Community Pollination by Karla Landrum

Sunday closed the call for speakers for Pensacola’s 3^rd Annual SQL Saturday, and each year it gets tougher and tougher to decide just what sessions to select.  This year we had 93 sessions submitted and had to narrow it down to about a third of this.  Knowing historically how hard this part can be, I started analyzing a few days prior to Sunday, and thank goodness I did, because I still didn’t make my goal of announcing the final agenda on Monday.  I have my excuses, but what would be the point of that now. (ok, maybe one, the SQL Saturday website update Monday evening…let’s just say, took an upper cut to the chin!).

This year I wanted to really mix it up, so I’m excited that we will have 16 new faces speaking for Pensacola’s SQL Saturday for the first time.  We will also have 13 returning, most of which have spoken at the past two year’s events, and several of those being local talent.  And since I know someone is going to ask, we have 7 MVPs presenting this year…wait, make that 9 since we have Andy Leonard [blog| twitter] and Kevin D. Wolf [blog| twitter] doing pre-cons for us on SQL Friday this year!

Ladies and Gentlemen, let’s get ready to rumble LEARN! I present to you Pensacola’s 3^rd Annual SQL Saturday Heavyweight Champions:

http://www.sqlsaturday.com/77/schedule.aspx

See you all in June!  As our hometown pride Roy would say, Pensacola in the House!!!

The month of April began with the very first ever SQL Saturday in Honolulu, Hawaii.  I didn’t get to attend, but from what I’ve been told and watched all that day in pics via twitter, it was a great success for them.  Their final attendee count via the website was 158, and 132 of those were actual “shows” for the day of the event.  That’s a very good number for a first time SQL Saturday, and for only having three tracks.  You can tell by some of the pictures (see below), these presenters had some very full rooms.

Team SQL Saturday Hawaii and I had a “debriefing” call this past Thursday to discuss what they felt went right, and what could they do better, and they wanted to go ahead and actually pick next year’s date for their 2^nd Annual SQL Saturday (which I think they are looking at closer to mid April 2012). W00T!! Things that went right for them, the venue was very ideal, and parking was free from the college, so made it very easy for attendees to get access.  The rooms were very large and held a decent amount of people, which was needed.  Something they hope for next time is the ability to get into the facility the evening or day before and do the set-up of the vendor tables and post the signage.  They weren’t able to do any of this until the morning of their event, so they felt very rushed, even though based on event evals submitted so far, the attendees felt the check-in process was very efficient.  They had gone with very traditional bento boxes for lunch, but based on feedback so far, it sounds like they should go with another option for lunch time next year.  They mentioned in the call potentially using the college cafeteria, which apparently provides a very nice lunch for such events.

As far as next year’s date, I recommended that they one, post it up as soon as they know, so more speakers can potentially be involved in the next event.  And two, that they space the date farther away from other large conferences.  This year’s SQL Saturday fell the same week as DevConnections, which I think a couple of those presenters would have tried to make it to Hawaii.  They also plan to add more tracks next year, in particularly, a full track for SharePoint and BI.  Their local presenter, Wen He [blog| LinkedIn ], did two SharePoint sessions, one including BI, and both rooms were packed out.  (By the way, received an email from Wen post the event, thanking us for picking him and sharing an email he received from someone saying how professional a speaker he was and that he was TechEd quality. How nice!  Wen, btw, bought a new $2K laptop for his SQL Saturday debut, said it was well worth it. Sweet!).

Many thanks to all the speakers, sponsors, Team SQL Saturday Hawaii, and of course the attendees for making SQL Saturday #72 a great event!  Looking forward to next year, hopefully I’ll be at it!