SQLSat Baton Rouge 2023!

Looking forward to #jambalaya at #SQLSatBR on July 29!

Register today: sqlsatbr.com

I hope to see as many people as possible that weekend, I'll be there at the Friday night speaker event.

On Saturday, I am speaking at:

• 9:45am about how you can contribute to the same Microsoft Docs I work on every day, Microsoft Docs + GitHub + You. Slidedeck available for download.
• 11am I'll be moderating the annual panel conversation about Careers in IT Baton Rouge 2023.
• 1:15pm after lunch meet me in the big auditorium for a brand new exciting SQL Saturday Jeopardy! A Quiz Show for Devs and Data Pros. I'm still looking for at least one more contestant, reach out to me on LinkedIn if you're interested!

See you there!

Speaking at SQLSaturday MN 2022

Thanks all for joining me for two sessions at SQLSaturday Minnesota 2023, and for great feedback and questions. I'm always a big supporter of SQLSaturday events whenever I can and I was honored to speak virtually to this conference again!

Slide decks for my two presentations are available for download on GitHub.

SQLSaturday Baton Rouge is back!

Looking forward to jambalaya at #SQLSatBR in THIS SATURDAY! Also looking forward to speaking and seeing all of you there, I guess... Register today: https://sqlsaturday.com/2022-08-06-sqlsaturday1026/

After I stepped down from the SQLSaturday Baton Rouge organizing committee lead in 2019, I had no idea what was to come. A pandemic, the dissolution of SQL PASS, and two missed Augusts later, SQLSaturday Baton Rouge is back! One thing I did get right in 2019: other volunteers deserved the chance to lead and organize and network and they've been doing a great job, from what I can tell so far. I'm happy to see the assets and resources we'd built together over 11 years of SQLSaturdays at LSU continue to be put to use.

I am speaking at:

- 9:45am in the Careers in IT panel

- 11am for Tabletop Role-playing Games at Work for Fun & Profit with Stacy Vicknair and Christine Assaf - Presentation available for download

- 1:30pm for How to Think Like a Certification Exam - Presentation available for download

See you there!

Ethics in Modern Data presentation at SQLSaturday Austin BI Edition 2020

Excited to launch another new presentation, the first co-presented with my wife, on Ethics in Modern Data. We'll explore the ethical considerations around historical bias, ethics in analysis and data collection, and disparate impact, with tons of well-documented case studies and examples.

This is an important topic that lives at the crossroads of both of our careers, my wife's career in organizational psychology and human resources, my career in data, and our joint passion for history and civil rights. The effort of researching, paring down, and rehearsing our presentation together as a couple has been an exciting first for us. It's important to understand that when dealing with bias, outcomes matter, intentions don't.

Thanks to the many of you who chimed in during the presentation, including with further reading and book recommendations for us all!

If you'd review any of the topics or case studies we covered, our slides and citations is available for download here.

Thanks to UserGroup.tv, a recording of our presentation is available here.

My wife also presented at Austin SQLSaturday BI 2020 on "Mastering your Resume & Interview: Tips to Get Hired" Saturday afternoon.

Ethics in Data @HRTact @william_a_dba #sqlsataustinBI pic.twitter.com/pf8r4Hpx3I

— Alicia Moniz (@AliciaMoniz) February 8, 2020

The SQLSaturday pitch to host facilities

Not being able to find a good, affordable venue to host a SQLSaturday is a show-stopping problem that is common to a lot of events, especially SQLSaturdays getting started or having to relocate in their city. Let's talk about the sales pitch that we as SQLSaturday organizers can give during initial introductions and conversations with a new potential host venue.

I presented these ideas at PASS Summit's SQLSaturday leaders meeting on 11/5/2019.

