Rockin’ Around the OPASS Christmas Tree

I am super excited to announce that Orlando PASS will be hosting another holiday social event this December 18^th. Last year Shawn, me, and really the entire team were all just too busy to make it happen, but we all felt so badly about not doing it, that we were determined to make sure we had it this year.

As we’ve done in the past, we’ll be making sure everyone walks away with a gift that night, as every attendee (including significant others) will get to participate in the Dirty Santa fun (many call this other things, like White Elephant, not sure where I picked up Dirty Santa from over the years, but it just has stuck with me). We’ll be limiting attendance to 60 since we want to be sure we have enough goodies for all. If by chance we manage to procure more swag than that, we’ll up the limit (our venue for this special evening, the Lake Mary Cork & Olive, holds up to 150).

In addition to the gift grabbing switching fun and good eats we’ll have for this year end finale, we’re doing a fund raiser to help support the local Rescue Outreach Mission’s “Loaves and Fishes Program”. ROM is who we provide any leftover BBQ and fixin’s to from the SQLSaturday event each year here in Orlando, so we thought we’d do more for them since the SQLSaturday is only once a year.

Not that our members need bribed, but to help raise food donations, we’re raffling off an Xbox One bundle. Everyone who attends on the 18^th will get one raffle ticket for a chance to win the Xbox, but for every 5 non-perishable food items that an attendee brings, they’ll earn an extra raffle ticket to help raise their chances of winning. We’ll be including not just food donations, but anything provided from their list of needed items.

Two years ago we tried charging $10 (optional) for any couples attending the holiday social, but it didn’t really drive attendance, so we’re hoping this “good will” and fun activity of helping the needy will really hit a home run for us and our community this year.

I want to thank our two sponsors for this year’s holiday event, SIOS and SanDisk. Their contributions are going to help make this the best ever OPASS Holiday Social, covering all of the yummy food, and a good portion of the Xbox One we’ll be purchasing (come on Black Friday deals!). We’re estimating that we’ll need to probably use less than $200 from our portion of funds raised from the SQLSaturday, which is a good investment to us since we’re hoping we’ll collect at least 500 lbs in donations for RMO.

If you’ll be in Orlando December 18^th, please RSVP. We’d love to see as many #sqlfamily there as possible! And don’t forget those can goods!