PASS Board Elections

Wow. It’s that time already. We have a lot of great candidates to choose from this year. It’s tough picking. It’s even tougher recommending.

That said – I think there are three candidates worth mentioning and who I plan on voting for. And it was really tough to single any out! One candidate however, I want to talk about a bit more than the rest. Allen Kinsel (twitter)

Why?

Because he cares. He really cares. He’s taken efforts to make PASS better, he’s won the PASSion award and he believes in PASS as an organization. I’ve come to become more indifferent about PASS at various points (Be it past election mistakes, not getting it at various points, nom com mistakes, etc) – but when I’ve been that way – Allen’s had some great points, good insights and genuinely seemed to care about my thoughts. I know the Board had those little notebook things they brought around to a summit once, but Allen seemed to care enough to search out feedback, he was thoughtful when receiving it, he was defensive when I was not correct and he was forward thinking and frustrated where I think he needed to be. I was quite frustrated when he narrowly lost last election – I see him as someone who has the right degree of independent thinking and ability to get things done that is necessary to move PASS forward.

Allen has put a lot of his life and time into PASS. He has more to give, wants to grow the organization appropriately has some good ideas shared on his blog and he has a past perspective that means he can hit the ground running – and that is what we need.

He also seems immune to group-think and clique-think mentality – and that is important for a member of a Board. I’ve been serving on one for a busy local non-profit in the medical space and I see what is necessary to make decisions. I see what balance is needed and I believe Allen has proven himself well here. I’m definitely voting for him.

Now for the other slots? Man.. Did I mention this is tough? They all have so much to offer. I don’t know enough about each candidate to say which is the best of all of the greats. But I know enough to know that there is really no reason to not vote for any of them.

I’m voting for Amy Lewis (twitter) – She’s done some amazing things with the BI Virtual Chapter (I see her name in my inbox all the time from that) . I also really really like her thoughts about strengthening the summit/BAC selection process – help is needed there. I’ve served in that role two times with two very different processes and I’ve seen the process from the speaker side. We can do better there. I think her insights will be great there and I look forward to voting for her.

And  I’m probably voting for Jen Stirrup – she has poured a lot of her self into this community of ours – and in huge ways. She has great ideas, cares about PASS, will be a good voice for Europe and I love her idea of a proper charter that once and  for all figures out what PASS is about and spells it out.

But really all of the candidates here are amazing and this organization will be blessed by having just about any of them on the board they all look good. Neil Hambly  would be great and what I know about him makes him excellent. I know Ami and know he has a lot to offer. Tim cares about building communities and has had success with SQL Cruise. I don’t know Richard, but his platform looks good and he’s great. See – we really can’t go wrong.
Don’t forget to vote! We have a week to do it.  The only question for me really at this point is do I just vote once like I’ve done in previous years? Or do I vote once for every separate link they send me 😉 I’d love one of these candidates to work on a real member merge project – so us foolish people who sign up in 16 different ways through the years are just counted once 🙂