(This blog post comes from an email I sent to the Board about this. I left in some of the thoughts around it in addition to just what we’re doing. Plus we’re still working out some details.)
This year at the Summit we want to give the community a chance to ask questions of the Board and provide feedback. We also want to capture any suggestions people have.
First, The PASS Board of Directors will hold an open Q&A session Wednesday from 4:30PM until 6:15PM. It will be in room 6E. This overlaps with the last session but also runs 15 minutes past the end of the last spotlight. This means that everyone should be able to attend for at least 15 minutes if they’d like. There just aren’t any other scheduling options except before the keynotes. Hopefully not too many of you will be double-booked.
We’ll try to record it. Depends on what A/V is already in the room and what costs are. I’m leaning toward spending the cash but we’ll see. Cameras are welcome. Everyone in the community is welcome to record it, stream it, whatever. We’ll definitely take good notes. We expect people to come and go during this. If we get the same question three times that’s fine.
The session will probably be moderated. All the Board members will be answering questions. In cases where there are a variety of Board opinions on issues we’ll make sure everyone gets a chance to answer or ruminate. I think we’ll get very few questions in areas where PASS has an official policy so it will mostly be Board member’s opinions. We expect the community to drive the topics and we just make sure everyone gets heard.
Second, we’ve asked each Board member to spend one (or maybe even two hours) in the PASS Booth. We’re hoping to list all the Board members and their schedule during Wayne’s keynote. If not, they will be posted in the PASS Booth. This will give people a chance to speak with the Board in a relaxed setting and answer questions about PASS.
Finally, we’re going to have a suggestion box at the booth. Yes, pen and paper. Old school I know. We looked into an email alias. The only downside right now is that we don’t have a good process on the other end of that to deal with the feedback we get. HQ is completely swamped getting ready for Summit and doesn’t have any extra time at Summit. I don’t want us in a position of accepting suggestions we can’t process or even respond to.
Whatever we have in the box by Wednesday we’ll go through at the Q&A -- time permitting. We can probably find a volunteer to sort them for us. Any received after Wednesday will be processed by HQ when they get back up to speed following Summit. I expect we’ll get quite a few about Summit logistics. We’ll just have to see if we have time to address those. Otherwise the HQ logistics group can look through them as they have time. This is a stop gap measure for this Summit only. The post-Summit survey that goes out will also be a way to capture Summit specific feedback.
Going forward we’ll either setup an email alias or forums. I’m leaning toward forums but we’ll have to see what works logistically. Brent Ozar made some good comments about that the other day. That gives people a way to give feedback on ideas and add more information. And a way for the community to give feedback on the fly on various ideas. We’ll see if we can keep up with them :) It also gives us a way to ask them questions. That’s an area we’ve been sorely lacking (or at least I have).
See you all soon!
-Bill
(Cross posted from the PASS Blog: http://www.sqlpass.org/Community/PASSBlog/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/119/Interact-with-the-PASS-Board-at-the-Summit.aspx)