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I realize that it’s been an entire week since SQLSaturday 35 in Dallas and that’s an eternity in the blogosphere, but I’ve been recently reminded of a very painful lesson: you pay for taking days off.  Two days out of the office to go to Dallas cost me much more than two days worth of work; I’m not sure what temporal and spatial laws are in effect that cause this, but it’s damned annoying.  It’s not making me look forward to next week, when I’m taking the entire week off; I should be behind for the rest of the month.

Anyway, the trip to Dallas was especially great for me; I grew up in Northeast Louisiana, and many of my friends moved to the Dallas area after college.  Unfortunately, I was only able to catch up with two of them (Evan R. and Brad W.); they graciously allowed me to use their couches, saving me a lot of coin for what was essentially an unpaid employee training expense.  It was great catching up with them, and I hope to be back that way in the near future.

This particular SQLSaturday was also very cool because it’s the first one that I attended simply as an attendee and NOT as a speaker; this was eye-opening for me, because it gave me a chance to experience some things as an outsider (although I did crash the speaker’s dinner on Friday night), and that gave me a chance to reflect on what it’s like to not know all of the details about an event, and what can be done to make sure people know what’s going on when, where, and how.  I’ll get to that in a second, but let me throw some thoughts out there.

What Worked Well…

I don’t think anyone can say enough about the team of volunteers from the North Texas SQL Server User Group; these guys simply ROCK, and they pulled without a hitch.  I especially liked the fact that they spread out the work effort over several volunteers, and that every member of the team took their responsibility seriously.   In my mind, however, there were a couple of amazing contributions at this particular event that often get overlooked, so I want to give a quick acknowledgement to them:

1. Having a designated photographer was a great idea.  Everywhere I looked, there was a volunteer taking snaps.  I’m not sure where those pictures will be posted, but we’ve had volunteers in the past take some great photos, but never really treated them as a full-time member of the team. I think having someone designated to capture the memory of the event is a great idea, particularly if it can be folded into networking opportunities later.
2. The food and food distribution was amazing; whoever picked the caterers did a great job, and the way it was laid out was simply wonderful.  Although I loved the ice cream at the end of the day, the sugar rush (and subsequent crash) was a bit tough for me personally.  Great idea, but unexpected side effects; I slept through most of the last session 🙂
3. Finally, Ryan Adams was the sponsor coordinator, and I watched him work those tables several times throughout the day.  That was a nice touch, and I hope the sponsors appreciated having someone who was available to them all the time to handle any issues that they may have had come up.

Others have noted how great the facility was; I couldn’t agree more.  I’m hoping that we can find a similar venue for our next SQLSaturday in Atlanta.  Registration worked great; I think having an early morning raffle incentive helped keep the distribution of the attendees relatively constant, and they had several lines available for people to check in.   I did feel a bit of “what happens now” after I made it through the line, but it was easy to spot where everyone was hanging out.

One thing that I really liked was the use of a claim ticket for filling out speaker evals; we had done something similar for the last Atlanta event, but the Dallas crew did it a little different.  Each attendee got a single ticket at the beginning of the day, and they used that same number throughout the day to fill out speaker evals.  Unlike us, however, they chose to do all of the drawings at the end of the day.

Finally, the event guide was amazing; it was very thorough and complete, and looked very professional.  All in all, I think the event was a wonderful day, and I hope people really appreciated how well things were handled.

What Didn’t Work So Well…

There were a couple of minor issues, however, and I mention them only so that other SQLSaturday coordinators can plan from them.  The brochure was wonderful, but the central schedule was organized around tracks, not times, which meant that if you were hopping tracks, you had to keep scanning in order to find the time something was occurring in order to see what classes were available.  This was a departure from the traditional scheduling format, and I just think it didn’t work as well as the planners hoped.  The planning team did have a great web tool for picking a schedule, and I noticed that many people were walking around with paper copies of those; those schedules were the traditional arrangement by time.

Second, and this was completely minor, I felt lost at the beginning of the day.  Again, this was the first event I’ve been to in a long time where I was simply an attendee, and it was a little overwhelming to go from the registration desk and walk into a mass of people milling about.  I’m not sure what can be done about that, but I’m wondering if introducing an usher would help make that transition slightly less disconcerting.

Third, the sponsors were responsible for providing their own tickets; this was both good and bad, so I need to follow up with sponsors about how they felt about it.  Waiting on people to fill out forms did create a traffic jam, but it completely took away some of the set-up responsibilities from the organizers.  The sponsors may also have benefitted from having people hanging out.

