The Jacksonville SQL Server Users Group (www.jssug.com) is hosting a SQL 2008 launch event on Friday, Sep 12, 2008 in downtown Jacksonville. Plans are for 15 sessions, all focusing on SQL 2008 and most being presented by speakers who live in the greater Jacksonville area. Registration is open at http://www.sqlsaturday.com/register.aspx?eventid=10. Think of this is a super user group meeting rather than a true community event, the former being less formal and less complicated logistically.

As an interesting aside we're hosting the event on the SQLSaturday site/framework even though it's not truly a 'Saturday' event. It has the tools and process in place, why not use it? We're expecting that to happen more going forward and are working on some ideas to let us present various views of the events so as to avoid the mental disconnect resulting from having a Friday event hosted on a Saturday site!

Our 3rd SQLSaturday went amazingly well due to the efforts of Brian Knight and his volunteers. Attendance for the day was a massive 275 people! The day started well with wait time for check in no more than 5 minutes and everyone was patient thanks to our "greeter" Scott. Having someone working the line and letting everyone know what is going on is a great way to start the day, shows that you care and provides a mean to notify attendees of last minute changes. It got a bit hectic between 8-9 am with everyone checking in, getting coffee and doughnuts, and then moving on to visit with the sponsors and start putting tickets into the raffle boxes. Shawn Weisfeld managed the coffee station, making something like 12 gallons of coffee throughout the day! Sessions started on time with no issues.

Lunch was from Jason's Deli and serving lunch went quickly, the only glitch was that we ran short of vegetarian meals. Because there was very little inside seating in the common area we had close to 200 people sitting under the trees picnic style enjoying the weather and a nice break. Through out the day speakers were giving away "book tickets" so that the winners could visit the prize desk and redeem it for the book of their choice. We had terrific support from Apress, Wrox, Microsoft Press. At the end of the day everyone gathered in the large auditorium for the "big" raffles from the sponsors, things like an Xbox from Red Gate, Bluetooth Car Speaker Phone from End to End Training (us!), some copies of Vista & Visual Studio from Microsoft, a Zune (and the sponsor escapes me), and a few more. Raffle went quickly and smoothly, and then we adjourned to 7 Bridges Grille for the after party - I'd guess 50-60 attended, more than normal but proportionably about what we usually expect - lots of people tired after a day of training and just want to go home!

Met a lot of new people this weekend and I'm sure I'll miss a few; Kent Waldrop, Jaime Campbell (talked to both of them about mentoring), Rodney Landrum (author of SQL 2005 Reporting Services from Apress), Brandie Tarvin (fellow author here on SSC), Plamen Ratchevm, Geoff Hiten, and Tim Mitchell. Brian Knights brother Devin gave his first presentation, I got to spend some time talking with old friend Brian Kelley (who drove down from South Carolina for the event), and my friend Chris Rock did a new presentation this time that went pretty well, showing that his efforts to become a first class speaker are paying dividends.

I also had the chance to evangelize a bit about SQLSaturday, speaking at length with Geoff Hiten (Atlanta), Tim Mitchell (Dallas), and Brian Kelly (Columbia, SC), and a lot of others in less detail. More on that later in the week, but it's clear there is interest, just a lot of education to be done.

My own sessions went well, my standard one on Transactional Replication is always well received, and I did an impromptu session on Professional Development and Mentoring that was part lecture/part Q&A. There's definitely a need for mentors and career guidance, now to find a way to help provide it!

Later in the week I'll some notes about things we can do to improve next time.

Wishing for a SQLSaturday in your area? Let us know you're interested! http://www.sqlsaturday.com/interested.aspx 

I'm headed back to Orlando after a quick trip to Charlotte. Flew in yesterday and spent some time with my friend Peter Shire and team (including Brooke!) of SQLSentry talking about all manner of stuff that comes up when you get some techies in a quiet room; business, user groups, their experiences at SQLSaturday in Orlando and the possibility of one in Charlotte, PASS, etc, etc. Peter is the current President of the Charlotte SQL group and has had some good experience rebuilding interest in the group after a bit of a slide (very common thing to happen). We headed over to the event about 5 pm, got a little bit of a late start, and then I did my usual presentation on Transactional Replication. Always a fun presentation. It's perhaps not as sexy as some topics, but it's fun to open the door to a new technology by showing attendees how straight forward it is to use. Had some good questions during the event and quite a few stayed after to talk more, including some guys from Mariner (though I did miss my friend Wayne Synder!).

Peter runs a good meeting, liked the way he handled the sponsor (in particular) and the raffle, and the speaker intro. Only suggestion I made was to give everyone name tags to make it a little easier to get to know each other. He's also been aggressive about soliciting non-local speakers, something I have not done and will try to work on - it doesn't hurt to ask.

This topic came up during the speaker reception at the South Florida Code Camp and while I've posted here and there, it's probably worth writing down some thoughts about what events like Code Camp and SQLSaturday can do to make being a sponsor more attractive.

