Things are tight
It seems like budgets are being cut everywhere, and IT training seems to be one of the first places cut. In an earlier post I outlined where you could get a lot of valuable training for relatively little cost. In this post I will explore a few methods that have worked for me over the years to get your boss to say YES to paying for you to refresh your fountain of knowledge.
TPS reports, love them or loathe them, they are a necessary thing for most of us working in corporate America. I firmly reside in the loathe camp, Just ask my boss.
In this case though, I've decided to start putting out regular updates about what Ive been up to for PASS. I hope the benefit is 2 fold, 1 to allow a greater transparency into what happens behind the scenes and more importantly for me to have a place to reference what we did and when!
We sent out quite a few different surveys during/after the 2009 summit, some of them are listed:
The 2010 PASS Program Committee Call for volunteers is open, We're looking for the usual assortment of people to help shape the summit in 2010.
Ever wanted to have an input into which sessions are actually chosen for the summitt? The group of volunteers who do this are chosen from these applications. Its a very challenging endeavor but also very rewarding.
There are literally dozens of separate projects that need to happen every year in order for the Summit to come together appropriately. Things like setting up the mgmt software, reviewing the ppts, reviewing the chosen abstracts for grammatical errors etc. These people will also be chosen primarily from the applications received
Do you have a relationship with your professional organization?
What is your professional organization? is it in technology? Something like Ineta, PASS, ISUG, IDUG, IOUG or one of the other various technology groups that exist. Or maybe your preferred group is more in the business side of things like ASPA, LOMA or AICPA. If you dont know your desired professional organization, take a second and plug in your favorite search terms + professional organization into «binoogle» and see if the results lead you to a new beginning.
If you already know your professional organization, what do you expect of your relationship with your organization? Is it a two way street? Do you give as well as receive? Would you like the relationship between you and that organization to be stronger or weaker? Do they do enough to help you succeed, do they provide value? Do you do what you can to enable their success? A little overly rhetorical probably, but you get the point.
This one has been sitting on my to do list for a very very long time, actually its been on my list since nearly the day after the 2009 SQLPASS Summit closed.
Admittedly Im not a PASS «Chapter leader», nor do I attend the meetings in person more than a few times a year (its 3 hrs roundtrip to the local group during lunch) but, Im always looking for ways we can improve processes at PASS and Ive heard too many times to count over the years that we dont do a good job of helping chapters connect with speakers, or even providing a way for the chapters to contact potential speakers.
The other day I contacted Andy Warren about an idea I had for getting a simple speaker bureau off the ground reasonably quick since I know he's had that on his mind lately. I'd like to think that his post on that subject was part of the fruits of that brainstorming session but, Ill never know. In order to make some of the things we want to do for the community «easier» we need to rework (in a small way) the speaker terms and conditions to allow for it.
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