This was a good meeting. About 50 attendees showed up at Nova (we use their space for joint meetings) to see Grant and Denny speak. Grant did an hour, then we had a 30 minute demo/pitch from ScaleArc, then an hour by Denny. That feels like a better investment of time as an attendee and was a good unplanned test of what I think the formula should be, at least here in Orlando. I’d much rather do this format once a quarter compared to finding one speaker for one hour each month.
The other part that is interesting is finding the speakers. Karla put in a lot of time to set up the Florida tour and the sponsorship to cover the travel costs. I don’t know if that’s something we can repeat, but it’s really worth exploring. Two speakers are better than one, but I think the 2 hours education vs 1 is what matters the most.
SQLAndy 
It’s so different by user group, too. In downtown Chicago, there’s a certain time when a huge number of attendees bail in order to make a certain train. I’ve done 90-minute sessions where several attendees came up to me at the beginning and apologized for having to get up and leave, hahaha.
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Brent, that’s interesting. Always good to note that one solution won’t fit all. Here in Orlando with urban sprawl travel time/distance is a key factor, and I suppose free parking too!
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We had 3 speakers in Tampa the next day, along with the associated sponsor demos. It was, very informative, but ultimately too much for one night. I think 2 speakers, sandwiched by 2 demos would have been a plentiful night of information.
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Jason, what do you think about larger (longer, more content) meetings less often? I can see 3 presentations being a lot. 2 to 2.5 hours seems decent to me, worth my time but not exhausting.
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