Greetings. PASS announced over the weekend that they were extending the deadline for updating your PASS Profile in order to be eligible to vote in the current Board of Directors Election. See the announcement from PASS President Thomas LaRock.

It is important that we all have our chance to cast our vote for the open Board positions. In case people are having issues receiving emails about this from PASS, I have pasted the steps present in the email I received. Please take a moment to make sure your voice is heard! #WeArePASS

Extension to Voting Period for 2014 PASS Board of Directors Elections

To address issues around voting eligibility for the current PASS Board of Director elections, the PASS Board voted today to extend this year’s registration and voting period to ensure that as many members as possible have the ability to cast their ballot. Here are the key dates in the extension:

October 5: All PASS members as of June 1, 2014, who have not already registered to vote by updating their myProfile on myPASS will now have until October 5 to update their profile.

October 6: We will pull an updated list of registered voters and filter for duplicates.

October 7: We will send all newly registered voters an email with their ballot link.

October 14: All voting will close at noon PDT.

How does this decision affect you?

If you already voted

You don’t need to do anything. All votes currently cast will remain valid, there will be no need to recast any votes.

If you already received a ballot but haven’t voted yet

You can cast your vote any time until the deadline on October 14 at noon PDT.

If you established your PASS profile after June 1, 2014

You are not eligible to vote in the current election, but you are already eligible to vote in next year’s elections if you have an up-to-date profile.

If you had a profile prior to June 1, 2014, but have not yet updated your profile

Please follow these steps in order to register and received a ballot to vote in this year’s elections:

Step 1: Update your PASS membership profile by October 5, 2014, 11:59pm PDT.
New mandatory fields were added in January, 2014. Please log in to confirm your PASS profile information is correct and fill out the new mandatory fields, including: Job Function, Industry, Country, Region, City, Zip Code/Postal Code, and Time Zone.

Step 2: Click ‘Save’ and make sure you see the words ‘Profile Updated and Voting Eligibility Recorded’ appear underneath the ‘Save’ button.
If you update your profile by October 5, 2014, you will receive a ballot on October 7, 2014.

Thanks for your patience and feedback as we work through these voting changes, and we apologize for any inconvenience.

To help PASS communicate important news and reminders, and in order to receive future voting ballots, please take the following steps to ensure our messages can reach you:

• Ensure the PASS IP address is whitelisted on your company or email address provider’s servers: 68.232.200.32.
• Add hq@sqlpass.org to your safe sender list and as a contact.
• Check spam folders regularly for important messages.
• If you believe that you are not receiving PASS emails, please contact helpdesk@sqlpass.org to let us know!

If you have been following the recent difficulties around the PASS election of Board Members, you will no doubt have noticed a climate of negativity and sometimes bashing. This has made me really sad to see in a community that I care a lot about. Rather than provide yet another blog post that goes into the details, I instead want to say Thank You to a lot of people.

Thank You to the people that have been raising issues and offering ideas. While I may not agree with the way in which these issues were raised, or the tone present, there were some good points made. You Are PASS.

Thank You to the PASS Board of Directors that worked through/around so much negativity to keep the Community in mind while striving to implement solutions. You took a lot of heat and, as far as what I saw, you handled yourselves with professionalism and patience. It was clear to me during this entire process that you care deeply about the PASS community and work hard to make it as strong as possible. You Are PASS.

Thank You to the people who have been understanding of the difficulties and stayed positive about the willingness of PASS BOD to work through these difficulties. You Are PASS.

PASS has been a huge asset to me in my career in working with SQL Server and related technologies. I feel that I owe a lot to the existence of this organization and the people within it who work so hard to keep it strong and help it grow. That includes the PASS members throughout the world. Thank you. You Are PASS.

My great hope with these recent events around the election and the events surrounding the PASS Summit selection process is that we, as a community, will learn something. The key idea that I think has been lacking on the part of some folk within the community is that everyone involved here, from the BOD to the various committees, to the PASS members ALL want this community to thrive. I would ask that, in the future, those of us who want to raise issues, those who want to make sure their voice is heard, etc, will base how we raise those issues by keeping one, very important idea in mind as we do so: WE ARE PASS.