Rock the Vote... or Something.

Let me just start this post with an apology to all of my readers, well both of you. There have been a lot of changes in my life lately and I’m been overwhelmed with demands on my time. I won’t go into details but those demands will be letting up soon, and I will be able to get back to blogging, community involvement, and catching up on sleep.

However, this topic is important enough that I had to take a break from frantic schedule to jot down a few words about it. As I started to write this, I got a notification of a blog article by my friend and fellow North Texas SQL Server User Group member, Ryan Adams (Blog/Twitter). As I read his article I realized that our views were nearly identical about two candidates, Sri Sridhara (Blog/Twitter) and Allen Kinsel (Blog/Twitter). I urge you to read what he wrote because I echo each and every one of his sentiments.

However, I’d like to say just a few words about each candidate myself.

Allen Kinsel

I met Allen at my first SQL Saturday of which I was an active volunteer. Allen was the first PASS member that I connected with who wasn’t in one of my local groups. The guy is tireless, has a pragmatic point of view about the community, cares about member’s opinions, and I’ve never heard anyone have a negative thing to say about him. When I have something to comment (whine about) on regarding PASS at the national level Allen is the guy I go to and I can tell you that he truly cares… or at least is good at acting like he does. 🙂

Sri Sridhara

Sri is an interesting PASS leader and volunteer. I’ve worked with him for several years organizing PASS events like SQL Rally, multiple SQL Saturdays, etc. In some ways, he’s a lot like me. Some people take to him, some not so much, but what I’ve found is that people in both camps are reacting to the same thing. The man is highly driven. Nobody can question his dedication, drive, and single minded focus on pushing the community farther. Sri embodies what PASS is and should continue to be, relentlessly driven to spread the adoption of SQL Server and to raise the ability and skill set of DBAs everywhere.

He and I don’t always agree, but he’s a guy you can count on to always follow through on his commitments, to do what he says he will do. Without belaboring the point, what happened last year was shameful, yet to this day Sri hasn’t had a negative thing to say about it, even privately. Let’s not let that happen again, Vote for Sri.

Like Ryan said, I’m not commenting on the other candidates, but not because they aren’t good people. I just happen to know these two exceptionally well, and intend to vote for them. You should too.