News: PASS outstanding Volunteer award & stepping down as Business Analytics Virtual Group Co-leader

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I am honored to get the PASS outstanding volunteer award again for June 2017! It’s been so much fun helping grow the chapter from 1K to 10K members within last 4 years — the PASS HQ Team & Dan English (Group Lead) were great to work with and there’s so much more growth left for the next few years! The Group was recently classified as a “tier-1” group and got new sponsors which mean that group has some funding to pursue paid growth opportunities that weren’t accessible before.

Outstanding Volunteer Award PASS

URL: http://www.pass.org/Community/GetInvolved/Volunteers/OutstandingVolunteers.aspx

So since the group has the perfect platform to continue growing and we have a really good process in place to keep our growth flywheel running, I figured it’s a great time to step down. Over the past few years, my career moved me from Business Intelligence -> Analytics -> Data Science and along with that, I have slowly moved away from Microsoft-centric architectures too. I started out working for a Microsoft Gold Partner and then worked for an Open-source heavy shop at a startup-mode organization in silicon valley and now I work in an organization that uses a little bit of everything. Something like best of both worlds — and so there’s a much bigger gap now between where my career is taking me and the mission of the business analytics virtual group. They don’t perfectly align anymore and even though it’s a very rewarding experience, after some reflection, I figured the group deserves a leader whose mission aligns better than mine does.

Thank you PASS for the opportunity!

And there’s an open position for new volunteers on the Virtual group and so if you like to be involved, reach out to Dan English through the group’s website: http://bavc.pass.org/

PASS Business Analytics VC has grown 123% in a year! #sqlpass @passbavc

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It’s been amazing to see the growth of Business Analytics community over the past couple of years as one of the chapter leaders on the PASS Business Analytics Virtual chapter…Here’s a data viz that I put together to analyze effectiveness of our marketing campaigns:

Here’s the chart: 

PASS Business Analytics Virtual Chapter Marketing Effectiveness Chart

It shouldn’t come as a surprise that an “Analytics” virtual chapter is using data-driven marketing techniques! 😉

Calcs:

May’14 = 100 attendees. Jun’15 = 223 attendees. % Diff = 123%

Projections:

With this growth rate, we should have ~500 attendees in our future virtual chapter meeting in Jun 2016. Can’t wait! 🙂

Credits: 

A lot of work by Dan English (current president) and Melissa Demcsak (Immediate past president) went into growing this chapter!

Join #SQLPASS virtual chapters for free online #SQLServer learning!

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SQLPASS virtual chapters (VC) provides free sqlserver training year-round:

If you are not signed up already, then consider signing up! With that, And here’s a Quick walk-through on how to Join a VC:

If you do not have a SQLPASS account:

a. Go to http://www.sqlpass.org/RegisterforSQLPASS.aspx

b. Fill up the required information and register

Now, After successful login/registration:

a. Go to http://www.sqlpass.org/MYPASS.aspx

b. switch to MyChapters section

c. Now under virtual chapters, you would see a list of virtual chapters. Join the one’s you are interested in!

my PASS my Chapter Azure VC