Finally (and this happens at every SQLSaturday I’ve been to), I don’t think enough mention was made of the fact that there is a thriving SQL Server community that meets every month behind every SQLSaturday.  We get so caught up on the day, that we forget to give enough shout-outs to the local or national PASS communities.  Tim Mitchell tried to do that at the end of the day, but it was done after the raffles were over and people were packing up to leave. 

These, of course, are minor quibbles; overall, it was a great day of training.  The classes I went to (for the most part) were excellent, and I felt like I came back with some new ideas to try out.

Plans For Future Events…

So here’s my final take-away, and what I plan to do at the next Atlanta SQLSaturday:

1. Punch up the mention of the local chapter and PASS a LOT.  Focus on getting people connected to those organizations.
2. Reward people for making connections; find some variant of Twitter Bingo to help people make local connections.
3. I loved the claim check idea with a single number for the whole day; I think we’re going to steal it, but continue to do raffles in-session and save the big prizes for the end of the day.
4. Contact the sponsors and ask them how they want to handle raffle tickets in the future.

Other Writeups….

A lot of other people have already written about their experiences at SQLSaturday 35′; in case you missed them, here’s some of the ones I read:

SQLAJ – What I gained from volunteering at SQLSat35

MidnightDBA (Jen) We Made This, Part 1 of 2 (Thoughts on SQL Saturday 35)

Made2Mentor: My SQL Saturday Experience

Ryan Adams: SQL Saturday Weekend Palooza

Bill Fellows: SQL Saturday 35 experience #sqlsat35

Wes Brown: SQL Saturday #35 Notes and Observations

It’s live; we’re limited to 250 seats, so register now for a great day of training in Atlanta on April 24.  We’re also looking for speakers and sponsors, so please feel free to spread the word.  I’ll continue working on the stub in order to finish the site out, so check back often.

This will be a new challenge for me, since we’re planning on running this by committee (which has both benefits and challenges); I’ll keep you posted as to how that’s working out.

Stay tuned!

I’m writing this post quickly, because I have a 6:30 SQLSaturday alumni meeting at a local donut stop.  Please don’t let the brevity of the post throw you off; lots of goals accomplished yesterday.  Unfortunately, going to sessions was not one of them 🙂

• I spent a lot of time networking, and discussing Agile techniques for database developers with a lot of different people, as well as looking at some of the latest and greatest tools for SQL Server.
• Speaking of vendors, I shipped home two huge boxes of free stuff, most of it from Quest, Idera, and Red Gate.  My shipping costs were $80, so you can imagine the stuff I had.
• Finally, and I’ll probably return to this in a later post, I met with the Board of Directors of PASS in an intimate session on governance.  It was fascinating, and I’m surprised that more chapter leaders were not there, because we discussed A LOT of issues related to the local chapters, and how PASS runs itself.  I don’t think that any particular goals were met, but I do believe that the following is true:
• Change is coming for the local chapters; the PASS board is going to try to do more to connect with the local chapter, but will want more from the local chapter as well.  Think of it as having more concrete discussions about how the local community uses SQL Server, and what niche can PASS fill.
• Steve Jones asked a series of great questions, including: “What have you done for me?”  He wanted the Board to be able to be more transparent, and expose their accomplishments beyond their individual audiences (for example, Greg Low’s work with the chapters should be available to those who are not chapter leaders).
• More to come.
• The day finally wrapped with an afterparty at a local arcade, hosted by Microsoft.  Lots of fun, but I was exhausted.

Gotta run; day 3 will be a blast.

Another SQLSaturday down!  This was my second one to organize in a year, and it was much different than the first event we held in April.  I learned a lot this time about managing the event, so it’s time for another wrap-up post 🙂  (YAY! You know you’re excited!).

Before I go to far, I need to express a huge THANK YOU to the faculty and students at Gainesville State College and the Institute for Environmental and Spatial Analysis, particularly Allison Ainsworth (and yes, we’re related).  I’ll explain more about their role in a bit, but they really made the event flow flawlessly and their presence helped make this event a huge success in a number of ways.  I’d also like to thank my daughter Isabel, who (like a typical twelve-year-old) alternated between being bored and excited about being there.  She was constantly in motion throughout the event, and she made me very proud.

I also want to thank our sponsors: Interworks and RedGate, as well as our hosting user group AtlantaMDF.  Without their involvement, there would be no SQL Saturday, and I hope that we can continue this tradition in our area for a long, long time.

