Long time PASS volunteer and 2009 PASSion Award winner, Allen Kinsel was elected to the Board of Directors during the 2010 election.

Kathi: Allen, congratulations on joining the PASS Board of Directors. What made you decide to run for the position?

Allen: Thanks, I decided to run for the board after a few years of volunteering in various ways for PASS.  I wanted to do more to help the great community of SQL professionals out there who have done so much to help me grow over the years.

Kathi: In what other capacities have you volunteered?

Allen: I started volunteering in the SIGS (pre –VC’s) and worked with various sigs including the DBA SIG and the marketing SIG.

From there I worked on the program committee as a DBA track reviewer.  I was the DBA track leader for a year and was the Program committee Chair for 2 years.  Now I’m the portfolio owner of the Summit Program on the Board.  Additionally along the way I served on the Nomination committee. 

Kathi: You dedicate a lot of time to PASS. How do you make it work with all of your other obligations?

Allen:  Depending on whom you ask, I don’t do a very good job of it!!

Actually, a supportive family is key, followed by a supportive employer.  Between the two of them I have pushed the limits on balancing Life/Work/PASS but they always seem to understand.  It can be tricky at times (especially this time of year when Summit planning is in high gear) but, for the most part I’d attribute the ability to make it work with managing to sleep less.  It’s amazing what you can get accomplished when you cut out a few hours of sleep a night…  Of course some day that isn’t going to work out too well but until then I’ll keep going.

Kathi:  Working on the Program Committee can be a thankless job, but you have held just about every role, all the way to the Director responsible for it. How do you see the session selection process changing during your tenure?

Allen: The session selection process has changed almost entirely since I started with it years ago.  Back then we didn’t have the huge amount of sessions to choose from, and, in many ways, exactly what happened in the selection process wasn’t well publicized.  Today there are usually about 700 abstracts submitted to the Summit, and we have teams of volunteers split up by track deciding on which abstracts are chosen to become sessions.

This year we went a step further and gave the PASS members the ability to let those volunteers know which sessions the members most wanted to see.  In addition to those sorts of changes, we have started trying out different things like Lightning talks and a straight community vote for some sessions that we have appropriately named “Community Choice”.  There are many behind the scenes changes that our members hopefully haven’t noticed.  These changes are primarily “back office” and deal with the way we manage the process as well as deal with Microsoft participation at the Summit. Hopefully they are paying dividends by making each year’s summit better than the last.

Kathi:  Is there anything else you would like to share with our readers?

Allen: I would encourage the readers to become more involved with PASS, to say that it has changed my life may be a little over exaggeration though not really a huge stretch.  I would say without a doubt it has changed my professional career for the better.  There are many ways to get involved including local chapters, virtual chapters, helping with national events etc.  PASS is volunteer led and run so any volunteer effort has immediate impact in the community. 

 Thanks for having me

 -Allen