I know I tend to be overly passionate. It’s something that has gotten me into trouble in the past. It’s also probably a huge factor in the things I’ve been able to accomplish in life. I’m bringing it up at this time because I think passion is causing some conflict within the community around the Professional Association for SQL Server (PASS).

On the 25th of June just past the announcements went out for the sessions accepted at the PASS Summit 2014. I found this stressful and exciting two ways. First, and for me personally, most importantly, because I had submitted several sessions and I desperately wanted to speak at the PASS Summit (I’ve spoken there every year since 2008 and I’ve made the Top 10 sessions two years in a row, for which I’m truly grateful, back to our story). Second, because this year I wanted to help make a difference so I volunteered on the selection committee (and I was on a committee other than one I submitted for, I didn’t influence selection there at all). I wanted to get my sessions accepted, and I wanted to see the work I put in on display. Happily, both occurred. But, the day was marred.

Let’s sidetrack (again) for a moment. I consider myself to be just a guy, a DBA, a developer, an IT pro. It’s what I’ve been doing for 20+ years (yeah, I’m old) and I’ve been relatively successful at it. But, I’m also a Microsoft MVP, a published author, frequent blogger, and an international speaker. I attribute most of that stuff, not to any great ability I have, but to a lot of luck, a lot of hard work, and, here’s the kicker, to my involvement with PASS. Go back ten years, I went to my first Summit down in Dallas, TX. I attended sessions and went back to my hotel room, except one night. During that day I had spent a little time chatting with a company and they invited me to a party they were throwing that night. I went. And I met some people. They were just DBAs and developers, just like me, but, they were also involved in the organization that put on the event, PASS. I liked these people. So, I started volunteering which led to another Summit and another and writing and speaking and… well, let’s just say, getting involved was a good thing. Being passionate about it all paid off, literally and figuratively. I really do owe PASS and the people that make it up a lot.

So, there are a lot of passionate people in this little gang of ours. And some of those passionate people didn’t like the outcome of the selection process. Being passionate, they voiced their opinions. LOUDLY. At length. Some of what they said had merit. Some of what they said was just hurt feelings. Some of what they said was a complete misunderstanding of how things worked within the committees and the selection process. But a lot of passionate people, who care about PASS, argued for a little while about the Summit selections. And, being a passionate guy, I took part. A lot of the work I did for the committee wasn’t making the light of day (more on that later, maybe, depending on how some internal communications turn out) and I was quite passionate about that. I don’t know this for a fact, but I suspect pretty strongly that my passion, what’s more, my public passion, around this topic made some people angry. I’m positive that others passion for the topic, regardless of their causes and the rightness or wrongness of their cause, definitely made people angry. Here’s where I get in trouble.

Get over it.

If we didn’t care about PASS and what the organization has done for us, and how we’d like to help it, and help others, and grow it, and reward ourselves (because I do believe everyone is fundamentally greedy, might as well acknowledge it), and just plain replicate the experience for others that I’ve had (because it’s been an overwhelmingly positive experience, I can’t say enough good things about PASS), then there wouldn’t be any passion. And if there was no passion, there would be no brouhaha and hurt feelings and the developing cliques (oh yeah, people are drawing lines like this was a war in the Balkans, apropos on the 100th Anniversary of World War I). But you know what, if there wasn’t any passion for, in, and around this organization, then it wouldn’t be the organization that it is.

It’s a great organization and people are going to be passionate about it. Cope. Passion is going to lead people to saying negative as well as positive things. Deal. People just might say negative things about you. Develop an epidermis.

Look, we should be able to disagree without being disagreeable, but passion leads us down dark roads sometimes. Let’s try to be understanding of that fact and recognize that the passion that makes this organization great is also the one that’s going to lead to conflict sometimes. Let’s just try to remember that and maybe we’ll be able to work towards sharing the great things this organization does with others and fight with each other less. Maybe.

NOTE: I made an edit about the work I did on the selection committee. It was on a track that I didn’t submit for. There was no way my work there could influence my selection. Plus the fact that the abstract evals and speaker evals were done by two different teams of people. Just want to be clear about that.

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