I’m Presenting at SQLSaturday Jacksonville on May 9th, 2015

I’ll be headed a bit north of Orlando next month for SQLSaturday Jacksonville to present Turbocharge Your Career With a Learning Plan.

Changes to the SQLSaturday Numbering System

Tim Ford has a post on the PASS blog today about Feedback Requested on SQLSaturday Numbering System that is worth a quick read and comment. Basically the idea is to remove the numbers from the event title to make it easier to reuse marketing materials. My feedback on the change: Joe Healy suggested the numbering […]

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 […]

From a SQLSaturday Volunteer: There Was a Lot More To This Than I Ever Knew

This past weekend in Tampa I spoke with a first time volunteer who had attended the events before (in Tampa and other cities) and he said that he had been really surprised and impressed by the amount of work that the event requires. I think he was disappointed a little that he had not realized […]

Celebrating First Time Speakers in the PASS Universe

I’ve long been an advocate of growing more speakers locally, something that turns out to be surprisingly hard to do, at least here in Orlando. This past weekend I was at SQLSaturday Tampa watching the end of day raffle and was interested to hear that one of the winners was also speaking for the first […]

Notes From SQLSaturday#371 Tampa

Very nice event this past weekend. I attended the volunteer dinner on Friday night after an uneventful trip down I4. Speaker shirt was different this year, a nice short sleeve button up from Columbia. Saturday everything went smoothly. I did my presentation on Learning Plans first thing, attended an interesting session on master data management, […]

Notes From SQLSaturday #362 in Austin

Direct flight from Orlando to Austin is nice Austin airport/rental car setup is nice, easy in and out Have to admit the 80 mph zones speed up the drive from the airport up to Round Rock Event was at the Wingate Hotel & Convention Center. Reasonable at $100 night, nothing fancy. Speaker dinner was at […]

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 […]

Live Near Austin? Join Me At SQLSaturday #362 on January 31, 2015

My trip to SQLSaturday Austin starts Friday with an early afternoon flight direct from Orlando. I’m hoping I can arrive, get my rental car, and get on the road to the hotel before Friday afternoon traffic gets going (I say that with Orlando traffic in mind of course). I’m really looking forward to the trip. […]

SQL Track at Orlando Code Camp

One of the things I worked on as part of SQLSaturday Orlando last year was increasing the engagement with the local .Net group (ONETUG). One of the offshoots of that is that they’ve invited the SQL groups to chair the SQL track this year for Code Camp. Kendal asked for feedback on what kind of […]