One of the SQLFamily I was lucky to meet at SQLRally Dallas, TJay Belt, posted a great question on the SQLPass Election Discussion Board:
What are your top 5 tasks you would implement right now, if you had the manpower, the approvals, the money and the time? Why would these be so important to our community and how will they help us out?
And knowing that this is a dream list, what obstacles do you see in the way of these tasks coming to fruition?
And knowing that this is a dream list, what obstacles do you see in the way of these tasks coming to fruition?
Here is my answer, and thanks to TJay for his question.
Hi Tjay,
Great question and thank you for engaging with the election process! It is good to hear from you.
Here are my top 5:
1. Do a member merge on the PASS membership list. I am sure I am not the only one with multiple memberships!
2. Support volunteers, the lifeblood of PASS. Make MyPass much easier to use. Hold volunteer skills webinars, twitter chats and google hangouts so that volunteers can get to know one another more easily.
3. Social media strategy. It enables everything else; outreach, recruitment and retention of new volunteers, speakers, and members. It spans technical disciplines. It helps the global communities to grow. Why not have a LATAM twitterchat, for example? In one of the local languages?
4. Take a step back to take steps forward, based on data. Where are PASS growing? What about the Russian community, for example? How can we learn from non-PASS events and organisations. This would feed into my idea of a PASS Charter, so everyone can see what PASS is (and is not!).
5. The Business Analytics community – I would like to forge this forward. All of the above would go towards supporting this nascent community. I’d love to see BASaturdays as well as SQLSaturdays, for example. Why not?
And a cheeky number 6:
my ‘task’ would be to thank each and everyone who has made this campaign good, fair and honest, and has taken the time to engage. This goes from the existing Directors, the Nom Com, and everyone who has taken the time to engage (like you have, TJay) over Twitter, and taken the time to vote. So a cheeky number 6: my thanks to the SQLFamily who have allowed me to have this opportunity to serve them better. Even if I am not elected, I will be grateful for all the interactions and support that I’ve had along the way, and those memories will last a long time.
Thank you,
Jen
I didn’t post about the obstacles; that will probably be another separate post!
Next topic, I will answer Denise McInerney’s great question about the Business Analytics community. I have a lot of thoughts so it will need a separate blog post.
Thanks again,
Jen