{"id":135,"date":"2015-11-02T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2013-01-01T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sqlhammer.com\/blog\/sql-pass-summit-2015"},"modified":"2026-03-18T21:52:14","modified_gmt":"2026-03-18T21:52:14","slug":"sql-pass-summit-2015","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sqlhammer.com\/index.php\/2015\/11\/02\/sql-pass-summit-2015\/","title":{"rendered":"SQL PASS Summit 2015 – SQL Hammer"},"content":{"rendered":"

Another amazing PASS Summit week is complete and I am sitting in SEA-TAC airport, waiting for my flight back to the east coast (at the time I wrote this<\/em>). I am going to hop on the red-eye in about an hour so that I will make it home in time to take my daughters, Kayla and Paige, out for trick-or-treating tomorrow evening. I am excited to return home but also cannot believe how quickly this week flew by.<\/p>\n

Last year was my first PASS Summit experience. I hit the ground running and tried to fill my limited cup to the brim with as much community immersion\u00a0a possible. It was extremely rewarding but also exhausting (read about it here<\/a>). This year, I set out to refine my Summit approach.<\/p>\n

Seattle, not PASS<\/h2>\n

One of my regrets from the PASS Summit 2014 was that I failed to enjoy Seattle enough. Last year was my first trip to Seattle and I walled myself up in the convention center for the entire week. I ate convention food or generic fast food the entire week and only saw the EMP Museum because the Community Appreciation Party was hosted there.<\/p>\n

This year I made a small step forward by trying out some local eateries, a flat rate pizza joint named Mod Pizza and a great food truck named Now Make Me a Sandwich.<\/p>\n

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Next year I hope to be able to come up for the full week and maybe skip one of the pre-con days so that I can hit up\u00a0Pike Place Market and a few other Seattle high-lights, suggestions appreciated.<\/p>\n

Giving back<\/h2>\n

Every month PASS provides our chapter leaders with a few slides of information that the leaders can choose to present at the user group meetings. Consistently PASS has reached out for volunteers. Our #SQLFamily<\/a> is built by volunteers and members who give back to the community. In that spirit I sought out as many opportunities to volunteer as I could. I highly recommend that future attendees look into volunteering, individual opportunities only take 30-45 mins and most are schedule when there are no sessions that you need to attend. For example, I helped bring people\u2019s attention to open seats before the key notes and spent some time before the welcome reception answering questions and directing them to the correct ballroom.<\/p>\n

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Quality, not quantity<\/h2>\n

I arrived on Tuesday afternoon with my metaphorical cup empty and vowed not to overfill it. If I was not going to push myself to meet as many people as possible, I needed to define what a quality action was. Without that definition, I would simply be doing less and not\u00a0better.<\/p>\n

There are certain actions which I immediately ruled out\u00a0because they are low quality engagements, even though they are likely high priority goals for many attendees.<\/p>\n