So last weekend was SQL Saturday #33.  While this was held in Charlotte, NC I was able to attend and present three topics.  Overall I think the event went really well, but there some issues which by getting out there hopefully can be avoided at future events.

The Good

Event Size

There were a ton of people there, both speakers as well as attendees.  There were 7 rooms, and each room had 6 sessions in it (three before lunch, and three after) for a total of 42 sessions.  I know that there were more sessions submitted than that, but the day can only be so long.  I talked to a couple of people and heard unofficial numbers between 250-300 attendees is a great turnout for a community event.  The people running this SQL Saturday event were able to do an excellent job getting the word out there about this event and it brought in not only speakers for attendees from all over the east coast.

The Food

I didn’t have breakfast at SQL Saturday, mainly because I had no idea there would be breakfast at the event.  It wasn’t mentioned anywhere on the SQL Saturday site, or in any of the emails that I received that there would be breakfast there.  It looked pretty good though.  The lunch was sandwiches, chips, fruit and soda.  I thought the food was pretty good, not quite sure it was up to the $10 cost that each attendee paid, but it was still pretty good.

Most events measure the success of the event based on the amount of bitching and complaining they here in the lunch hall about the food (this was a big deal for the SQL PASS Summit team last year).  Personally I didn’t hear any complaining about the food in the lunch hall.

Location

SQL Saturday was able to hold the event at the local Microsoft office.  Microsoft has a very nice multi-building campus there in Charlotte, NC and they were nice enough to let the SQL Saturday event use the facility.  They were able to provide 7 rooms for us, including a couple of large rooms.  Some of the rooms were a on the small side for the speakers that were put into them, so it was standing room and floor seating, but that always happens at these kinds of events.

Microsoft CSS

This SQL Saturday had some bonus attendees.  You see this particular Microsoft office is where a good number of the SQL Server CSS engineers work out of, and several of them were able to attend the event both as guides and as speakers which I think really bumped up the event.  Unfortunately I don’t think anyone knew that they would be there so people may not have been able to take advantage of this.

Tons of top notch speakers

This event was packed with top notch SQL Server Presenters.  While the truly big guns like Paul Randal, Kimberly Tripp, and Buck Woody weren’t there, there was a massive amount of speaking talent who were able to attend and give presentations.  There were no less than 15 Microsoft MVPs there presenting including the likes of myself (duh, I’m the one writing this up), Aaron Bertrand, Andrew Kelly, Tim Ford, Andy Leonard, John Welch, Jessica Moss, Steve Jones and Geoff Hiten to name just some (if I missed you sorry).

I honestly I don’t know when the last time that this many MVPs got together at a single community event (other than the SQL PASS summit of course) and presented so much excellent content.

The Not So Good

I’m sure that there were a lot more wins, but these are the ones which have stuck out in my mind.  Like any event, nothing runs truly smoothly and no event is perfect.  These are the sore spots which stuck out in my mind (and were able to remain there after the flight home).

Recommend Hotel

The SQL Saturday site posted a recommended hotel, but not until most people had already made their hotel reservations at other hotels.  If you are going to post a recommended hotel, it should be known with the rate arranged (if you can get a special rate) when the event is announced, or within a week of the announcement, no more.  We stayed at the recommended hotel, and it was very nice, but there were only about 5 other people staying there because most people had their hotel arrangements made before the recommended hotel was setup.

Now where this runs into a problem is a couple of places.  First parking at the event.  The less people who are driving in the less walking from cars to the buildings people have to do.  Second, after the event is over people want to socialize, which usually involved dinner and a bar after.  With people at different hotels now a lot of cabs need to be called, or people will be driving after being at the bar which just isn’t a good plan.  Nothing spells bad publicity like “SQL Saturday attendees arrested in DUI sweep”.

Signs around the event

Signs are key, especially when you’ve got people coming in from all over the place who have never been there before.  When we arrived our shuttle driver didn’t know where to drop people off before there were no signs saying “Check In Over Here”.  Then after the keynote there wasn’t any signs showing how to get to the second building from the first (which was a big problem since 6 of the 7 rooms were in the other building).

This is a big problem at our SoCal Code Camps as well (so when you guys read this…).

The Raffle

Everyone loves free stuff, especially cool, relevant free stuff.  At the end of the day there was a raffle where each sponsor was giving away some nice item.  Be it their software package, a gift card, or an iPod touch.  You’re probably asking yourself why this is in the problem part of this post, right? The problem came in with the implementation of the raffle.  Like all raffles at these events, these are “must be present to win”, but the last session ended at 5pm, and the raffle started at 5, in the building which only had one session room in it.  So the only people who had a chance to win the first items where the people who attended the last session in that room.

