Grant Fritchey (10/18/2007)
PASS does offer training through the Summit and a couple of other large scale events overseas & here in the US. But, that's only the cost based side of the training. The free part of the training can easily be defined as the Chapters. But, and here I'm speaking as the Program Director of a new local chapter, we're getting little to no recognition or support from PASS. As anyone who has tried knows, starting a user group is difficult. Presumably our association with PASS should hook us in to an existing network of speakers and sponsors and all kinds of great resources. The reality is, some of that is there, but it's difficult to find or hard to get, or it's just no there at all.
I'll second this. We started up the Midlands PASS Chapter at the beginning of this year and thus far all of our speakers have been bourne due to contacts from within the user group. Getting outside sponsorship of our meetings has been along the same lines. Every so often we get a box of SWAG, often unannounced, but other than that, no real support. And though it's been raised to PASS HQ, we still don't appear on the official chapters page.
K. Brian Kelley
@kbriankelley