A one topic post this time. As a candidate for Vice President of Marketing for PASS this year I asked to submit ‘a written statement about your strategic vision for PASS’. By the time you read this the interviews will be complete, so I thought I would share with you what I provided to the officer nomination committee to meet that request. In my experience strategy involves a bit of dreaming, trying to think a couple steps beyond that seems immediately possible. Smaller dreams are easier and quicker to achieve, larger ones have the chance of really transforming something once everyone seizes the vision. Of course, it’s often hard to tell whether you’re dreaming small, big, or undoable…until after the fact!

More pragmatically, I think you could also call this my ‘fix PASS’ list. Aside from the sturdy growth goals for membership and Summit attendance, if we could do the rest today – I’d be thrilled and proud of the change.

Let me know what you think.

Strategic Vision for PASS by Andy Warren

I spent some time thinking about what my vision for PASS is and writing down some goals related to that, at the end of that process I saw I focused on three key areas:

• Governance
• Sustainability
• Membership growth worldwide

I think those are good areas to focus on, but in practice they are too high level to be useful, so I’ve included the more specific goals I had in mind, all written with the view of what I think PASS should look like in 2014:

• Directors spending 80%+ of their time on governance, spending tactical time on problem areas or new projects only
• Full time staff and executive director employed by PASS rather than a management company, and a succession plan in place for the Executive Director
• Membership of 250,000. Membership defined as having a deliverable email address on file
• Solid system for growing and measuring new speakers and authors to insure that the Summit stays vibrant and relevant
• PASS Summit defined equally as learning and networking, attendance of 4000 paid members annually, and a virtual attendance option
• PASS cash reserves increased to 1.5 million
• PASS presence at 200+ local and regional events annually
• PASS Summit rotated in a three year cycle from east coast to mid west to west coast, making it accessible with limited travel to all of our members once in three years, and providing a fresh venue for those wishing to combine the event with a vacation
• Officers elected directly from sitting board of directors for a two year term, eliminating both the officer nomination committee and the quasi official process of holding each officer position for two years on the path to President
• A culture of transparency, where the default is to share with the members
• Chapters monitored and incented to grow, and a process for encouraging turn over in chapter leaders every 3-5 years
• Marketing efforts increased and diversified to put more emphasis on non-Summit related activities
• Increase in the PASS Europe Summit to 750 attendees and new Summits in India and Australia
• PASS program for certifying training for the purpose of earning continuing education credits and for certifying members for having maintained their education each year
• A PASS Hall of Fame that recognizes 2-3 people each year for long term and substantial contributions to the SQL Server community/product
• A strong but equal player in the eco-system of SQL Server online communities, with a well understood mission of focusing on people, relationships, and career growth
• Potentially a multiple language/culture presence, but there is a lot of work to be done to see if that is relevant and sustainable – we should at least well understand the possibilities in each area by the end of five years
• A solid IT infrastructure that supports the mission of PASS across the board; conference registration, conference planning, virtual events, bulk email to members, membership management, etc
• Reliance on volunteers only for tasks that require SQL Server knowledge, or for which clearly is appropriate for members to own the tasks rather than HQ