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To the people and company I still think of as friends, I hope all this year’s events, starting tomorrow, are awesome!

When I wrote that line (without the “and company” the first time), I knew what I meant… but as I read it a few times, I thought… this could be taken the wrong way. Even after I added the “and company” part, I still wasn’t quite sure if it sounded sincere.

This week are a few events I had planned to be at, much less play a part in. That is gone and I have made my peace with this (I still feel it, but as the saying goes…it is what it is.)

The fact is, I still love the people who will be there as presenters, volunteers, and many wearing red shirts or standing in front of red displays. Some of of these folks I have had friendships with for 15+ years. Some I met the last three years. I will be giddy when I see many of them the next time our paths cross. And I use Redgate software daily again, so the better it gets, the easier my life is.

I suppose that last point is a bit selfish, but the only time of my life when I wasn’t using SQL Prompt was on vacation or trying to expand my knowledge beyond SQL Server the past few years.

This year is interesting for PASS

This year the PASS Summit brand is making four stops, including NYC, Dallas, The Netherlands and Seattle. It is exciting for them, and honestly exciting for me as a community member. I hope the PASS brand does well expanding this year.

After returning to my previous company (with some exciting work coming up I will share about one day!), my life has almost reset itself, and I hope I hope I can finish that process and return to (one of?) the PASS Summit events next year.

I have had a bond with PASS since the beginning days. I have spoken at way more than half of their conferences and have worked on the program side of things when I wasn’t a speaker. Myself and Tim Ford did the Quiz Bowl for years. It is as much a part of my life as Dollywood and Disney World (BIG parts of my life if you know me even a little bit.)

It feels like I am going to miss the family reunion

The past two years I was able to attend, the atmosphere of the PASS Summit has continued to trend back to feeling normal, which is to say it has felt like the database professional family reunion. There are people you have known as long as you can remember and people you have never met before, all sharing a common DNA-free bond.

Following this analogy, conferences like Data Saturdays and SQL Saturdays (yesterday was Columbus 2025) are like regular family picnics. You see some of your regional (SQL) family members, but when you go to the yearly reunion, a lot more of the family is there. You walk around having hallway conversations that start ideas and sometimes new friendships. I have only missed a few events before, and usually a hospital bed or at least some sort of physical recovery was involved. I have struggled around a Seattle convention center several times with a cane, once on an ECV (I rode it 8 blocks to a dinner once… that was actually kind of terrifying), and just 2 years ago, on a broken hip replacement (I found out it was broken a few months later…it only hurt occasionally, but when it did… yowsa).

Every single time, it was worth it.

No matter which larger conference (if any) I end up going to next year, if it isn’t one of the PASS Summit events, I don’t expect that warm, community feel we have all come to expect.

Why write this this?

Some people have acted a bit funny around me about these events, either not knowing I wouldn’t be there or knowing and trying not to hurt my feelings. I will admit that seeing social media activity this week may kick off my study to see if FOMO can actually kill you. But this is the case for so many events pretty much every week of the year in my social feeds.

The fact is, I simply wanted to answer the questions in one place. I am more than fine, and nothing has changed in my community life. I would have submitted to these events if I had time. (Same with Columbus and Orlando SQL Saturday this year. Next year I will be submitting to as many locations as the wheels on my car will reasonably take me in a day!)

Frankly though, I just wanted to make it clear that I wish them so much luck it isn’t funny. This isn’t marketing or an attempt to get lots of views, it is just what we do as writers. When life makes us feel things, we write it down and share it. (And not everything gets publicized or even published! I am only posting this on my blog for that reason.)

Whether it matters or not is not my problem. And to be completely real, I probably won’t follow along too much until the November event’s live streams start (another reason I really miss hybrid conferences), but I want it to work this year and in the future for them, for the data community, and for me.