There's been a lot of flack posted lately about the PASS Board of Directors decision to keep the annual Summit in Seattle for the next three years. You can read about some of the notes fromJack Cobett, Brian Kelley, Brent Ozar, as well as the reasoning presented by PASS President, Rushabh Mehta. For the record, I don't much care where the Summit is. I would like to see it move, but it's certainly easier on me if it's always in Seattle.
Whether you agree with the decision or not, I think there was something interesting that occurred here. When PASS sent out their survey, I think they reasonably made an effort to find out what is important to the membership. Quite a few people found the survey to be biased, and I was one of them, but I had a different frame of reference. If I step back from my own point of view and re-examine the survey, it doesn't seem so biased.
As data professionals, we often end up not only presenting data back to business people, but we also influence them with the way that we handle data, display it in reports, even with the queries we write to aggregate information. It's entirely possible that in doing we inject our own bias into the results. It could be something as simple as the size or font we choose, or more subtle in the way we discuss the meaning of data with a business analyst when designing the software. Even the names we pick for tables or other data elements exposed in an Excel report or a Report Builder data source can influence how others view the data.
It's hard to guard against your own bias, but as the guardians, managers, and transformers of data, we ought to be aware that we can influence others and be aware of where we might do it, especially if we're helping gather or present information back to others.
I have a lot of friends that are active with PASS and want the Summit to move to the East Coast, and I don't think attendance will go down if the event moves. I think the board is fundamentally mis-interpreting the data, but perhaps I'm biased since I do like to see attendees more than Microsoft people. If you feel strongly one way or the other, please post a response here. I'm sure PASS is paying attention.
Steve Jones
PS - Regardless of where the Summit is held, it's worth attending. It's a great learning AND networking opportunity. If you can go, use our "SSC2010" code and save $100 and come to the SQLServerCentral party on opening night.
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