Basic stats

• 103 registered; 75 attendees
• 12 faculty and student workers
• 3 tracks; 14 speakers

What worked well…

• Faculty & Student Volunteers rocked.  Having someone running the show who did not have a vested interested in seeing the speakers was a great asset; if you can partner with a local school and work out a deal to have student workers, DO IT!.  The team at GSC worked very hard, and while they managed to sneak in a few sessions, they didn’t expect to see all of them.  This was very different from the Alpharetta event earlier in the year where I felt guilty because several volunteers were unable to attend sessions.
• Attendee Volunteers were awesome.  I had several attendees who were very willing to proctor the sessions they were in (thus relieving the student workers of that responsibility).  They handled speaker time, took care of announcements, and made sure that the sessions flowed smoothly from one to the next.
• Lunch!  Lunch was a bit of an accident, really; we had made arrangements with Sonny’s Bar-B-Q to provide the meal, but had neglected to follow up until right before the event.  We were expecting box lunches, but because of the timing, they provided us with a buffet.  This happy accident was actually OK, as our costs were lower, and the amount of food provided was enough to ensure that everyone was well-fed.  In general, everybody ate well (breakfast, lunch, and a snack).
• Speakers!  Just thumbing through the evaluation forms, I saw a lot of positive comments.  I also heard a lot from the attendees about how well the speakers did in general.  We had several first-time speakers at this event, and I think they handled themselves very well.
• Facility.  I had several attendees compliment me on the choice of the facility; even though GSC is a bit of a drive from downtown Atlanta, several people seemed to indicate that the spaciousness of the floor plan was worth the drive.

What needs improvement…

• Sponsor recruitment.  We only had a couple of sponsors, and I wished I had managed to contact more.  Part of the difficulty was in approaching sponsors so soon after the Alpharetta event.  However, I did have a few attendees remark that they missed having the opportunity to meet with the sponsors.
• Prizes-for-evals.  In each session, we had attendees complete an evaluation form for a ticket; this way the form could be confidential, and they would have a chance to win a prize at the end of the day.  According to Allison, this was tough to manage (making sure that tickets and forms were collected at the end of each session).   I also think it biased the evals; since people HAD to complete one to get a ticket, many of them simply circled all #1’s or #4’s.
• Session oppositions.  I had a couple of situations where I wished I could have touted the GIS sessions more than I did; at the end of the day, for example, most of the SQL Server folks went to the open spaces sessions rather than the GIS session describing the program at GSC.  People have free choice, but I wish I could have found a way to encourage them to learn more about the hosting organization.
• Student presenters.  We had originally intended that there be a SQL Saturday #24 on Friday, featuring Student presenters.  It didn’t happen, so we need to figure out a way to open doors to students at GSC (and other schools).  We did have two presenters on Saturday, but I wish we had more.

What I would change next time…

• Speaker polos; student worker T-shirts.  We had speaker –t-shirts made up for the event, and we also shared them with most student volunteers.  I had a couple of speakers remark that they missed the polos (but they understood it was a budgeting issue).   It was nice, however, to see a sea of green t-shirts manning the registration desk, and helping attendees find their way.
• More vegetarian options.   No one went hungry; however, we had ordered vegetarian meals from a local Chinese restaurant for the attendees who had registered as vegetarians.  We had a few people who thought they had registered as a vegetarian, but it didn’t list that way on the extract from the site (my guess is they never actually clicked the button).  IF we do a buffet next year, we may do it as a Chinese buffet with additional vegetables.
• Bill the event as a North Atlanta or Lake Lanier event.  The space is great, and we’d love to make it a bigger event next year; however, we have to convince the Atlanta development community that it’s worth the drive, AND we have to figure out a way to get more sponsors involved.   IF we could get a well-known keynote (or special topic) speaker to appear, that could boost our attendance rate, and boost the sponsorship.
• Give away prizes during the last few minutes of a session.  Let’s do away with the prize-for-eval; still hand out eval forms, and tickets, but let the proctor in each session do the prize pull at the end of the session REGARDLESS of whether or not they have a completed form.  Hang on to all of the tickets for extra prizes at the end of the day.

Additional writeups:

A couple of blogs have already made it around the net; here’s a couple of different perspectives on the day.

http://dyfhid.blogspot.com/2009/10/sql-saturday-25-and-epiphany.html

http://ammonsonline.com/jeffablog/post/SQL-Saturday-25-Fun.aspx

http://arcanecode.com/2009/10/10/sql-saturday-25-gainesville-ga-october-10-2009/