Does SQLSaturday Increase Chapter Attendance?

One of the big goals for SQLSaturday was for it to be a membership drive. It’s worked hugely well in some ways; we’ve added tremendously to the number of PASS members, grown the size of the Chapter mailing lists (for those that held a SQLSat), and introduced a lot of people to PASS/Chapters. But has […]

Working With Sponsors

Apologies for the poor photo, the example was trampled a bit on the journey home! This past weekend at SQLSaturday South Florida they put these out on the table prior to the end of the day raffle and wrap up. It’s a half sheet of yellow 8.5×11 paper, directions on one side (shown below) and […]

Marketing Materials for PASS Chapters

I brought this back with me from SQLSaturday South Florida. It’s postcard sized and laminated, and information dense in a good way. It feels like something that would be kept far more than a paper flyer or a business card. Might be interesting to make it magnetic to get it on the fridge at work […]

Notes on Marketing PASS at Non-PASS Events

This is a follow up to my previous post about Orlando Code Camp. The event team offered oPASS/MagicPASS a free sponsor table and we took them up on it. I wrote a bunch of notes about what worked and what didn’t (below), but the bigger point I want to make is that there are so […]

What Does PASS Stand For? How Do You Answer That Question?

This past weekend I was at the 10th annual Orlando Code Camp as a speaker, attendee, and helping staff the PASS/oPASS/Magic table along with Kendal Van Dyke and Shawn McGehee. We had a prime table location and we talked to quite a few people. Many knew about the local groups and SQLSaturday, many did not, […]

Thoughts on Speakers and Topics for PASS Chapters

After wrapping up my part of SQLSaturday Orlando this year I’ve been thinking on what if anything we might do to increase attendance at oPASS & MagicPASS. Attendance at both is reasonable right now, this is just me looking and thinking about what we could add to what we have now. Is more better? I’ll […]

SQLSaturday Orlando Marketing Plan-Part 49 (Plan Notes)

Introduction After finishing up six months of managing the marketing for SQLSaturday Orlando I’ve been going back through all my blog posts to outline stuff we (or any other event) can use next year. It’s not a complete project plan, but I hope it gives you some ideas and a structure to start from. I […]

Notes on SQLSaturday Admin Tools

Introduction One of the items I’ve had on my todo list for a while is to write up notes on the state of the admin tools for SQLSaturday as they pertain to marketing. For those who haven’t managed an event, SQLSaturday is really three different sites; the public facing one that most of you see, […]

SQLSaturday Orlando Marketing Plan–Part 48

This past Saturday we held our eight annual SQLSaturday. I’ll write some notes about the event and post today or tomorrow. The final registration count after marking 20-30 people as cancelled (things got hectic, was hard to track) was 640 (vs 344 last year) and our best effort on attendance count is 450 (and was […]

SQLSaturday Orlando Marketing Plan-Part 47

Notes: We sent out a final you haven’t paid for lunch reminder on Wed, asked for a reply if they were planning to bring their own. 20 or so are, so far. We don’t mind that they do of course, but it’s really valuable information because it’s another block of attendees we can confirm (or […]