It has been a somewhat long two years, trying to get our labor of love project off the ground and running on its own without requiring full time efforts from Heuer or me. There were times we were able to put love into it, other times our personal and work lives made it impossible to keep up. More times than not, the latter happened.
This makes me forever grateful for the founding folks who believed in the vision of SMC and helped our baby grow from a 14 person kickoff meeting in Silicon Valley on August 16, 2006 to where it is today – a worldwide organization consisting of 200+ paid members, 17 active chapters, another 25+ chapters (today) on the verge of launching, and 1000’s of people who have gotten together to share their knowledge with one another.
/me sheds another tear of pride
While we could simply let people self organize around a wiki, that model doesn’t help our mission to get the local chapters conversing with one another – sharing their knowledge, promoting ethics, working on standards and making sure we ‘lift all boats’.
So today, we put a stake in the ground to show our commitment to the people who believed in us from day one and announced the formation of an interim board to chart strategic direction and advance the goals of SMC.
Now, I know the number of folks on the interim BOD (41, soon to be 42) might seem crazy to some, but there is a large list of things we wish SMC to accomplish, and everyone involved has a ‘day job’ and other responsibilities to tend to, so I think the number makes sense. The problems of the past have always been trying to do too much with too few people involved, and as Heuer mentioned earlier, we will not need consensus on every little item, we will be split into working groups with different responsibilities so I expect us to be successful and able to push projects forward.
I am really looking forward to the next 4-6 months and seeing what this group can do together. Getting the national organization set up correctly and working efficiently is a key focus, as well as making sure the local chapters have what they need to flourish. Other projects on our plate will be shared later, right now…I need some infrastructure in place…like ASAP.