In late November I wrote a post asking for volunteers for the Performance Virtual Chapter. There was a great response, and many thanks to those who replied! Without further ado, let me introduce the Performance VC team for 2012:
Speaker Wrangler: Carlos Bossy ( b | t )
I briefly met Carlos at the SQLSaturday in Portland earlier this year, and he emailed me early on expressing interest in the Speaker Wrangler position. Carlos has a lot of speaking experience…he spoke at the Summit and SQLRally last year and has presented at numerous SQLSaturdays. Why is this so great? He knows a lot of speakers! He’s an independent BI consultant out in Colorado so I know he has no problem connecting with people. The lineup for the first quarter is almost finished; we will have details on the site soon!
LiveMeeting Hosts: Wil Sisney ( b | t ) and Neeraj Jandwani ( b | t )
Wil is someone I’ve wanted to get to know for months. As a Star Wars fan, how can I not like a guy with HanSQL for his Twitter handle? I do wonder what he really looks like… Anyway, Wil is SQL Server DBA who works for a large health insurance company, and has spent hours (as in almost 600 hours in 2011 alone) studying SQL Server. I am quite certain that the time he’s spent attending sessions and listening to webinars will translate into an engaging host for the LiveMeetings.
Neeraj lives in San Francisco, CA and works as a Senior SQL Server DBA for an advertising community. He is already on Twitter and looking to get more involved in the Community, and the VC is a great place to start! He’s going to be Wil’s backup for hosting LiveMeetings because as we all know, redundancy is a good thing.
Web Master: Paul Hiles ( t ) and Yulia Fuller ( t )
I first met Paul many years ago, as he used to work for one of our customers as their DBA (and supported SQL Server 2000 for them). I was sad when Paul moved on to a different company, as he had made my job pretty easy. Paul and I reconnected when I started attending User Group meetings here in Cleveland, and I look forward to seeing what he and Yulia can do with the website.
Yulia was recommended to me by one of her colleagues before I even wrote the blog post asking for volunteers, and when I emailed her she quickly replied and said she was definitely interested in volunteering for the VC. Yulia is a DBA for a hospital in Connecticut, and has regularly attended the Summit so I’m hoping that I get to meet her in person this year.
Marketing Genius: Ryan Adams ( b | t ), assisted by Phil Franz ( t )
Ryan is a busy guy. He is on the Board of Directors for the North Texas SQL Server User Group, a regional mentor and is helping with next spring’s SQLRally. Oh yes, and he has a regular full time job and blogs. Ryan originally inquired about being the Web Master, but I admit, I really wanted to see him leverage his experience and community access in the marketing position. Lucky for me, he agreed! Ryan does have some help from Phil Franz.
Phil was the first person to respond to my post, and he is new to the community and is really looking forward to getting more involved. Phil is coming off a stint in the Armed Services (thank you greatly, Phil, for your service to our country) and finishing up his college degree so I’m expecting emails at crazy hours and someone with a lot of energy. Ah, to be young again 🙂
What’s Next
I am really looking forward to this year, as I think this team will do great things in the Virtual Chapter space. We decided to change our regular LiveMeeting time to the fourth Thursday of the month at 2 PM EST (so block off that time on January 27th now!) and our January speaker will be the first person we had speak when the Performance VC was revived in 2010: Jason Strate ( b | t ). I love that we’re kicking off the year with an “alum”, so to speak, and I remember being so nervous for that first LiveMeeting. Thank you, Jason, for your patience then and for presenting for us again! We will again have a sponsor this year, and it continues to be Confio. Thank you Confio! Did you know that after every LiveMeeting we have a drawing of attendees, and give away a gift card, courtesy of Confio? We’ll do a better job of highlighting it this year.
We will have registration details on our site soon, and expect changes in the site in the coming months. You can follow us on Twitter (@SQLPASS_PVC) and monthly LiveMeetings will also be listed on the PASS Events page. Finally, if you are interested in presenting for our Virtual Chapter, feel free to email me (erin dot stellato at sqlpass dot org) or contact Carlos via Twitter or his site. We look forward to seeing you at our next LiveMeeting!
[…] people volunteering to help. I won’t rehash everything, but you can read her post on it HERE. This team has already made some great accomplishments.I volunteered to help out and I will give […]