1. First off, to review typical meeting facilities:

   

   LSU Business Education Complex atrium, home of SQLSatBR

• community colleges and universities, technical/trade colleges
• training or conference centers
• technology parks or business incubators
• Microsoft Technology Centers
• hotels as a last resort, because of the typically high cost
2. Leverage PASS
• Mention how PASS is an international organization that has hosted over a thousand of these events, include a link. This is a large, leading professional organization for data platform professionals.
• Mention that SQLSaturdays around the world are hosted at major universities, include some that have happened in nearby cities, similar-sized markets, or their competitors!
• Put an emphasis on engaging with the local community of potential students, clients, tech enthusiasts. SQLSaturdays are authentic opportunities to get involved in the local tech community, something that many public institutions of higher education desire.
• Mention the local and (inter)national sponsors at nearby or recent events, and what locations hosted them.
3. Pitching to universities

   

   SQLSatBR sponsor lineup, including facility host LSU
   and our monthly UG hosts, LTP and ASC

• If going after a university or college, try first reaching out directly to faculty, especially faculty who teach databases, business intelligence, or analytics. By leveraging them internally, you can cut through a lot of bureaucracy if the event becomes internally-sponsored.
• Many universities have master's or certificate programs in data analytics and cybersecurity these days. Try to reach out to that program's faculty personally.
• Of course, use your alumni/alumnae relationship, or that of a fellow SQLSaturday organizer, to work inside the academic institution, bypassing red tape.
• Now, if you're talking to someone who manages the facilities for rental, they probably don't care about any of that. They're probably just thinking in terms of rooms, fees, cleaning staff, etc. Try to talk to someone on the instruction or academic side.
• Make sure to state that everyone can attend, not just user group members. The general public, including faculty and students, is welcomed, and that it is free. 
• Universities, especially public institutions, will balk at charging admission.
• Make sure to offer an opportunity for the host facility's faculty, staff, instructors, or experts can get involved to speak with guaranteed slots on the schedule. Worth it if you can get the facility for free!
• Again, maybe don't talk to facilities or building management. If you're an alumni, or know an alumni, work that relationship for a meeting.
• Mention that some other (admittedly, not many) get facilities for free because of the benefit to the academic institution for hosting such an event.
• Being organized as a non-profit entity may help...
• Operating or representing a nonprofit org cannot hurt. In the United States, this is a 501c3 or 501c6. Some organizations only give free space to nonprofits, for example, many public university systems only work with nonprofits, and public libraries do this too.
• Incorporating as a non-profit is a different topic altogether with differences but if you can't figure out your local bureaucracy yourself, for help forming the organization, consider going to a law clinic at a University, or local services that specialize in forming and servicing nonprofits.
• Gilda Alvarez added a great addition to this topic right after I spoke at the SQLSaturday organizer meeting: Work a relationship with a large company's recruiting as an in to the university. In Orlando, Gilda's organizers worked through Deloitte's recruiting arm to convince a university to host a SQLSaturday event, and it worked out very well.
• Use your experience in the field to offer to speak to University clubs, such as AITP or ACM, or Women in Technology groups, or just as a guest lecturer. Consider also contacting and trying to get involved in departmental advisory committees. These are ways to meet faculty and start working on strategic partnership between the school and the SQLSaturday. 
4. Get them involved directly



LSU's booth at SQLSaturday Baton Rouge

• Offer a top-level sponsorship and table to your host organization, free of charge, to help your host facility attract new students or clients.
• Feature them and their message just like any other sponsor.
• Offer a spot on your schedule to any host faculty.
• Offer to put their students on the schedule to give a project showcase of their work.
• Consider scheduling when students are on campus and can attend.
• Mention that your event can help showcase their building, draw community attention to it. Especially if the building or a part of campus is new.
5. Tips for good host relationship
• Bring your own free-standing folding cardboard garbage bins and bags, making garbage cleanup fast and easy, and without overfilling the host venue's small trash cans.
• If possible, haul the garbage directly to a dumpster for the venue, and recycling to the appropriate place.
• Make sure your volunteers team knows that everyone's job is to pick up trash and clean up at the end of the day, and sweep all the classrooms for trash.
• Be sure to thank the host facility at the end of day raffle, publicly, and invite them to join. 
• Use easels or free-standing signage instead of taping signage to walls, doors, or glass. In general, don't tape anything to walls or doors!

My Organizer's Notes and Goodbye after #SQLSatBR 2019

Some 2019 tips for other SQLSat organizers from my last year as lead organizer of SQLSatBR. I hope as a fellow organizer, you can pull some ideas and inspiration for your future events!

