What a week! #pass24hop #summit15 #newbeginnings

Glad that I had a full 2 week vacation before this week! Amazing what can happen in one week.

Week started off with accepting an offer for a new job at Chipotle! Looking forward to using all of my SQL BI knowledge to help them out. It has been a great run at RevGen Partners and I appreciate all of the help and support I have received over the last year there. I'll miss all of the friends that I know there, but the good thing is I'm staying in Denver, so I'm sure I'll run into them many times in the future.

Many have asked why I decided to move away from consulting and the only thing that I can say is that I realized that I really want to see how the decisions and changes that I make will go over a much longer period of time. Maybe I'm getting old, but I just started to feel like I wanted to see things over the long term, not just for the next few weeks/months. I really enjoyed that in my time at Visa where I got to see a decision that I had a lot of influence in turn into something much bigger than I ever would have hoped, but it took time and patience to see that happen. I see a lot of great potential for that at Chipotle and I am looking forward to the challenge of Retail/Food Service which I have not worked in since High School (yay Pizza Hut New Haven)! Thankfully for all of you I'll be in the HQ buildings, not in the kitchen. ;)

Next thing this week was my 24 Hours of PASS: Growing our Community presentation "Introduction to the Power BI Designer" on Wednesday afternoon. I was very well prepared and ready for it, once we opened it up I was happy to see over 200 attendees in the opening minutes. Then the strangest thing that I have seen with GoTo Meeting happened when the whole session came to an end for everyone about 15 minutes in. After my initial panic of trying to figure out what to do I just clicked on the email link and sure enough it was back up and working fine. Lost some attendees, but still had over 150 when it was back up and running again and I only lost a few minutes. Session went well and there were lots of good questions at the end, wish I could answer all of the when/what type questions, but that is all part of doing a presentation on a beta product that we don't know everything about yet. Stay tuned to this space for a link to the video once it is posted next week and I'll answer any questions that we didn't get to at the end of the session.

Then on Thursday night I got the email that I didn't think I was going to get until later on Friday. After 4 attempts I'll be speaking at PASS Summit 2015 in a regular session slot! I was jumping for joy last night when I got the email and had to read it 4 times just to make sure. I know that there is a lot of controversy in the SQL Community about the selection process for PASS Summit, but I have been a Program Committee Volunteer for 3 years in a row now and I know that it has gotten better over those years and has helped me understand what it takes to put something like this on (along with organizing 4 SQLSaturdays). So, in October I'll be presenting my "Date Dimension: Past & Future in One Script" session, which is definitely one of my favorite sessions that I have done many times over the last couple of years. The cool thing is that this presentation came from a Lightning Talk that I did at PASS Summit 2013 (my first time speaking at a PASS Summit). Just goes to show you what patience and experience can do. I'll also be doing another Lightning Talk at PASS Summit 2015 on "Power BI Designer: Nothing to Dashboard in 10 Minutes!". Looking forward to putting this one together since it should be a lot of fun and for those doubters out there I will even be able to show how to do at least 2 dashboards in 10 minutes! :)  If you have not yet registered for PASS Summit 2015, please click on this link and use the discount code LC15WTG2 to get $150 off!

And not to get too political or anything, but the week was topped off with the SCOTUS gay marriage decision, which my response is: "It's about time!". Way to go SCOTUS, very proud to be an American today!

Looking forward to the US Women's World Cup game tonight against China and relaxing a bit over this weekend, cause after reading this I'm already really tired. :)

What a week!

Outstanding PASS Volunteer

Earlier this week I was notified that I had been selected as the Outstanding PASS Volunteer for November 2013! This award was a big surprise to me, since all of the other Board members for the Denver SQL Server User Group had secretly nominated me. I am very thankful for the recognition and hope that I can continue to contribute to the community in the future!

Looking back on the last couple of months I have been doing a lot in the community and hadn't really even realized it until this award got me thinking about it. From organizing our 2nd very successful SQLSaturday to speaking at PASS Summit 2013 for the first time along with being part of the Program Committee, volunteering to sit at our table for the Chapter Lunch, heading up a table at the Birds of a Feather lunch and also volunteering at the Community Zone. And on top of that all of the regular duties that go along with being a Chapter Leader for the Denver SQL Server User Group and speaking at as many events as I can. Makes me tired just thinking about all of it! But it is all worth it as I always get so much more back from the community for everything that I put in.

Thanks again to all of you that have helped me out and I will continue to contribute in as many ways as I can in the future!

If you are looking for ways that you can help out in the community, please fill out your myVolunteering profile on sqlpass.org. Just create a free account or login to your existing account and click on the myVolunteering button on your myPASS page (should be shown automatically when you login, or just click on the Home link in the top navigation). We are always looking for community members that are willing to help out and this will get your contact info to the correct people in PASS. Everyone should fill this out, even if you are already volunteering (yes, speaking at events does count as volunteering) today!