2008 Elections for the PASS 2009-2010 Board of Directors

Louis Davidson

Biography

Louis has over 15 years as a corporate database developer and architect. Currently he is the Data Architect for the Christian Broadcasting Network and NorthStar Studios in Nashville, Tennessee. Nearly all of Louis' professional experience has been with Microsoft SQL Server from the early days to the latest version currently in beta. Louis has been the principal author on four editions of a book on database design, including one for SQL Server 2008. Louis' primary areas of interest are database architecture and coding in T-SQL, with experience designing many databases and writing thousands of stored procedures and triggers through the years. He has volunteered with PASS with the Special Interest Groups since their inception and has spoke at all but two of the PASS Summits.

Interest in becoming a PASS Board Member

There are two primary reasons I want to join the PASS board, two things that I want to have a hand in changing. PASS is great is so many ways, but the organization lacks openness and agility. Both of these tend to give a negative feeling for a number of people and one of the biggest concerns that I hear vocalized by people I talk to about PASS.

The first, openness, is very important to lots of people I talk to. I would like to see PASS become more open to letting it’s members know where and what they are getting for their membership dollar. (Ignoring maniacal micro-managers,) the more eyes you have on what you do, the less likely you are to do something bad, and the more likely it is that the great things you do are known. Of course there is a balance, and data out of context is not information, and can seem far worse than it actually is. Clearly there is a fine line between "spin" and "inform."

The second, Agility, is probably the biggest thing I care about. I want to see PASS grow and be able to adjust to the newest and latest trends in computing and particularly social interaction. They are doing some good stuff in the new website, and more is planned (part of it stuff that I have been involved with and have been trying to get for a long time, hence my trouble with agility.) Slow processes are fine for the government, but we are a technology organization. Things change fast, people live fast, and we communicate with people all of the time. Every year I say “I wish the conference wasn’t the only time I interacted with many of these people”.