SQLSaturday Orlando Notes – Speaker Gifts & Bags

I like to give speakers something to say thank you beyond the standard speaker shirt. It doesn’t have to be big, fancy, or expensive. I’ve always appreciated a hand written thank you card. Here in Orlando we’ve given speakers business card holders, a very nice $25 coffee cup, beach towels, chef hats, and a lot […]

SQLSaturday Orlando Notes – Speaker Shirts

I’ve always considered it important to offer a shirt to a speaker – part thank you, part making it easier for attendees to identify them as key volunteers. Does the kind of shirt matter? For some it does, they only want a polo or other ‘work class’ shirt. Or maybe they won’t wear those! Not […]

SQLSaturday Orlando Notes – Kahoot

The last two years we did Family Feud as part of our end of day gathering. Fun, exciting, and energetic are all words I’d use to describe it. Definitely a good way to end the day. If there’s a downside it’s that the audience is just that, watching but not participating. That’s not a huge […]

SQLSaturday Orlando 2019 Summary

Our 13th SQLSaturday is done. Some quick notes about the overall event, then as time/energy allow I’ll post separately on some things that went well (or didn’t) and some new things we tried. Attendance this year was 310, up slightly from the previous couple years and registration was up slightly as well. For both of […]

SpeedPASS Printing

Based on the great post and script from Wayne Sheffield I decided to try again pre-printing the SpeedPASS for everyone this year. I dislike the line of shame and I dislike having attendees wait in line for more than a couple minutes, printing them at least reduces the pain. I wanted a little more from […]

SQLSaturday Orlando 2019 Begins

We’ll be event number 911, set for September 28th at our usual location at Seminole State College. Maybe something interesting to do there as far as a theme. Call for speakers is open and we’re looking for pre-cons (send quickly, we’ll be deciding in the next week or so). I have two personal goals for […]

Notes from Jacksonville, Atlanta, and South Florida

Misc notes: Jax. Ice cream break in the afternoon is nice, but the waffle cones on site make all the difference, the smell is hard to miss! Jax. Rooms in two different locations is harder. This isn’t uncommon (Tampa had a variation of this) and it’s worth extra effort to help people to find the […]

The Two Year Plan

Earlier this year as I thought about what I wanted to try in Orlando related to the SQL community and thought about the time commitment, I realized it was also “time” to think about what comes next for me. I came up with this: I want fewer ongoing commitments so I can spent that time […]

Notes from SQLSaturday Tampa 2019

Late notes! Great signs at the event, all hand written on flip chart paper. Cheap and effective, the “different” nature of the signs made them easy to spot Rooms were scattered again. Not much to be done, we take what’s available, but it does add a little bit of friction The acoustics in the main […]

SQLSaturday Atlanta & South Florida 2019

I’ll be in South Florida again this year and will stay over as usual for a couple days of vacation. I see Brent is attending; I’ll have to make sure we’re not scheduled at the same time so that he gets a few attendees in his session! I had not planned to travel outside Florida […]