• Treat me like a customer that is just as important as your attendees, your speakers, or your site host!
• Give me plenty of advance notice. I need to budget for it and fit it into my schedule. Ideally talk to me 4-6 months prior to the event, at a minimum 3 months prior.
• Give me some basic options, and be prepared to bargain some. Impress me by putting together a nice sponsor package that shows you have a plan and that you take sponsors seriously. I know you need hard dollars, not software valued at x dollars, but sometimes there is room to compromise - be open to the conversation. If it's a new event or the first time my company will be a sponsor, be prepared to spend some time with me at lunch or dinner. That's right, you've got to convince me that it's a good venue for me, that the cost vs return is likely to work out, and most importantly, convince me that you can make the event happen.
• Accept checks and credit cards. It's your event, I don't have time to buy soda, cookies, etc in lieu of you collecting cash.
• Guarantee that if the event cancels, I get a full refund
• Give me a deadline and address for sending you collateral to be placed in event bags. It's critical that the items be placed in the bags, just laying out on the table greatly reduces the number of people that will take the time to look at it. By placing in the bag that will look through it while waiting on a session to start.
• On the day of the event have someone at registration to specifically help sponsors. Tables should be set up and labeled in advance, and just having someone help carry all the stuff to the table is a great help. Have a hand truck or other cart available for sponsors to use.
• Set up sponsor tables in a way that insures traffic flow. One method is to locate them immediately following registration, the other is to locate them immediately after the food. Either way, set things up so that people naturally flow directly by the sponsor tables. Also, it's fair that the biggest (paying the most) sponsors get the best locations.
• Give attendees a name tag! Sponsors need to talk to attendees and making the name exchange easier makes it easier to start the conversation. It's also a good idea from just a pure networking perspective.
• Make it easy for attendees to share their contact information with us. One way is to pre-print a set of 10 or so 'business cards' for each attendee and include in the bag, another is to barcode the info on their badge using PDF417 or similar format. The latter does require sponsors to acquire a more expensive barcode reader but it is worth while. The sad alternative is forcing attendees to write down their contact info over and over again, and it's common to lose 20% of those due to illegibility, plus it just annoys the attendee.
• Make my logo very visible on your web site, proportional to my investment of course
• Provide attendees with some type of printed event guide/schedule that also features sponsor logos
• Ask if I'll be raffling or giving away an item that will probably be of interest to most attendees, then highlight that in pre-event email, then again at the key note - remember, these freebies help drive people to your event.
• Provide access to internet and electricity, or let me know it will not be available.
• Consider doing an event polo or tshirt for attendees and put sponsor logos on it as well. Polo's are the preferred choice, but realistically tshirts are the most cost effective for large crowds.
• Sponsors attend events to either build their contact lists or to directly demo their products/services, so look for ways to help them achieve their goal. For example, offering a sponsor track or special lunch time sponsor sessions.
• Try to provide someone to help with break down and clean up near the end of the day

I know that sounds like a lot. What do you get in return?

• Cash. Most free events have very real hidden costs, ranging from lunch and tshirts to signage and coffee cups. If you can do without cash, you don't need sponsors, right? (Note: Most attendees actually enjoy access to sponsors and find it adds value to the event)
• I'll be spreading the word about your event to everyone I know, to increase the attendance and my ROI, and to highlight involvement in the community - a good thing for any business to do
• If you do a good job managing the event and your relationship with me, I'll be there as a reference and will most likely be an easy sell the next year

Put as much effort into your sponsors as you do the attendees, speakers, volunteers, and site host and things will go well.

As a user group leader I see new products as a chance to make sure our members know about the new features (or pitfalls) of a new release, and to grow and evangelize our group - not a novel approach, but sound I think. Met with Shawn Weisfeld from ONETUG last night to discuss what we might do to put together a launch event for our respective (SQL & .Net) communities next year. It's going to be a little strange since VS 2008 is RTM, SQL 2008 is somewhere on the horizon, and perhaps Server 2008 is somewhere in between? It was an interesting discussion; how do we something different from our annual events (SQLSaturday, Orlando Code Camp) that will still be fun, leverage our event experience, and not just be a waste of time for attendees? We want something demo focused, not the fancy demo's you see at TechEd, something down to earth that shows how to employ a new feature. How do I create a spatial index? How does the new date data type work? I think seeing that stuff used in minimalistic fashion helps people relate it to the work they do now, looking for the one or two killer features (for them) that might make it worth the pain of the upgrade!

What's a good format? Do we rent a theatre and just put a succession of demo doers up front? Good for a large audience, but harder to get participation. Maybe something less formal akin to a chalk talk? What's a good venue for that? Or do we go for a few flashy demo's and just make it a fun event, perhaps at the FunSpot?

The challenge of course is to provide value to those that attend as they'll be taking time off from work. I like SQL Server, earn my living from it even, but for a community launch event to work it can't be all fluff and spin. I think it's enough to look at the new features and how to employ them without a lot of 'this feature saved Company X 2000 man hours' or whatever the marketing people come up with. Or do people find value in seeing how the early adopters find value and all the success stories?

We had our final meeting of the year last night, minutes posted here. Pretty good turn out, 22 total. And given that we started the group back up in April with about 10 attendees, we're growing nicely.

Highlight for me last night was getting more feedback from the group itself about SQLSaturday. Clearly they take some pride in the event and the way we used volunteers really contributed to that. We had a good discussion about speaker evaluations and I'll be posting more on that soon. Also was the first time I had seen Brian talk about performance tuning in SSIS and was interesting to see some of the not so obvious things you can do to improve performance, we're discussing changing his current class to include or possibly extending to a 5th day.