Education

So much stuff going on that it’s hard to keep track of; as of this moment, we’re at budget, which means that all of my expenses are able to be paid. I’m still working on getting a little more funding (just in case we need it), but I’m feeling really good about things right now. I’ve still got a long list of stuff to do, but we’re getting there.

Just in case you care, here’s my remaining to-do items:

1. Make sure that the restaurant is still available on April 24th for the speaker’s dinner. I sent a request in, and got a few initial emails, but haven’t heard back. I need to follow up with that.

2. Need name badges for volunteers, and hopefully for all of the registrants. My wife said I could find some at Office Max, which is good, because I was getting prices on fancy lanyards (which we don’t need).

3. Pick up event bags; Regions Bank is actually donating the event bags to us, so here’s a little shout out to them 🙂

4. Prep the event guide. The Microsoft conference center has names for its rooms, so I need to go back and change the names of the tracks to match. Should simplify my life as best I can.

5. Prepare my volunteer army for stuff they need to do. I still haven’t laid out a logistical plan, which I need to do soon.

6. The week before the event is going to be printer mayhem; I need to check on prices at the various business stores to see what printing the event guide will cost me.

7. Pursue the non-pays on the lunch fee list, as well as prepare to reimburse volunteers who paid.

8. Contact the SQL Short Session Speakers and see where they are at with their topics.

Ugggh. Too much stuff to do. On the plus side, free stuff is continuing to come in, so that’s exciting.

Things are trucking along; I finally got all of the speakers nailed down and had to choose between some very interesting presentations. After a discussion with the rest of the SQLSaturday team, I decided to add another room and track, and so we now have 34 presentations (plus a lunchtime special by Joe Celko). WOW.

BTW, we’re still way overbooked. If you put off reserving a slot, I’m sorry. Maybe next year.

Anyway, here’s the tentative graphical schedule; this is still subject to change, but it’s close to being done (I think):

SQLSaturday #13 schedule

I’ve also figured out a restaurant for the Speaker’s dinner, as well as the vendor for the box lunches on Saturday. Stuff left to do:

1. Get more sponsors! More money, more money.
2. Get the speaker’s shirts done.
3. Get the attendee gifts done.
4. Set up volunteer shifts.
5. More shwag.

Sheesh….

This update is brief compared to other ones; I just wanted to get some thoughts down quickly:

1. We’re overbooked with speakers; still waiting on a session from a really smart guy that I admire a lot. Hopefully, he’ll have time to submit it tonight before I close the sessions down again.

2. We sent out our second email to the AtlantaMDF membership list today, and we now have 200 registrants (standing room only if everybody shows up).

3. I got a price from our caterers, and it’s well within our $10 lunch fee.

4. I’ve got enough sponsors at this point to pay for everything; I just need a few more to have enough cool swag to hand out.

Gotta run pick up the girls.

It all started with phone call with Andy Warren last Friday (February 13); that seems like a lifetime ago.  I was concerned because things weren’t going so well with the planning for SQLSaturday #13 here in Atlanta on April 25 (sorry; it starts becoming a habit.  I can’t say the name without giving a location and a date).

Anyway, I’m coordinating this event, and it just wasn’t feeling right.  I had been exchanging emails with Andy, and he suggested a phone call to give me some advice.  It was a good idea; among Andy’s suggestions was that I tackle one problem at a time.  Our schedule was only about half full, our registrations were about half full, and we only had one or two sponsors.  Andy suggested that I get the schedule filled up, and that would draw in registrations.  With registrations, I could sell the show to sponsors.  I agreed, and started thinking about where I could advertise for speakers.

I started by contacting everyone who had ever spoken at a SQLSaturday event in the past; I then posted the call for speakers to every LinkedIn group to which I belonged.  I asked nearvy regional user groups for speaker recommendations.  I did all of this on Friday afternoon.

Response was swift; I got several responses, including one short email on Saturday:

“Celko can do extra slots.”

Celko?  Joe Celko?  The guy from the usergroups with whom everyone I know has had at least one brief and antagonistic conversation? THAT Celko?

Yep.

Out of desperation (and a little avarice), I wrote back and asked if he would consider being a featured presentation.  The way I figured, Celko’s a controversial figure; a lot of people love him, and a lot of people, well, don’t.  But, I had heard that he’s a great speaker, and even though I’ve disagreed with some of his methods, he is a smart guy.

He agreed.  I posted a couple of postings to different newsgroups advertising Celko’s presentation, and wanted to see if the numbers would go up.  They eked up a notch (5 or 6 registrations), but not much.  I then asked the email master at AtlantaMDF to send out a blast to all registered members announcing the event.

Sunday came and went.  No email.

Monday and Tuesday came and went. No email.

On Wednesday, I nudged the email master.  At 3:39 pm the email went out.  By 4:02, we had jumped from 76 registrations to 100 registrations.  I was hoping for 120.  By 4:45, we had 118.

After consulting with the other team members, we decided to bump up the available seats to 140.  By 7:00 AM today, we had hit it.  Andy suggested we bump it to the fire code limits; I now have a limit of 200 seats, and a little over 150 registrants.

Of course, we picked up other speakers along the way; we now have 26 scheduled sessions (I was expecting 15), and I’m now having to turn people away.   I’m still waiting for sponsors to respond, but I’m very hopeful that we’ll get a good response SINCE WE”RE TWO MONTHS OUT AND I”M LOOKING AT STANDING ROOM ONLY.

Sorry for yelling.  I’m a little excited.

It all started with a phone call.

If you ain’t from the South,  you probably don’t get that particular reference; basically, it’s a classic desert combination.  Two good things that are great together.  I kind of felt that way after having lunch today with Dan Attis.  Dan’s putting together a Sharepoint Saturday  the week before SQLSaturday, and it was kind of nice to compare notes with somebody.  We’re looking for ways we can build on that synergy for a future conference (and whatever little things we can do for the current ones).