• Last year we tried to take an "action" pic of each sponsor booth. We sent a personal email and included those photos to the sponsors this year, with an email "We'd love to have you back at SQLSaturday Baton Rouge 2019!" This year, we included action shots from Saturday in our "thank you" email that also included the scanned raffle badges for those sponsors. It worked to renew a sponsor in a couple cases, and we received some really nice replies to those emails. Examples:

• Always capture booth "action" photos, of conversations taking place and with big crowds in the background/foreground. Use them as great call-outs on social media. Big crowd shots are always winners, tell your photographers! Then, we post all our photos in a shared community photo album for anyone to contribute.
  
• Our Thursday night bag-packing event was just so impressive. Notice our double-barreled, assembly-line approach to packing 500 bags in <2 hours. We also packed our third annual speaker goodie bags as a team that night, which was nice, since I'd done that on my dinner table in past years. 


• In an effort to reduce waste and our landfill impact, we bought biodegradable badge holders this year instead of the slightly cheaper PVC badge holders which are worn once, tossed in a landfill forever. (Biodegradable plastic badge holders aren't as common to find, we bought from kleertech.com and they worked fine with the SpeedPASS PDF name badges that are 4" wide.) We also had our vendor use biodegradable paper-based serving boxes for the lunches instead of standard styrofoam. 

• Be sure to recognize your user group and host facility partners, offer them a special place in the sponsor lineup. We were fortunate in a position to offer both the La. Tech Park and LSU a free booth at our event, as a big thank you for the free host facilities they provide us year after year. We also reached out and provided free booth space to the local Toastmasters group and a nonprofit that offers STEM education to low SES kids in our city.  But it's important that we make sure to reach out and offer our host facilities some recognition and an opportunity to participate, rather than just a transactional facility rental.
  
  Especially if your host is a higher education facility that provides post-grad certificates or degrees, which are major revenue sources, they would likely appreciate an opportunity to staff a booth and get their pitch out. This type of relationship is the type that leads the school to give us the facility for free, because the department is "hosting" our event rather than renting us rooms, so we bend over backwards to thank them.

• We plan on expanding the use of facilitated panel discussions next year, they have been the past three years well attended and an additional honor to speakers and community partners including new potential sponsors. This includes the CIT Panel that we've done for years in partnership with Careers in Tech and our CIO Panels in the past. 

• Feedback from Kenny Neal, our amazing schedule master: "If we could get a drag and drop scheduling module for sqlsaturday.com it would be great. Like a listing of approved sessions on one side and let me drag them where I want them." Our schedulemaster was otherwise very happy with the new features on the admin SQLSaturday site this year. Gotta keep them happy. Big thanks to all speakers who spoke multiple times, some on short notice, and some three times back-to-back-to-back. Speaker dropouts are always a reality and easy to overcome when you have an diverse, experienced speaker lineup from around the country. Our strategy is to accept single sessions from as many distinct speakers as possible, and then add second sessions from their repertoire as needed.
  
• Our Friday sponsor/speaker/volunteer dinner featured live music from the jazz band led by one of our long-time volunteers and a local data professional, Lori St George. Honestly it exceeded all expectations and Lori's Collaboration Band was a huge hit. It was an amazing collection of musical genius until they brought some of our SQLSatBR organizers up on stage for a hard-working finale.
  
  Are there any fun music acts in your local SQL community? Pro tip: don't ask them to play for free. Don't ask any independent/freelance folks to do what they do for free. We paid our tee shirt artist for design time, our band (no website for them... yet), our user group logo designer, and the baker of our pralines and bread pudding. If someone wants to volunteer their time, great, but if you're asking them for their normal services offer to pay their normal rate.
  
• Blown away by all the people who participated in our small remembrance of SQLSaturday volunteer photographer and Baton Rouge community volunteer Carter Spade. Carter tragically passed away in July, leaving a void in many volunteer organizations like ours. Thanks for joining us in that, friends. Thanks for all your help in years past, Carter.
  
• Our second year of a STEM Kid's Track was a hit. I visited the classroom after lunch, and the 30 kids in there were actively typing, plugging away, smiling and laughing, planning and debugging, and definitely the opposite of bored. Produced by the Foundation for the EBR School System, it sold out really fast despite being greatly expanded. There were definitely some disappointed parents. Next year we plan two classrooms, and an expanded partnership with STEM educational organizations in the city including the La. Women in Technology group, who we raised money for at our end-of-day raffle, netting a total donation of $1452.
  
