for good.
You sure it’s vendors? I’ve never hit this sort of issue in 15 years of sponsoring a boatload of conferences across multiple database technologies. Seems like it might just be a PASS thing? They were always very annoying and petty to deal with from a vendor standpoint. Reading your blog I was reminded of the shakedown they gave us with the Bingo cards!
Well, I’ll put it to you this way: when a PASS person emailed me, they specifically said vendors complained about us giving away magnets. It could well have been PASS just smelling an “alternative marketing opportunity” (chuckle), but that’s what they said, anyway.
Oh right…PASS themselves are a VENDOR, and THEY complained. Got it :).
HAHAHA
It’s really unbelievable that someone complained about your magnets. Magnets? Seriously?
hhmmm… I suspect that may be a cover story, and their real grudge is the free-con that y’all put on last year. Awesome, BTW.
Makes me wish I were going this year, the pre-con you have planned looks amazing.
Steven – hahaha, thanks, sir. Yep, magnets. (sigh)
I gotta stock up on popcorn now 😉 You are right. And such good examples. And you are following the rules. Honestly? I would rather not go to a Brent session if I can’t get your tufte inspired handouts, see you use those tools you’ve invested so much time and money into and give out for free.
No amount of snark or passive aggressive comments will change that opinion.
Hoping the rules get clarified a bit. As one who has sponsored with his company a couple years in a row now, I have no problem with these mentions and placements. At all.
Mike – thanks, sir, I appreciate it.
I hear comments about an arms race to give free stuff to attendees to help make their job easier, and I just get so excited. I can only imagine how awesome it would be to have an entire PASS Summit full of sessions as awesome as David’s, Erin’s, and Ola’s.
It’s hard to have a constructive discussion about a problem without also describing possible solutions. If the solution works and is available immediately after the session, that just adds value to the conference IMO.
Eric – yeah, otherwise it’s just a group therapy session complaining about the pain. And who wants that?
Excellent stuff, Brent. And Mike, the snark serves a purpose in distinguishing the signal from the noise. :{>
Thanks, sir!
To be honest, just watching all of the drama back and forth is really causing me to just not want to attend any further events. While I agree with everything you have presented here, I know that either later today, or tomorrow, there are going to be TONS of snarky comments on Twitter feeds. As a speaker at SQLSaturdays, and PASS UG’s, I have a slide that contains my company information. Is it because I am marketing? No, its because my company is SPONSORING me to attend these events(paying for travel, accomodations, etc) and I do not see anything wrong with talking about them for a short time. I attended Summit last year and with ALL the swag that was given away, I had no more room in my bag, and got charged a heavy bag fee from Delta(I also got like 6 redgate books which took up the most weight). I didnt see anything that I thought was wrong. I’ve been to your precons and I learn tons of new information with each session/webinar/email that your company presents. I say keep on doing what you are doing, your business is doing great from the sounds of it, and as the great Taylor Swift says “haters gonna hate”. Keep on rocking the community Brent Ozar, we NEED you out there!
Mongoman – thanks for the kind words, I appreciate it.
Yep, Yep, Yep…and Yep… So totally true… all that has been said. As a speaker at PASS for the first time last year, I was almost afraid to say too much about anything… but i definitely talked about free tools as my session was about execution plans. I also mentioned PluralSight… I wouldn’t be doing my job if I didn’t. Most of what I was presenting came from PluralSight… they don’t pay me (or even recognize me) so I thought I was safe.
For that matter, am I not allowed to share the scripts that I wrote for the demo that will help the attendees understand what I was showing them? Where is that line drawn?
This has been a fun discussion Brent, Andy and all!
Mike – thanks sir!
The demo scripts one is pretty straightforward – IF the demo isn’t your company’s product or service, then you’re okay. However, if you’re doing the same things in the demo that your company does as a service, well, not so straightforward.
Yep, comments were mostly sarcasm. It really is silly that we even have the need to discuss this. Think someone just likes poking the bear to see what kind of frenzy it’ll create.
I have a vague recollection of something like this a few years ago. Is it that time of the decade again?
Is this where PASS gets told it isn’t in business to sell the community to the highest bidder and dictate that I have to wear a bag on my head and speak from behind a curtain during presentations? Not that it wouldn’t improve my speaker score, I’m just giving an example.
This is just nuts.
Wes – HAHAHA, improve your score, heh. Yeah, that contract keeps getting weirder and weirder. I’m not sure what’s driving those requirements.
