Steve, I'd love to run, really. Not because I have some great ideas for where to take the organization but because I'm willing to get in there & work. However, I'm already committed to helping run a Troop of Boy Scouts. Right now, that's where my "free" time (ha!) is going. As much as I love the SQL community and feel strongly about the role PASS can and should play within it, I just don't have the time it would need for me to do it justice. So I'd rather not do the job at all than do it badly or half-assed. In a few more years, that's all going to change (the kids are getting older, quick). At that time, I'll be looking for bigger challenges.

But you are right. We need people to step up and do the hard work of keeping this organization on its feet and moving forward. There just don't seem to be enough around. What's more, everyone seems to have similar excuses. They're the same excuses I hear from parents when I'm trying to get them to help the Troop "I just don't have the time." For most people, I'm fairly certain that's BS. but when you look around at the people you'd like to see running PASS, they're running a local user group, organizing SQL Saturday's, working on this or that PASS committee, and, oh, by the way, working full time at some job and raising a family and maybe even occasionally relaxing.

The fact is, the best people are probably over-committed already. We need to convince them to let something go, stop running the user group, don't work on new books for the next couple of years... whatever. That's probably going to be a hard thing to do. But it's where our efforts need to be focused. My 1.5 cents anyway.