  Someone asked why a few years ago we started emphasizing, featuring, showcasing, and raising money for STEM education nonprofits like The Futures Fund. It's because stuff like this helps the event to be more than "established IT professional training established IT professionals". We cast a wider net, a wider view. I don't want to be a part of an insular same-faces-every-year cycle. That's one of the reasons I have stepped down as lead organizer of SQLSatBR, but will be around to help the volunteers ready to step up.

Why am I stepping down as SQLSatBR lead organizer? There are a few reasons, I'll explain some here. I definitely will continue to support the both our SQLSat Baton Rouge conferences in 2020 as a volunteer, as well as the SQL user groups, as well as my role as a PASS Regional Mentor. But not as lead organizer for the SQLSatBR planning committee.

1. Organizing the SQLSaturday has been really good for me professionally and personally. I've met tons of people. I've exercised skills as a public speaker, decision-maker, organizer, logistics. I've made friends from fellow organizers and volunteers, vendors in the community. I've exercised gratefulness in making sure to thank people as often and as individually as possible. So, why shouldn't others be able to do this? Other volunteers deserve the chance to own a larger portion of the conference we've built together since 2009. The Baton Rouge SQLSat scene is great to have not only a new SQLSat BI event coming in 2020, but also a dozen folks who I think would be perfectly capable and enthusiastic about running the conference, talking with sponsorships, making sure the spending lines up with the fundraising, talking to vendors, etc.
2. First off, we have a ton of volunteer/organizers. I have had a lot of help. I want to make sure a smooth a transition as possible happens, so while I won't be lead, I will still be around. I'll probably be speaking more, leading less. But others deserve, want, and are enthusiastic about filling my shoes. There's no better time, the table is set and a great crew of volunteers is hungry. I left with a tight throat but with no animus, no regrets, and no apprehension that this thing that I have grown and loved will continue on. It'll be different in their way, and that's OK.
3. I'm not sure what I'll do with my freed-up time in the late summers, but I'll figure it out. Don't worry about me. My wife and I have an empty nest and many adventures ahead of us. 'nuff said.

In case I got a little too choked up on Friday night, here's the notes I printed:

Lemme talk a little about SQLSaturday Baton Rouge.
I was just bragging on Twitter about the awesome volunteers we have, literally a couple dozen people show up, new faces and old, to help pack 500 attendee bags and a few dozen speaker bags. We have an amazing venue given to us free via our partnership with the LSU College of Business and the Stephenson Department of Entrepreneurship and Information Systems. We have an artist we’ve known and trusted for years for our poster and tee shirt designs. We’ve got documents, spreadsheets, contact lists. We got shared accounts for email and docs and social media. We’ve got a UPS Store box, we’ve got a high-falootin business bank account with have a dozen card holders and hours of paperwork, we’ve got a legal not for profit corporation. We even got branding for the SQL, .NET and Analytics User Groups to share a common logo concept across all our platforms and signage. We’ve got an amazing team up here, of DBA’s, Dev’s, and Data Professionals, and Microsoft MVP’s and Microsoft employees,
, and one lead singer who is also a data professional.
, and one Oracle DBA but we don’t hold that against Kristen. 

So when I say that 2019 is my last year as lead organizer of SQLSaturday Baton Rouge, I am stepping down from that role, and this is me announcing that to everyone, everyone including my wife, I’m saying it with a high degree of confidence that this thing we’re all doing with our free time in the late summer is in good hands. I’m not vanishing, I’ll be around to help, I’ll probably speak at the event, but this team has got this and we will work deliberately to make sure we’re as successful in 2020 as we have been in the past.
So, enough from me, thank you all, please eat, enjoy the music, see you tomorrow morning.

Emphasizing STEM Community Education at your SQLSaturday

Was honored to speak to fellow SQLSaturday Organizers at the PASS Summit SQLSat organizer meeting on Tuesday. Here's an outline, detail and links to some of the things I mentioned.

In 2018 we celebrated our 10th annual SQLSaturday Baton Rouge event. Several years ago, our event leveled off as far as attendees go, around 500 per year, pretty steady.