“or products and/or services provided by any companies with which you have a business relationship.”
What about Microsoft? Don’t the vast majority of us have a business relationship with them?
I buy their products for my own personal use (Windows, Office, SQL Server Developer Edition), as well as services (Azure, the former TechNet subscription.) I also give them money for certification exams. I have received swag from MS at conferences, and plenty of things (plaque, jacket, etc.) for passing the MCM exam. They give me space for my user group to meet, and have also contributed prizes to give away to our members.
At work, I have input on whether or not to purchase very expensive products from them.
Wouldn’t this preclude most of us from talking about SQL Server, a paid product from a company we have a business relationship with? Or is there an exception granted in this case? I realize that’s not the intent, but it certainly appears to be what the words say.
No exceptions – the contract says no products or services, period. That would also exclude VMware, Amazon, Xen, BIML, etc.
Going to take a wild guess here and say talking about products by any of the companies sponsoring the event is ok, whether you do business with them or not.
There’s no exclusion for that in the speaker contract, and Ola was not a sponsor of the event. (I don’t know if Heraflux was in 2014.)
When I was a DBA (still a bit sad that I’m not anymore), I loved sessions that talked about tools (paid or free). Learning about new features and how to do things in SQL was always top priority for me but also seeing tools that made it much faster and removed PEBKAC errors were worth their weight in gold because they meant I could do more work faster and more reliably.
Kevin – yep, same here when I was an attendee, too.
And open source conferences work the same way – it’d be ludicrous to tell a code author, “Sorry, you can’t talk about the products you give away to the community. Only someone else can do that.” (Yes, open source products are often run by for-profit companies who sell services to keep bread on the table.)
Could you imagine if you released a PowerShell version of sp_Blitz at PASS Summit?!?!?. THE HORROR!!! LOL.
P.S. I’ll probably tweet this too.
HAHAHA
I know I would not be where I am today without those free scripts even if they have a license agreement, it it still free. Just don’t sell/market them as your own. I love this community because we can connect share and learn. I have helped others and others have helped me. The BoD must review this. I always go through the exhibit hall to see what is new, should I buy it or should I build it. There is so many ways to do different things, that is why this community is so great. I personally see this as a death nail to a great community if we are not allowed to share. We have a choice if we want to use it. Remember, free is no support and paid you can get support. Depending upon your level of knowledge, you may need to get a vendor.
Armor, thank you. You’re absolutely right – I go through the vendor hall too. Monitoring software is a great example – no way in hell am I going to try to roll my own monitoring software. The vendors build fantastic tools for that, way cheaper than I’d be able to build ’em myself.
Seriously, I would not be the IT Pro I am today without people like yourself and others freely sharing what they do.
One of the abstracts I submitted for this year’s PASS Summit is a security talk that revolves around a script I wrote to limit DBA permissions. I share that script. That would be a damned shame if this kind of sharing is squashed.
Ron – awesome, man, thanks sir. I appreciate the kind words. And I, for one, would love to see that script.
http://www.sqlsaturday.com/489/sessions/details.aspx?sid=42784
To be perfectly honest, all the drama and such relating to the PASS restrictions on speaker behavior, and those restrictions themselves, strike me as juvenile. If the objective is to enhance the community and share knowledge, then this restrictions are counter-culture to that objective. Honestly, and feel free to quote me on this for what its worth, makes me not want to attend a PASS Summit. I attended my first SQL Saturday in Madison this year, and had a great talk with Doug Lane that helped convince me to start speaking, and I also launched a new PASS UG in the Wausau area. Now hearing about this, and watching the community drama, it’s really making me re-consider my level of involvement with PASS.
I’d definitely support alternative pre-cons that allow for open sharing of free resources that will make our lives easier.
WOOHOO! That’s great to hear that you started speaking and launched a UG! That’s fantastic! I share Doug’s enthusiasm for getting people up and on stage as part of the SQL Server community.
The world needs more active voices and speakers. Welcome to the club!
I’ve seen the (insipid and almost quaint, compared to traditional social media spats) thing about Vendors and Their Evil Practices, and am genuinely nonplussed by it.
Every attendee is an adult and can differentiate, quite clearly, between a presentation that involves some product endorsement, and one that has none.
If I get swag for listening to a great presentation, then I’m happy.
If I don’t get swag for listening to a great presentation, then I’m happy.
