Kendal Van Dyke asked a great question on the PASS Board of Directors election candidacy today:
Candidates,
If elected, what do you envision is your top strategic goal for PASS? How do you anticipate gaining support from your fellow board members to pursue that goal and what are some examples of tactical activities you would engage in during your term in support of it? How would you support that goal if you are assigned a portfolio that isn’t directly in line with what you want to accomplish?
Thanks for putting yourself out there for the sake of the PASS community!
Here is my response:
Hi Kendal,
Great question, and thank you for taking the time to get involved in the debates on the discussion board. here is my response:
If elected, what do you envision is your top strategic goal for PASS?
If elected, my top strategic goal would be the broadening of the community to involve data professionals who touch SQL Server products, not just SQL Server experts. I mean the Excel experts, the Power View addicts and the PowerPivot heroes. People who have data pass through their hands, cleanse it, shape it and make decisions based on it. They may be accidental DBAs but they will focus on front end tools to make magic with data.
How do you anticipate gaining support from your fellow board members?
I anticipate gaining support from my fellow board members to pursue this goal by fairly putting across that this is totally consistent with the PASS mission statement as a cornerstone of where PASS have been, and where PASS envisage themselves in the future. The data professional is central to Microsoft’s data platform and PASS are uniquely placed to support and educate this formative community.
This is on PASS’ critical path.
What are some examples of tactical activities that you would engage in during your term in support of it?
– ebooks – I believe that PASS already produce stellar educational facilities but I’d love to see the introduction of e-books or e-chapters written by volunteers, peer reviewed by volunteers and so on. I suspect that the data professional might stumble across a library of well-written chapters. I think that there is a wealth of great community writers out there who already write fantastic blog posts, so why not wrap them up and shape them to form e-books which are downloadable, and may attract a new membership? We already have a great set of free ebooks from microsoft but I feel that the PASS community has a wealth of real-world experience and I’d like to see this leveraged.
– inperson events – I would love to see more BA focused events around. This could include BI/BA focused UGs or even BA SQLSaturdays – BASaturday, anyone?
– the Virtual Chapters already do a great job with the Business Analytics VC, and I’d love to see this grown into other languages.
– global growth – my own personal passion is to see a PASS BAC in Europe or another part of the world. I’d be interested to know if there was a demand for this type of event in Africa, for example. It would be great to have a SQLRally Africa with a BA track, just to test the toes in the water.
I hope that helps.
Kind Regards,
Jen