My Vision for the PASS SIGs

I wanted to share with everyone my overall vision for the PASS Special Interest Groups. My role on the PASS Board of Directors is to coordinate and lead the SIGs to…somewhere. In the past no one has known where that place was, and often times the SIGs were simply left adrift. About two weeks ago it became quite clear to me that the first thing we needed to do was to give the SIGs a sense of purpose, and then to give them some specific and measurable goals to achieve for 2009.

Quite simply I see the SIGs as virtual communities. Unlike physical PASS Chapters, SIGs are comprised of people with a common interest but spread out around the world. The common interests could be technology specific (BI, Application Development) but SIGs could also be quite general and aligned with business sectors (Healthcare, Retail). In short, anytime we have a group of PASS members with a common interest, we should have a SIG defined for them. The definition of a SIG and the role and responsibilities for SIG Leaders are going to be defined shortly, and I am welcome to any suggestions that you feel have some real value.

One of the real hurdles with the SIGs in the past has been twofold. First is keeping the members engaged more than once a month. Second is getting the members to contribute content. What is meant by content? Well, content could be an article, or a link to a blog, or a conversation on Twitter (or a discussion forum), or even just a simple “here are the top ten links” which could lead to a conversation. It doesn’t have to be anything significant in stature, it just has to be.

And how to keep them enagaged on a weekly or daily basis? Well, we need to form the communities and then have the members of the communities decide how they want to interact. Not everyone wants to be on Twitter. Not everyone wants to attend meetings. Not everyone wants to use forums or newsgroups. So, we need to make certain that the people in the community can communicate in whatever way they want. But the important thing is that they do communicate, we cannot let members go dark for an extended period of time.

The end goal for the SIGs will be to generate new memberships. There are a variety of tools at our disposal to build and create user communities. As the communities grow, so should the number of PASS members. There are also regions of the world that are quite untapped, perhaps it is time to think about other cultures. Is anyone aware that one in four people born today speak Mandarin? Or how many people in the world speak Spanish? How many PASS members do you know that speak Spanish? Why not have a SIG dedicated to promoting events in Latin America? Or, even easier, how about Latin communities right here in the USA?

Check out how PASS defines itself. We need to get the SIGs focused on helping PASS to achieve its goals, and those goals are spelled out quite nicely. We are here to support, educate, and promote the SQL Server Community. We can do that in three easy steps.

Connect.

Learn.

Share.

The SIGs are vital to making this all happen. When MaxxDopp tweets about hoping that the board meeting results in action, I look to MaxxDopp and say “here is what we need, here are the actions we want to take, will you step up to help?”

The next SIG Leaders call is this coming Wednesday. I have already contacted them today regarding my vision and I expect to get some feedback from them. If anyone else has some feedback they would like to share you can either comment for everyone to see or just drop me an email if you want your comments to remain private. By the end of the month I expect to have our frameworks in place regarding the SIG definitions and SIG Leader’s roles and responsibilities.

I am looking to build a vast array of virtual user communities, but I am not so vain as to think I have all the answers as to how to make it happen in the next year. I know I need help, not just with people coming forward to volunteer, but with people simply willing to share ideas that the rest of us can put into actions.