My Role at SQLSaturday Orlando This Year

Last year I took on the marketing of SQLSaturday and a good time doing it, with some nice results for the extra effort I invested. As I thought about what I wanted to do this year and what I had time for, I realized I couldn’t make the long commitment marketing requires (months of continuous […]

Thoughts on Venue Selection for SQLSaturday and Chapter Meetings

Last week oPASS held their January meeting at a wine bar. Before that it was held at a local training institute/college, a restaurant, a different restaurant, a hotel meeting room, I think another restaurant, way back when in my office when I had space, and before that at the local training center. I might have […]

Notes from the January 29, 2015 oPASS Meeting

New location, the Cork and Olive in Lake Mary. Fairly easy to find and easy to get to, plenty of parking Meeting space is high top tables, with room for a screen and there is a monitor already in the room too. Nice space Food was pizza. Blah. Bar doesn’t have iced tea either! The […]

Notes From The October 15, 2014 oPASS & MagicPASS Meeting (The Souza-Thon!)

Both groups met at a special joint meeting last night at Nova University, part of Operation Souza. Before I go into my usual notes, I want to say thank you to Mark Souza for traveling from Redmond for the meeting. He flew overnight to get here and had a 6 am flight the next morning, […]

Operation Souza

This Wednesday we’re having a special joint meeting of oPASS and MagicPASS featuring Microsoft GM Mark Souza. For the past couple months we’ve referred to it internally as “Operation Souza” as we discussed how to best support his visit and do the most for our local SQL community. We contacted Mark originally to see if […]

Joint oPASS/MagicPASS Meeting Scheduled for October 15, 2014- Featuring Mark Souza In Person!

Big news for us in Orlando! On October 15th Mark Souza, General Manager – Data Platform Group at Microsoft, is going to speak to a joint oPASS/MagicPASS chapter meeting. Just having a joint meeting is a big deal, but having Mark as the speaker – hard to believe! The topic? We’ll share more on that […]

Building the SQLSaturday Orlando Marketing Plan-Part 7

Just spent some time re-reading my notes far and my ideas from before – glad I wrote them down, lots and lots to think on and easy to forget something (though I will probably miss some things anyway). Updated thoughts: What list is the list? We have an oPASS list, a MagicPass list, and the […]

Building the SQLSaturday Orlando Marketing Plan–Part 6 (Seminars)

Seminars (aka “pre-cons”) have been part of the DNA of SQLSaturday going back to #1. For those that weren’t there we started off with Joe Celko doing our first one and it went really well. I think we sold it at $99, included his latest book and lunch, and had about 70 paying attendees. That […]

Building the SQLSaturday Orlando Marketing Plan–Part 5

More notes, many from a chat with Kendal. We wish we could see the open rate on email and an easy way to do A/B testing. The emailer in the site (mine, or a derivative maybe) was just built to send a lot of email, no bells and whistles. Would the open rate help? Don’t […]

Building the SQLSaturday Orlando Marketing Plan–Part 4

I spent some more time last night thinking about the event and marketing it. Biased I am, but I think the event has a great value proposition and doesn’t require “selling” except to first timers (seminars are different). We seem to do pretty well at getting first timers to attend, so it worth extra effort […]