I hope you’ve seen the note from Andy Warren (Blog | Twitter) on a PASS Spring Event, and there’s another writeup from Kendal Van Dyke. The idea of growing PASS by offering another event, in addition to the Summit, that will hopefully grow, allow more people to come to the event, and make a little more money for PASS. Yes, they need money to run, and they place a big bet every year that the Summit will allow them to continue for the next year.

I have to say that I’ve been talking with Andy for months on this topics. We’ve debated the value of it, the risk, and the possible rewards. We’ve tried to brainstorm and come up with ways that it can be an addition to the Summit, but also work in a way that doesn’t mean PASS is risking its future on two events a year.

I think it’s a cool idea, and I hope that I can go. Orlando was chosen as the first location, mainly because it’s been very successful with large SQL Saturdays (300-400 people), it’s a good location in terms of hotels and the airport for people to travel, and FL has a tremendous number of talented speakers who would likely come.

I do hope this gets going, and as I talked with some PASS board members, I think this is something that you could do quarterly, 3 a year, and move them around to different cities, perhaps focus more on certain technologies like SSIS/SSRS, and provide a different experience.

We’ll see how it goes, but if you have comments, criticisms, thoughts, I’d urge you to start dropping them on one of the two blog posts above.