2016 PASS Board of Directors Candidate Town Halls
It’s PASS Board of Directors elections again! After a number of twitter discussions last week about the applicability of PASS outside of the US and what I think PASS is good and bad at, I thought I would engage the process instead of just being a complainy-pants. I attended all 6 town hall webinars and asked questions to all the candidates. I recommend you watch them before voting.
Find out more about the candidates, the PASS Board of Director elections, and how to vote on the PASS website.
Allen White
- improving and managing the PASS Summit program
- opening up more paid-for large regional events that contribute back to PASS
Check out the full video on youtube.
Ben Miller
- improving communication methods (and access to them) for the PASS membership and chapters
- increasing the communication between existing members, not necessarily focussing on growth of the membership
Check out the full video on youtube.
Wendy Pastrick
- taking PASS to where the people are, especially meetup.com
- improving interactions with the global community
Check out the full video on youtube.
Eduardo Castro
- increasing global PASS branded opportunities in under-represented countries
- focus on PASS more at SQL Saturdays to increase attendee’s understanding that they’re now PASS members and what that means for them
- building regional councils / mini-Boards to help improve intra-region activities and growth
Check out the full video on youtube
Paresh Motiwala
- improving marketing of PASS to Data Professionals and to CXOs
- leveraging the PASS network as a recruitment network to improve opportunities for members and as a revenue source
- improving affordability of PASS Summit to make it accessible at a global level
Check out the full video on youtube
Jason Strate
- building up the PASS content platform to make it a stronger resource
- building partnerships with non-PASS events to grow engagement with PASS long-term
Check out the full video on youtube
Key messages from candidates
- PASS covers the Microsoft data platform so if Microsoft expands it, PASS’ content coverage should expand also
- They’ve gained a lot of benefit through networking and contributing to PASS and they think we can all get that value
Who am I likely to vote for?
There are three seats up for election this year, so we can cast three votes. I went into this hoping to increase the geographical diversity of the board’s perspectives. Eduardo is the only LATAM candidate so of course, he’s gonna get my vote for that seat. I’m also going to vote for Paresh – not only did he do well within his town hall but I think it will be valuable to have his additional representation for India and the rest of the APAC region. Of the others, I’m unsure – I think I’ll have to see the twitter debates later today to help make my decision!
Thoughts on the process
I was very frustrated by the hurdle of 6 separate webinars that had to be registered for by attendees. These had a large amount of compulsory information and opted people in for marketing from PASS. PASS probably wanted each candidate to be able to prepare without interfering with the others, but with the ability to practice before a webinar starts I think it would have been better to make candidates verify their webcams etc up to 2 and half hours early than reduce the turnout they’d get.
Grant Fritchey deserves a big thank you for hosting these. He moderated 3 hours of webinar fantastically. He gave each candidate the treatment they deserved, which is super hard when you have to say the same things 6 times in a row and be on the ball for 3 hours. The continuity helped throughout but perhaps a deputy could have been of benefit.
Find out more about the candidates, the PASS Board of Director elections, and how to vote on the PASS website.