And by “swag”, I mean anything from a book or thumb drive, down to helpful backup scripts or a Top Ten DMVs Guide.
The chances are excellent that I will encounter a particular SQL Server-specific vendor’s product/s during my career (SQL Server-related products are not, after all, as ubiquitous as smartphone apps or video games), so why not “browse the catalogue”, so to speak, with the assistance of a vendor-supplied boffin, of whom one can ask searching questions?
This whole Vendors Are Scummy Capitalist Vermin idea is ludicrously false, and looks like a “lighted torches held aloft” witch hunt, where, in fact, there are no witches.
Hi Richard,
I don’t think Vendors are Scummy Capitalists. I am a capitalist, but only because my training as an engineer encourages me to choose solutions that actually work.
I think the Vendors and Exhibitors (and I co-founded a company that was an Exhibitor at the PASS Summit in 2014 and 2015) will suffer from this rule right along with the attendees and the SQL Server Community. When speakers cannot share code or links to free code or other training, the value of the presentation is diminished.
That’s all. That’s my whole story and I’m sticking to it.
Brent and I built careers by learning from PASS Summit presentations and other presentations. I grew to become a presenter, and then helped grow a company to the point that it became a sponsor. I see the cycle. I’ve lived it. I want others to be able to live it, too. This over-reaching rule will short-circuit that.
The rest is noise. Dramatic and somewhat entertaining at times, it’s positioning, optics, and narrative. I’ve executed sp_removePolitics on the default instance of serverAndy. Peace.
:{>
I agree: if vendors are told, in effect, “Don’t vend”, then they will, understandably, go elsewhere, and their expert tutelage and Q&A sessions go with them.
Richard – thanks, sir. I appreciate the kind words. It means a lot at a time like this – it very much does feel like a witch hunt.
If ever Brent Ozar wants to put on a competing event, Unconference Unlimited, let me know. We’ll make it fun for the community, and a win-win for the vendors and the speakers, who will deliver amazing content. The best speaker content wins the conference game every time. Even I as an evil, blood sucking, capitalist vendor knows this.
Christian – I don’t think I’ve ever said this publicly or privately, but here’s as good a place as any.
I didn’t learn everything I know about marketing from you.
Only the good parts.
You’re very, very good at what you do, you’re awesome to work with, inspiring, and I miss working with you. I hope somehow the lotto of life puts us together again at some point.
Me too! Would be so fun to put the band back together for something sometime.
I find the whole thing surreal. I miss the days when people argued vociferously about index fragmentation and the best way to select a clustering key. A major turn-off for PASS for me is how…into itself, so to speak, it has become. I think if SQL Server was pulled from shelves tomorrow and everybody went Oracle, somehow PASS would convince itself it must go on, for its own sake. At the Summit in 2013 the keynotes had an almost church service feel at some points, everyone get excited, not about SQL, but about PASS, etc. Now, PASS has been useful for me developing skills and knowledge over the years, so I can forgive the at-times culty feel that seems to surround it, but I’ll take a “pass” (ha!)(sorry) on the bitchy, drama-filled flareups that have seemed to happen with more and more regularity, in the past few years. PASS is a means to an end for me, I can get great training for me and my team at SQLIntersection, Immersion Events, and your classes of course…but for many of the folks so deeply embedded in its culture it seems more like it is the ultimate end, for them. Snippy church drama, is what it feels like, which I know sounds ridiculous. Ain’t nobody got time for that.
Now we could get real sectarian and have a church split, with the New Reformed Professional Association of SQL Server. Ahh, the enmity and backbiting would be over the top! It’d be like that scene in Life of Brian with the People’s Front of Judea:
“The only people we hate more than the Romans are the ***ing Judean People’s Front!”
HAHAHA, Reformed Professional Association for SQL Server, nice.
I was looking at SQL PASS Summit registration this morning and on the page I saw Doug Lane’s Video (about quitting twitter). This pointed me to these other blogs. It took half of my day to read this post, Andy’s post and Karen’s post.
I regularly attend User Groups and SQL Saturdays. I respect all of you and I look forward to your blog posts, tweets, scripts, newsletters etc. It really hurts me to see this discussion.
I like to mention Brent Ozar here because he gave me his 5 day training class at 90% discount when I wrote to him that I could not afford and my employer was not sending me and how and why his training would help me etc. I also get Holiday card from his company
There are other people who have helped me on #sqlhelp on twitter and one of them is Allan Hirt.