One of the reasons we are a small town with a big SQLSaturday is that we are not an insular SQL Server event. Sure, we attract tons of SQL Server sessions, and the name is SQLSaturday, but we've reached across technology lines and now, across community lines. Look, it's not like we're partnering with Oracle here, we're still very much the game in town when it comes to SQL Server and business intelligence knowledge, including helping to launch a second local PASS chapter, the BR Analytics User Group.

A few years ago, we started coming up with a theme for the event, that generally dictated little but our swag. One year a brand new STEAM magnet high school was opening near LSU campus in Baton Rouge, the fancy new campus was being constructed. We decided to have a "building careers" theme, thus the bulk order of construction helmets with SQLSaturday stickers on them.

We kept going from there, wondering how more we could get involved in the community, what could we as a gathering of hundreds of IT professionals do for a city and a state that, aside from the new high school, was dis-investing in public education, healthcare, infrastructure, especially in north Baton Rouge which is just a few miles north of campus.

So we started collecting money for the Foundation for the public school system, with the help of an organizer, we got in touch with the local Star Wars cosplayers. So yeah, we made a loose alliance with the Empire and so far we've raised a few thousand for the Foundation for the EBR School System.

We've helped to spread the word on the Futures Fund, which is an organization that provides digital arts and web design and coding training to underprivileged youth in Baton Rouge, with training from local professionals in the community. We gave opportunities to their organizer and instructors to speak at our Friday night speaker's banquet and a time slot to discuss their important mission and strategy on Saturday.

This year, with help and advice from organizers of kid's tracks in Dallas and Jacksonville, we hosted our first STEM Kid's Track. It was a logical addition to our goal of getting more involved in our community, it attracted speakers and attendees alike to make it a fun parent-child Saturday. I'm hoping to expand and look for more new ideas to get involved in the local community, especially to add opportunities for young and disadvantaged kids a learning opportunity to share with their parents.

We're hardly experts at this. One of the reasons why we partnered with STEMupBR was to have volunteers, actual professional educators, using well-prepared plans for teaching stop motion animation with Minecraft and coding with littleBits inventions. Similar to the strategies we apply every day in our jobs, we didn't reinvent the wheel here, and we were fortunate to find awesome volunteers, and we let good people do what they're good at.

We're not perfect, and we're not done at reaching out and trying to make SQLSaturday as meaningful as possible for volunteers, attendees, sponsors, and the next generation of IT professionals.

Thanks for reading, but in short, here's some ideas for your SQLSaturday:

• Reach out to local STEM education programs and initiatives. Offer them free space to do their thing in your event, with a built-in audience of tech savvy or tech enthusiast families
• Reach out to the local public school system to see if they have any weekend or after-school programs that could easily be adapted to a one-day event.
• Reach out to nonprofits and STEM education initiatives in your city. Face it, as an organizer for a large and free tech event, there are folks in NGO's and outreach organizations would will listen to you and are eager to partner. Partnering with a free event like SQLSaturday could be valuable to them when it comes to their grant-writing.
• Reach out to local tech community charitable arms and foundations, who are always on the look-out for tech-focused ways to donate time and effort. If they're anything like the Foundation at my employer, they're also not just looking for places to donate money, but opportunities to get their employees involved in STEM education.
• Reach out to STEM and STEAM-focused schools, technology incubators, and tech entrepreneur organizations, offer them a free booth in your sponsor area in exchange for volunteers, supplies, or curriculum.

Best of luck to you and your fellow organizers as you efforts to give back to your local STEM community.

Organizer's Thoughts on our STEM Kid's Track at SQLSaturday Baton Rouge

New this year to #SQLSatBR that was really nice for us - we hosted a kid's STEM track leveraging an existing children's education organization operated by the STEMupBR program inside the Foundation for EBR School System.  This is also the same organization that we have raised money for at SQLSatBR for the past four years.

Professional educators and their Americorps VISTA volunteers and our volunteers hosted 25 kids thru robotics, stop-motion animation, and LEGOs thru the day. Some kids had a parent in tow, some had a parent enjoying the rest of SQLSaturday. In the last timeslot we had a "showcase" for the kids to show off what they had created. Parents spent the final session of our SQLSaturday with their kids, and it was far from formal and far from another boring Saturday!

