Karla Landrum (twitter|blog), Community Evangelist for SQL PASS, made the comment this morning on Twitter that there are many people out there in the SQL community who still have not heard about SQL Saturday, the free training event that is taking the world by storm at a location near you every Saturday of the year.

This does not shock me even though I have been in the know for a while now because I was once that guy who did his job and did not know much about PASS or SQL Saturday.  There was a point where I had belonged to professional associations and decided that annual fees with little to no interaction was no longer for me.  Thus, when I started focusing on SQL Server several years ago, I did not seek out any professional associations for the simple fact that I had associated them with an annual fee for a nice little add-on to my resume.  I had belonged to the HTML Writer’s Guild, the International Webmasters Association, and the Capital PC User Group in Washington, D.C.  I joined that group and then could never make the meetings because of my work schedule, but it looked great on my resume.  There were a few other groups, but I honestly cannot remember them now.

This is not a knock on these groups as I am sure that they are wonderful groups for some people, but that to me was what these professional associations were.  SQL PASS is so much more and then some.  I honestly wished someone had told me about it years ago.  So make it your mission today to tell someone about PASS.  They may already know, they may not.  Do them a favor and spread the word.  Enjoy!