Tuesday , July 19th 2011 Wes Brown, Mike Byrd and Richard Heim held the first board meeting to establish the Professional Organization of SQL Server Educators, POSSE. We will be posting bylaws, meeting minutes and all relevant documentation to this site.
We did set the initial executive committee in this first meeting:
President – Wes Brown
Secretary – Richard Heim
Treasurer – Jim Murphy
Marketing Coordinator – Richard Heim
Media Coordinator – AJ Mendo
User Group Coordinator: CACTUSS – Wes Brown
Program Coordinator – Mike Kaplan
Voting Board Members:
Wes Brown
Mike Kaplan
Richard Heim
Jim Murphy
Mike Byrd
I’d like to thank everyone who volunteered and accepted a post to the POSSE executive committee.
What Is POSSE?
POSSE is simply the Professional Organization of SQL Server Educators. We exists to facilitate education and promote SQL Server in the community.
Who formed POSSE?
POSSE grew out of the Capitol Area Central Texas Users of SQL Server and the San Antonio League of SQL Server Administrators. We have a local need for a larger nonprofit organization to help with things like donations and to assist with organizing larger events like SQLSaturday.
Is POSSE Part Of PASS?
No we are not. We do work with PASS chapters though.
Can Our User Group Be Part of POSSE And PASS?
Absolutely! Your chapter can be part of several organizations that support user groups and community outreach. We are currently focused on Texas user groups as we get everything sorted out. That doesn’t me we don’t want to help you! We do want to make sure that we have POSSE in order so when we do partner up it will be a success.
How is POSSE like PASS, INETA, GITCA or aitp?
Like PASS we focus on SQL Server and related technologies. Also, like the other organizations we focus on community and education as well. Our goals are complementary and meant to work hand in hand with these other great organizations.
What Makes POSSE Different from PASS, INETA, GITCA or aitp?
All of the above organizations are fantastic and we love to work with them. Their focus is much broader than POSSE. They are national or even global organizations that nit people and user groups together. While these are great groups to belong to we feel that there is a lack of local and regional focus. With that in mind POSSE was specifically setup to help at the local or regional level, to pick up where the national organizations leave off in most cases. While organizations like PASS put together a fantastic national event and do facilitate regional events like SQLSaturday there is one thing they don’t provide, nonprofit status.
What Does POSSE Really Do For User Groups?
We are currently finalizing our offerings to the community but there are a few things we want to do. We are offering to bring your user group under our nonprofit organization so your group can also benefit from that status. This allows us to help you solicit donations and gives the supporter a tax break. We are also looking into how we can help you organize your own user group as a federally recognized nonprofit and if you are in the state of Texas how to be recognized at the state level as well. We also want to help you organize your user group and regional events.
In the next few days we will get the site updated with all the documentation. Until then if you have any questions at all about POSSE please feel free to send an email to me, wes.brown@sqlposse.com.