I knew that the raffle was after the last session (which I was speaking during) so I made sure to wrap up as close to on time as I could (ended up being like 2 minutes early), but after all the thank yous, and talking with everyone, and getting over to the other building most of the people in my last session only were able to catch the last half of the raffle.  This was only worse for some of the other sessions.  I know that Geoff Hiten’s (@SQLCraftsman on twitter) presentation ran a few minutes late, so not only did his attendees not make it to the raffle, but Geoff actually won something, but because he wasn’t there he didn’t get it.

Now I’m now suggesting that you wait for every last person to arrive, but announce the start time in advance (I had no idea what time the raffle was supposed to start) and give people time to get there.  We had 15 minutes between sessions so following that logic the raffle should have started at 5:15.

Shuttles

All of the information which I had received said that there would be shuttles running loops from the hotel to the Microsoft office during the morning and afternoon, then from the hotel to the after party at night.  Turns out, not so much.  Granted this was probably do to the fact that there were only a half dozen or so people staying at the official hotel, but still, you publicize, and you follow through.  There were a couple of shuttles in the morning.  In the afternoon there was exactly one.  To get to the after party there wasn’t any official shuttle (someone was designated as the driver because they had a mini-van), but they left the party early as did most of the other locals, so those of us without cars had to get a bit creative to get back to the hotel.

The After party / Geek dinner

After a full day of cramming knowledge into your head, a get together is pretty much required.  Sometimes the costs for these parties can be covered by sponsors, sometimes they can’t, which I have no problem with.  I understand that these events are large and hard to put together, and feeding a few hundred people gets very pricey (I’ve been told what our SoCal Code Camp geek dinners can cost, and these can get expensive fast).  However when picking the location for the after party somewhere that has a private room (or is willing to close for the private party) is needed.

You’ve got a couple hundred people, at the event, so assume that 50 make it to the after party (since this was a pay your own way, turn out would be much lower than if food was paid for) you really need at least a private room.  We were spread out across a normal restaurant so people were contently switching tables to find people to talk to (assuming they could find a seat at all) moving around the normal restaurants customers.  And then the band started playing which made it next to impossible to talk.

Now for those that haven’t made it to a geek dinner your probably thinking that I’m nuts, that it’s just a party and how important can it be.  The geek dinner is where you really get the most face time with other attendees, speakers, and the event planners. In truth the geek dinner can run just at long as the event so there’s a lot of technical talk and professional networking which can happen at these events.

The event was 6 hours of sessions, plus an hour for lunch for a 7 hour event.  The geek dinner started at 6 and went until the last few die-hard people left.  The few of us that were still left at the restaurant left shortly after the band started playing, and moved to the Hyatt (where oddly we were all staying, except for one) and kept talking.  This lasted until about midnight or 1am, or just about as long as the actual SQL Saturday.

Sponsor Equality

All sponsors are created equal, and they should be treated as such.  I know this can get into a touchy area, especially with a lot of the folks running SQL Saturday 33 being employees of one of the sponsors.  However, when running a community event that your company is a sponsor of you need to remember that you are there as the community representative first, and a company representative second.

For example, during the keynote only one sponsor was mentioned (the one that the community folks work for).  All the other sponsors were refereed to as “our sponsors”.  Honestly I’m not even sure if Microsoft was thanked for letting us take over their offices for the day.

Overall?

Overall I would say the event was a success.  The goal of the event is a free day of training from some of the top SQL Server people that you can get there, and in that regard I would say that it would have to be called a success.  The issues are for the most part easy to fix, and fairly minor.  The other ones as time goes on and the community gets more used to putting these events together will probably work them selves out.  With SQL Saturday now being a SQL PASS brand I’m sure that some things will change, hopefully for the better.

I can’t wait for my next SQL Saturday event.  I’d like to make it to SQL Saturday 31 in Chicago, but I don’t think that’s going to happen for me.  I know I’ll be at SQL Saturday 44 here in SoCal.  I’m thinking I might be able to make it to SQL Saturday 27 up in Portland, but I’m still not sure yet.

Where ever you are, check out the local SQL Saturday in your area, or even one that isn’t in your area.  It’s a great place to learn more about this SQL Server thing we use for a living.

Denny