2010 PASS Board Applicants: Markus Sprenger

 

I am interviewing 2010 PASS Board Nominee Applicants. As listed on the PASS Board Elections site the applicants are:

 

I’m asking everyone the same questions and blogging the responses in the order received.

 

Markus Sprenger is next up:

 

 

1. What’s your day job?

I work for Avanade, a global System Integrator and a joint venture between Microsoft and Accenture. Avanade has with +2000 SQL Server consultants across the Americas, Europe and Asia Pacific the largest SQL Server workforce in the market. I’m responsible to drive Avanade’s growth in BI and Collaboration, which is all the work that we do worldwide on SQL Server and SharePoint. That’s a great job and gives me the opportunity to work with a lot of large clients across the world on cutting edge projects.

 

2. What motivated you to run for the PASS Board of Directors?

PASS plays a very critical role in the SQL Server ecosystem. It makes a market impact by promoting the SQL Server community. But much more important PASS is making a difference in the life of people: it helps them to grow, helps them to achieve new levels of professionalism and ultimately supports people in perusing their personal goals. I would love to contribute to this with my experience and my leadership. In addition it’s great to work with talented people that share the same passion for SQL Server than I do.

 

3. What is PASS’s largest challenge right now?

The market is getting more and more dynamic. SQL Server is growing double digits, but a lot of the growth is coming from emerging regions where PASS presence and penetration is not very high. It is in regions like India, China, South Africa or Latin America. If PASS wants to be a true global community we need to figure out how we can take our successful concepts from Europe and the US and adopt them so that we can achieve the same level of impact in these markets.

 

4. What is PASS’s greatest opportunity right now?

Microsoft’s investment in the cloud will drive a lot of demand for education and best practices on cloud based SQL Server and BI solutions. There is a huge opportunity for PASS to drive these discussions and create thought leadership around SQL Azure.

 

5. Complete this sentence: “If I only get one new thing accomplished while serving on the PASS Board of Directors, I want to…”

… help creating the vision where PASS could be in 5 years from now.

 

6. Complete this sentence: “If I only get to change one existing thing about PASS while serving on the PASS Board of Directors, I want to…”

 … figure out how we can expand out footprint so that we can impact more people, helping them to connect, share and learn.

 

7. Share something interesting about yourself!

Born and raised in Germany I was of course very into soccer. I played myself when I was a kid and followed Bundesliga (German Premier league) every Saturday. 4 years ago I moved to Seattle. Some day one of my friends took me to a Seattle Seahawks game. That day I learned how fast and exiting American Football can be. I have never watched a soccer game live since then, but do have a Seahawks Season Pass. Go Hawks! (pretty sure that this confession will cost me a lot of votes J)

 

:{> Andy