As a member of the PASS Board of Directors I attended the PASS Business Analytics Conference (BAC) recently. You can read more about it here and here (as well as here).

Let me start with an important note: I am voicing my opinion here as an individual, not an official stance of the PASS organization.

There is controversy around the BAC because of a whole bunch of things, but one question in particular bothered me. It was suggested that the people attending the BAC were just consuming the worth or value that other people who paid for the Summit generated. At first, I just dismissed this concept. It stuck in the back of my mind though. Suddenly I realized why.

Yes, the BAC was partly paid for by Summit. The attendees at the BAC were not all people who would have attended Summit. There were, maybe, 1/3, who have attended Summit, are going to attend Summit, or who might attend Summit. That means, a majority will not.

So?

Money from Summit is used to support Chapters. Anyone ever canvassed their attendees at a local user group for who has gone or will go to Summit? I have. Most of the time, far less than 1/3. Do we cut funding for Chapters?

Money from Summit is used to support SQL Saturday. Once again, I’ve canvassed several of these for people who were going to be attending Summit. Again, way less than 1/3. No more funding for SQL Saturday?

How about the Virtual Chapters that money from Summit pays for? How many of those people are attending Summit? I don’t know, but I’d be shocked if it’s 100% or anything close to that. Are we cutting Virtual Chapters?

24 Hours of PASS is also paid for by Summit.

You know, everything that PASS does, whether you like it, and attend it, or not, is paid for by Summit. There are good arguments to be made that we should not be doing the BAC (and arguments that we should). Where the money comes from is absolutely not a part of that argument. Otherwise, we must pull funding from anything and everything that is done by PASS that doesn’t translate to 100% benefits for the people who paid for it, Summit attendees.

I believe that we, the members of PASS, should be open and accepting and willing to try new things, both from a technical perspective and from a personal one. Providing training and community is what we do. Let’s focus on that.

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