I get Idera’s duck in mail.
I have attended Sean and Jen’s Minion session. I have not downloaded their product but the information I got helped me improve my own backup restore process. These small nuggets I would not have gotten if their minion product is demoed by someone else. I attended their precon on Powershell and they mentioned their company only when somebody asked about their stickers and later they said they will have booth where they will distribute it.
What I am trying to say is everyone is trying to help the community in their own way and if in doing so if they are promoting themselves a little bit, there is no harm. I understand laws. Like traffic laws are there to protect us so is PASS Board’s laws are to protect presenters and vendors. I think PASS board should get survey of attendees of these events (what they want) before making such laws. This is a not a line but a triangle of Vendors, Speakers and Attendees.
Ameena – awww, thanks ma’am! Good to see you.
Yes, the discussion hurts to have – but on the flip side, it’s helping! PASS has admitted they made a mistake on the contract, and they’re working on fixing it with our feedback.
I think the policy needs amending and I would bet it will happen, though perhaps not in time for Summit this year. Rules get made to handle problems. Sometimes the rules are premature or incomplete, sometimes not. My guess is the the rule stems from trying to fix a problem AND not define gray areas – make it very very clear so they there isn’t endless debate about what is/isnt ok. That rarely works, but I can appreciate the idea. I see lots of options for making it better and clearer for speakers and attendees.
Historically we’ve tried to keep a wall between education and sponsors, because left unchecked it tends (or at least that is the fear) to become more and more salesy presentations. We live in the day of personal brands where the lines blur and I don’t know that we’ve kept up with it in terms of official or unofficial policy. Do we want speakers doing “product placement” ala the movies? if its ok to hand out 50 magnets to attendees is it ok to hand out 500? I think there should be a line, but it’s tough to draw it perfectly. I want speakers, attendees, and sponsors to be successful and clear about what is or isn’t ok (and why).
I think calling it drama is unfair. It’s negotiating or renegotiating what we think PASS should be. We all see our own viewpoints clearly (and Im mindful of that as I write this!), not necessarily those of others until we have the debate. What think we do badly at this is having the public debate in way that we can see all the viewpoints side by side. I’d like to know why the policy exists as is, to start, and then work through “what if” on proposed changes. Growing is often painful and messy, that’s not drama, or at least it doesn’t to be. I emailed PASS about this issue yesterday and got a fast and thoughtful response. That doesn’t mean they’ll instantly change or do all that we think we want, but its far from “not listening”.
Of course we can each frame it as we will if its drama to you, thats fine, and I say that without sarcasm. My goal is just to challenge the idea that the evil empire is at it again, or that any public discussion indicates dysfunction.
Andy – thanks as always for the thoughtful words, sir.
The big point for me is that the debate has to happen in public. Every time PASS has made a rule like this in private, and then unveiled it, there’s been massive backlash and it’s been walked back or changed. We’ve gotta be more of an association, take advantage of all the rich experience in the crowd.
Yeah, it’s a shame – to me it goes against “work smarter, not harder”. I don’t really want to go to sessions where I see hundreds of lines of tSQL that a free tool could have done for me with a few clicks, only to go back and have to download those scripts and spend MORE time combing through them trying to understand what they really do.
What my company and I want to do (per what I “learned”) is identify the actionable data I’m looking for (quickly), and then know what to do with that information – again, quickly. Using one of the few pay tools I use (SQL Prompt), I type in “wa, ” and I get my custom sp_WhoIsActive script to quickly find out what’s going on, versus combing through a bunch of rather cumbersome DMV’s. I type in “bc ” and I get sp_BlitzCache with the parameters that provide the output I want – boom! That’s useful, actionable information. Don’t get me wrong, we should understand DMV’s, but putting a nice wrapper around a bunch of them and spitting out really useful, actionable information in a few seconds saves me time, and my company money. I bet I’ve saved myself thousands of hours over the years with all these useful, free tools, many of which I have in my “Toolbox” on my blog. If folks went away from PASS with knowledge of how to use the free tools that the community has so generously provided over the years, they could probably pay for their trip to PASS and then some solely based on increased productivity, not to mention maybe getting rid of some pay tools (hmm… vendor conflict there). THAT is a return on investment for their company.
At any rate, that’s how I feel.
Allen – yep, agreed. In fact, I get frustrated when I see sessions that just cover DMVs. It’s the year 2016 – stop telling people how to reinvent the wheel, and just show them the cars.