Mar

Sql Saturday #70 – It’s a Wrap!

bobby

It’s a Wrap!

It’s been a week now since we closed the doors on Sql Saturday 70. This year Columbia put on a great event. We had just over 200 attendees, including: around 20 volunteers, 40 speakers, 20 sponsors, 4 coordinators, and a handful of very understanding and patient significant others. This year we hosted the event in the airport campus of Midlands Technical College. We were very lucky to yet again have absolutely beautiful weather and a great crowd. There were much fewer technical problems, and though we ran into one or two logistical bumps, things went very well.

The Good

Everything went great and exceeded our expectations. We had some great attendees, including a decent number of first-timers and those getting their feet wet in the deep-end of the pond. I saw a handful of fellow developers that seemed somewhat skeptical in the beginning who had huge smiles and were brimming with ideas by the end of the day.

The speakers were fantastic. In particular, I’d like to thank Stuart Ainsworth (blog | twitter) who managed to make it out despite a fairly nasty head-cold, and the handful of speakers who traveled quite a ways to make this event. We had a few new speakers make one of their first appearances at our event. A final note on speakers: there were a few individuals who were so inspired they mentioned that they plan on speaking at a future event, so look out for a few new names to appear in a city near you.

This time-around, I took some time to sit and talk with some of the sponsors. Some of them traveled quite a ways to make it to the event and had some really wild technology to demonstrate. Honestly, without them we could not put on such a great event. The next time you find yourself walking down “vendor alley”, carefully avoiding eye-contact and staring at your feet, stop and think for a minute: these guys not only contribute in a variety of ways to the community (money, advice, time, travel, free books, etc.), they take the time to visit and discuss some of the most cutting-edge tools, practices, and trends. No one is going to force you to buy into what they are selling, but think about where they are coming from — most of the sponsor representatives come from a technical background (I managed to meet one of the developers of the .Net 64-bit JIT compiler, who happened to be one of our vendors at the event) and are so excited about technology that they decided to get personally involved with the tools they love so much.

Yet again, we had some great volunteers. From the session proctors, to registration, to those helping out with lunch — they were a fantastic group. Without them, I doubt I would be able to hold onto sanity throughout the day. I would like to extend a special thanks to James and Dmitry, two 13 year olds who ensured all of the equipment was working properly. I hope to see you around next time (by the way, I have a TV that might need setting up)!

A Few Differences

Sql Saturday Jotters

We made a few changes this time-around. First, we decided to charge for attendee lunches. Doing so allowed us to be more flexible with our offerings for speakers, lunch, etc. I also like the idea that by paying a few dollars ($10 in our case), our attendees have made a commitment to the event. Rather than simply place the event on their calendars and flag it “Tentative”, they have made an investment in not only a great community function, but to their personal and professional growth.

We also decided to provide an attendee gift. We explored t-shirt, water bottles, and coffee mugs. I happen to be a sucker for pen & paper, which led us to the jotters that we were able to provide. Not only were they made of recyclable materials and matched the speaker shirts, but they came fully equipped with a “Sql Saturday 70″ logo — where else are you going to get one of those? These came courtesy of 4impact – who really came through for us in a pinch.

Bumps in the Road

I would be remiss of me not to mention that we had a few hiccups throughout the day. Thanks to a great group of coordinators and some very understanding volunteers, we managed to steer clear of the shoals and make the event everything it could be.

Speakers

Due to illness as well as a few other unforeseen incidences, we had a handful of speakers drop out. Brian Kelley (homepage| twitter), our speaker coordinator, did a great job of jumping in and re-arranging the schedule. Juggling 48 balls (8 tracks and 6 sessions) is a tough act. Luckily Brian is quick with an e-mail and quicker with a revision.

Registration / Food

Two events caused us a bit of grief. In-and-of-themselves they are fairly minor, but together they caused somewhat of a problem. First, our order had to be in to the caterer by the Wednesday before the event. Second, not only were we charging for lunch this time around, we were unable to stop charging for lunch at a specific time. So, on Friday night and Saturday morning we had a flurry of registrations and lunch confirmations. We ordered enough food for a roughly 10% uptake in orders, but the jump we saw was a decent amount over that. Luckily, we had a contingency plan in place. We send one of our volunteers out to pick up about a dozen pizzas. This allowed us to fulfill two goals: offering variety to those who paid for lunch and filling in the gap left by the registration overage. By the end of the day, there were roughly three slices of pizzas and one boxed lunch left. Everyone seemed very pleased by the offerings and all-in-all, it worked out great. In the future, we will find a way to cut-off registration earlier. We might still order pizza, that seemed to be a hit with the attendees.

In Closing…

… I’m really happy with how things turned out. I have heard very little criticism and what little I have heard will be easy to reconcile next time. I doubt anyone has a “perfect” event, but I have to say that we (the community as a whole) are getting close to the mark every time. Thanks again to everyone who made time in their busy schedule to come by. If I didn’t have a chance to meet you, I hope that I get to at a future event. We are planning on doing it again next year, we’ll see you then!