Why do I volunteer for PASS?

Ive been asked more times than I can count why I spend so many hours working for an organization that doesnt pay anything other than thanks and smiles. 

I work for a large company, and have a very small team of people.  As such, it is often very helpful to have a sounding board outside of your sphere of influence to talk to people about ideas, issues and bacon, mostly bacon.  Sure there has always been newsgroups and forums and they certainly have their place for this type of information exchange.  However, when you know someone and have shared a dinner, a beer, a session, or even just a 5 minute hall discussion, they are more vested in you’re outcome than some random stranger on an internet forum.   The overall quality of the conversations and of the information that is exchanged in these groups is higher than the average internet sql community, if only by a little bit.  

Payment (in the form of knowledge) for the work I do for PASS  is 100% reaped by my employer, in the form of better database systems!  Granted my professional knowledge is also increased but, whats good for me is good for them too right? This becomes a pretty easy sell at least in my head to know that I can put in some hours of work for a professional organization and in return they open up many conversation breakers between myself and not only the superstars of the SQL community but between myself and many of the rest of the community that is just as eager to share their knowledge.

So, with that in mind I give you a new friend that Ive twittered with for quite a while but,only just met at SQLPASS this year @mrdenny (blog).  I think Denny may have had 1 too many Jaeger shots that night but, this rendition of eye of the tiger is #PASSAWESOMENESS