Well, it did not take long for me to screw up on the PASS Board of Directors. I missed my deadline for reporting on my monthly progress. However, I have not been inactive since taking office two months ago. In fact, the PASS SIGs have made some progress over the past eight weeks. A lot of work remains to be done, of course, but since I missed the deadline to report on our progress to the Board I figured I could leave the details here for everyone to peruse.
Upon taking office and being given the SIG portfolio to manage I was asked to perform a SWOT analysis. SWOT stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. I used the SWOT analysis as the basis for my presentation to the Board back in January on the current state of affairs for the SIGs. After that meeting I was asked to formulate and put into action a 90 day plan. Here are some of the major points of that plan.
1. Take measurement of current number of active SIG members.
2. Align the creation of a new SIG with the creation of a new Chapter.
3. Facilitate the use of sqlpass.org for SIG content.
Back in January I asked the SIG leaders to report to me their current membership numbers, and this past week I asked again for an updated number, so that we can have a baseline to use between now and the end of the year. One of the major goals for the SIGs in general is to grow PASS membership, so it is important for us to keep asking for that rough estimate of active SIG members.
Since January we have put together some documentation that helps to explain what it takes to get a SIG created. With those documents in place it is going to be easy to facilitate new SIG creation going forward. This will be very important for two reasons. First, we want to minimize the layers of bureaucracy involved in getting a SIG started. We want to start getting some new SIGs created, which means we want to make the process as efficient as possible. Second, the documents outline how SIGs are going to operate as Virtual Chapters, and they make it clear as to what is expected from the Virtual Chapters on a monthly (or regular) basis.
The sqlpass.org website has portals configured for each SIG, along with an events page where SIG leaders are expected to post their meeting notices so that the PASS community is aware of their activities. The SIG portals are also being configured with the necessary Dot-Net-Nuke modules for them to operate, although the process of getting modules added and configured can sometimes be slower than desired.
So, with that behind us, what do the next 90 days hold in store? I am putting together that plan outline now. One thing that will be a part of the plan is an increase in the marketing for the SIGs specifically. I am always asked about having a SIG started for a particular interest, but I rarely see people step forward to volunteer their time to help get the SIG up and running. For example, I have heard from more than one person that they would like to see a SIG devoted to the Healthcare industry, but have yet to meet anyone that would want to get a SIG, or Virtual Chapter, off the ground.
Another item that we need is to facilitate is getting speakers to volunteer their time to present at SIG meetings. We apparently have a list of speakers that we can reach out and use, but nothing written down as to how to go about getting that done.
The Board has a conference call today, we meet the second Thursday of the month for a one hour call. Our next face to face meeting is in May, I believe.
