When I got elected to the PASS Board of Directors I decided I would plan my goals for the job in 3 month intervals. I also plan on  blogging about the experience of being on the Board at the end of each quarter, at least.

Getting Started
Prior to being elected all of my time and energy was focused on the election process. Because the election ended so close to the start of the new Board term there was not much time to transition from being a candidate to being a director. I set a rather modest goal for Q1: learn my new role. This really broke down into two major areas:
learning what it means to be a member of the body responsible for the overall running of PASS and learning about my portfolio of Virtual Chapters.

In January we had our first in-person board meeting after the election. We covered a lot of topics from Summit floor plans to global growth strategies to SQLRally selection process and much more. (See the meeting minutes for more detail.)
I was struck by the thoughtfulness with which the entire body took up each question and discussion. I thought it was particularly productive for the first meeting of a board  who had not worked together as a group before.

The challenge to being a director is that you need to transition from the more tactical, execution-focused role of a volunteer to a role that requires you to think about the longer term strategic goals of the organization. I knew this going in but the board meeting helped me get a better understanding of what that shift looks like.

Virtual Chapters
Each director is responsible for at least one portfolio; in my case it's the Virtual Chapters (VCs.) I believe VCs provide a lot of value to our members as a source of both technical education and networking, and I'm excited about the possibilities for growing and expanding them. I think of myself as an enabler and evangelist for the VCs. The VC leaders and committees do a great job organizing speakers and events. I can help by removing obstacles, securing resources. and promoting the VCs and their work.

To that end I've made some progress in the areas of marketing and finance. The PASS marketing team has some great ideas for ways to support the VCs. We've already seen a couple of articles in the Connector, and more are planned. We've clarified the process for getting and managing sponsorships and also discussed VCs budget needs for the coming fiscal year. One of my goals is to communicate relevant information with the VC leaders in a timely way and to seek their input. I think I've been pretty good at that so far, but in the end it will be the VC leaders themselves who will grade my performance.

We've also launched three new VCs since January: Global Chinese Language, Big Data and Master Data/Data Quality. I think each of these is a great addition to the portfolio and I look forward to seeing how they develop.

Next Up
The next three months will include an in-person board meeting in May, the end of the budget planning cycle as well as some work-in-progress with the VCs.