Brian Moran: I know there are some achievements at PASS that you're proud of and some things that you wish could have gone better. Over your whole tenure, is there anything you wish you could go back in your time machine and do a different way?
Kevin Kline: Well, there’s a very long list of things I wish we could've done differently or done better. Here's a simple example: The board has had a great number of people who have served for varying lengths of time—one year, two years, maybe even two terms or more. Once those sterling individuals have left the board, in most cases, that's the last we hear from them. They don’t come back as speakers; they don't lead a local user group. For some reason, many of them have disengaged. And in some cases, these folks were promoted into better jobs, and they don't care about SQL Server anymore, which is understandable. But in some cases, those people are still engaged in SQL Server, and I wish there was something we had done to help them stay in the fold, and to stay active and interested, and to at least comment every now and then and say, "Hey, here's my thoughts on this particular issue."
I really should actually broaden that, because there's a lot that happens to people who we have made contact with, but we somehow lost that contact. So we've had great speakers, chapter leaders, committee members, and in any kind of volunteer organization—boy and Girl Scout troops, PTO—volunteers do it for the love of that organization. I fear that if we had just expressed a little more care and appreciation, some of these people might still be with us today. And that's a fault I take personally—you know, I could've done a better job telling these people how much it meant to me. So that's just one example—there are quite a few where we could've done a better job as a team trying to lead this organization.
Moran: On that topic, I'm just thinking out loud a little: Do you think there's value in having some sort of advisor's network of past PASS leaders who have institutional knowledge about what's worked and what hasn't worked? Has the board talked about something like that?
Kline: The board has not talked about something like that very much. We have talked about some ideas around giving some long-term benefits to a board member. Say, if you served more than a year, then you always qualify for the lowest-price discount for the conference. Or, you know, some things like that.
Moran: Like a lease on a 5-series BMW maybe?
Kline: Exactly. You get at least 25 percent of what we paid you before. But actually, to go directly back to your idea, that was one of the things I was thinking: You know what, why don't I create a LinkedIn group of former board members? If nothing else, we can be the peanut gallery.
Moran: Have you done that?
Kline: I have not done that, but I plan to do that. Yeah, I think you're absolutely right. One of the things that mature organizations do is that, after they pass a certain threshold, you have enough institutional knowledge that if you take any one individual out of the organization the institution still continues. We're not there yet.
Moran: Can we have a special LinkedIn group for people who used to be on the board and are now on the board again now?
Kline: That would be a very special group, with a membership of maybe just one person.
Moran: I could probably ask you an infinite amount of stuff about PASS per se, but without sounding too silly, I think you have a lot of fans in the community. They probably wouldn't mind knowing a little more about Kevin, the non-SQL Server professional. Just some soft ball questions: Based on the amount of time you’ve dedicated to PASS, I'm not sure if you had a lot of time for golf or something. What do you do for fun?
Kline: That's a great question: What have I been doing for fun? I think consistently, one of the things I've been doing that gives me a lot of pleasure is I am a person of faith, and I'm active in my church, and that's probably my biggest group of friends back home in Nashville—the people I see every week and we have parties, throw each other birthdays parties, Easter, Christmas, Halloween parties and things like that. I enjoy playing classical guitar, Spanish guitar. And I am also a bit of a tinkerer and inventor—I'm going to file my first provisional patent this year.