Chuck Boyce

Friday, October 16, 2009

It's the transparency, stupid

(I originally authored these remarks as comments for a post by Tim Ford, but I liked them so much I decided to post them here on my blog.)

This is of course about the ah, shall we say...conversation taking place at http://www.brentozar.com/archive/2009/10/meet-pass-board-candidate-matt-morollo/

I think that social media is bringing about more transparency whether organizations like it or not. I was surprised that my profession’s association could present someone to the slate who had never attended our community’s PASS Summit, never attended any of our community’s Chapter meetings, never attended a Code camp, etc. — and who had no history at all in any capacity serving within our community. On top of this, this individual isn’t even in our profession! This individual is obviously qualified to run a company – but is painfully unaware of even the basics of our particular professional community.

Whether this was a mistake by the Nomination Committee or simply a misunderstanding by most of the community as to what it means to be a Board member serving us is somewhat gray to me. I think the arguments being presented that service in our community (or even actually being a part of our community) has never been a prerequisite to serve on our Board are a bit weak, but I won’t go there right now…

The issue is that social media lets EVERYONE see for themselves these dynamics that would have otherwise gone unnoticed and behind closed doors. Those doors are WIDE OPEN now. Twitter makes sure of that, as we have all seen.

I would like to see a process moving forward that is codified and doesn’t change its nomination criteria from year to year and I want to see social media employed to allow the COMMUNITY to decide who is part of the slate. All candidates should have to interact with the community live via twitter and UStream and the COMMUNITY should vote and decide upon the slate.

Will it happen? I doubt it will any time soon, but I do have faith in some of the many encouraging new stars in our profession – like Tim Ford – and I’m behind you all 100%.