SQLSaturday Orlando 2017 Goes Live

Today we’re starting on our 11th SQLSaturday here in Orlando. Normally we rotate the leadership between oPASS and MagicPASS, but this year is a bit of change – I’ll be leading this year instead of just contributing. It’s a chance for Shawn and Kendal to take a year breather and a chance for me to give […]

Reflecting on Ten Years of SQLSaturday

It’s hard to believe it’s been more than 10 years since we started the planning for the first event in Orlando. The success of the idea seems obvious now – surely the time was right for something to happen in our space. Back then though it was far from obvious. We didn’t have doubts about […]

Notes from our 3rd Student to IT Pro Seminar

Concurrent with SQLSaturday Orlando we ran our third student seminar. This is our way of giving back to the college that so kindly gives us free space for the event and of encouraging students to see IT as a great career choice. Attendance was down last year, not good. This year we had a good […]

Notes From SQLSaturday Orlando 2016

This year we held our 10th SQLSaturday, a very nice milestone to hit. I’ll reflect in a separate post on the growth and future of the overall franchise – there’s a lot to think about – but I’ll mostly keep this post specific to the event itself. This turned out to be a tough year […]

Why we need a PASS Sponsor Portal

Major sponsors in our space get hundreds of emails from us each year, all asking for money. Those are all interesting and potentially valuable invitations, but the sheer volume can be overwhelming. Beyond that, sponsors struggle to find the ROI, from picking the swag that draws people to the table to identifying venues most likely […]

The PASS Global Alliance Program (GAP)

One of the topics I forgot to mention from the Roundtable was a swell of dissatisfaction with the GAP. Not all understood it, and it’s clearly not “global” from the perspective of the non North American events. I don’t know if GAP is a good idea or not, but it started to help sponsors (and […]

The ROI of SQLSaturday

Following up on my notes about the 2016 SQLSaturday Roundtable I wanted to write more about the ROI of SQLSaturday. I suppose there are many ways to measure it, but I think it boils down to two views: How many people did we train/hours we deliver to our members? That’s what we’re in business to […]