PASS Summit 2015: So Far

It’s Kilt Day!

I want to give a quick assessment on how the Summit has been for me so far. Monday, as is true for the rest of the week, I served two masters. In the morning I went to the Redgate SQL in the City event. In the afternoon I attended our in-person board meeting. The minutes for the meeting will come out after they’re approved. The meeting largely consisted of reporting on how we had done this year and starting the process of getting going for next year. I left that meeting and went back to SQL in the City. Yeah, I’ve been running all week.

Tuesday was my community day. It’s been announced that I’m moving from the Chapters portfolio to the SQL Saturday portfolio. I went to the two hour meeting we had with all the organizers of SQL Saturday events from all over the world. It was a celebration and a chance for feedback. What things do we need to stop, start or continue. Here are a few of the notes I took during the meeting:

• We need a better way to share sponsor info, a report or forum
• Regional Mentors (RMs) could be a clearing house for sponsors in regions
• We need to promote having people bring a friend (actually, this is something I’d like to find a way to formalize or reward somehow)
• We need a better way to automate lead generation for the sponsors
• Sponsors would like to get the layout ahead of time
• If you want to get sponsor money, get them a list of topics and speakers as soon as possible

There was more discussion around improvements in the web site and speedpass. Overall, it seemed like a successful meeting.

Next I met with your Regional Mentors. We had a private discussion that I sort of stirred up (maybe even on purpose a little). I started the discussion by saying, “So, let’s disband this program.” We went from there. The feedback we generated for improving the program is great. A few items I’ll share are:

• We need to ensure that the RMs are involved in Chapter communications from the org
• RMs need a way to easily send emails to their org
• RMs have to communicate better with the board

Finally, I met with the Chapter Leaders. It was, again, a celebration of everything they do for the organization. Also, I reported on my progress on their behalf. I set three goals, increase the number of chapters, find a way to use the PASS email list to market for the chapters, get the chapters access to our extensive speaker list. We’re succeeding in the first goal, easily. You guys form community easily and well. The second goal we’re meeting because marketing has started generating regionalized emails and we’re supplying chapters links in those emails. We’ll continue to work on this. Getting access to the speaker lists is not yet complete. We have a couple of legal hurdles that we have to clear and it’s going to require a few technical changes. The plans are to finish this before the end of the year which means I’ll have met my goals for my tenure as the leader of Chapters.

Tuesday… woof. I spent a lot of time in the Community Zone talking to anyone that wanted to provide feedback on Chapters, RMs, or SQL Saturday or any other thing related to the PASS organization or the Board.

It’s been an exciting Summit so far. It’s very different doing this from the Board. I hope these reports about my perspective of how things are going there are useful.