It was awesome, the kids would NOT stop talking about the cool things they created. For other #SQLSat organizers, contact the local school districts to see if they have a STEM program, or contact local WIT organizations, children's museums, or coding camps to see if you could partner for an all-day kid's track.

We had speakers bring kids from out of town, we had an attendee drive in from Houston with his daughter, and volunteers/organizers register their kids too. We will grow it next year because it was an inspiring addition to our event.

Originally I wrote the above as part of my PASS Post-event Form answer for SQLSaturday Baton Rouge, then turned it into a twitter thread. But I've expanded it somewhat here, so some thoughts on this part of SQLSatBR from the organizer's point of view.

We charged a small $10 fee per child to register because:

1) We wanted to start small this year, only 20, but then increased it to 25 when we had huge demand, and so we wanted those who registered to show up.

2) to cover snacks and consumable supplies, like printed materials and creative materials the kids used in the pictures here.

We're not pioneers here, we benefited from the wisdom and experience of others.

We're not the 1st, other SQLSats have done this before, and Devin Knight from SQLSat Jacksonville gave me some valuable tips. But, not operating it myself (as the SQLSaturday organizer) - instead partnering with pro STEM educators - seemed super convenient for me and effective for the kids. Partnering with a professional STEM organization like STEMupBR also gave me, the SQLSat organizer, peace of mind.

STEMupBR handled registration, parent forms, payment, refunds/cancellations. They were smart about having parents sign photography consent forms, had appropriate snacks and supplies, and a great grasp of the gear the kids were to play with.

Organizations STEMupBR, which was started with a grant from the White House US2020 grant program in 2014, also wants to partner with larger events like SQLSaturday and other STEM-oriented community events, as opposed to trying to stand up their own independent STEM events. SQLSaturday is a perfect opportunity to further their mission with a pre-primed audience of STEM-savvy parents and kids.

So you're an organizer, what's the toughest part about organizing a STEM kid's event this?

It's the volunteer adults. Let's face it, this is challenging. Professional educators have training, tools and tactics for working with kids on this stuff that your everyday Professional DBA or Dev does not have.

It's even more challenging at high school age levels, especially if you try to teach coding. It's hard to find professionals willing to dedicate their time to teaching coding to kids - though the ones who do it are AWESOME and should be thanked at the top and bottom of every hour. And it's hard to keep kids engaged if your content is not appropriately challenging.

This is why our STEM Kid's track at SQLSaturday Baton Rouge will likely never offer age levels above the 8th grade (not high school) - because the content and teachers needed to keep that age level interested and not make it "too simple" are hard to wrangle. On the other hand, it's often that scholastic organizations require volunteer hours of high schoolers - this would be a great opportunity for them to volunteer to help teach younger kids under the supervision of STEM education professionals. We'll advise that if you have an older kid in school, send them along to volunteer with their younger sibling, for example.

Between LSU, the Visit Baton Rouge local visitor's bureau, the Louisiana Technology Park, and now the STEMupBR program from local the school district, we have really worked some good partnerships with SQLSaturday and other organizations in the Baton Rouge community.

Photographs in this blog post used with permission from STEMupBR.

Attracting Non-Technical Speakers to Your SQLSat Events

Fellow DBA and community leader Peter Shore of the Columbus SQL PASS UG and SQLSat Columbus OH asked me via Twitter, "What is the best way for us to have a discussion about how you handle SQLSatBR? I am curious about the none data platform tracks, how you attract other disciplines and executives etc." My answer was the draft of a blog post... and a few email and Twitter exchanges later, here we are. Thanks for the blog inspiration, Peter!

This blog post is for SQLSaturday organizers, session selectors, and schedule-masters. 

---------------------

Professional development and IT leadership talks at past SQLSat Baton Rouge

At SQLSaturday Baton Rouge we try to provide non-technical content for two major audiences: career-minded IT professionals, and also IT leadership. 

The former is common at many SQLSats, but the latter we find is invaluable to our success as a small town SQLSaturday event in Baton Rouge. In a city of less than 500,000, we had have a 400-600+ person SQLSat event for the last 7+ years because of a broad session lineup.

First off, advertise the tracks you want to fill in your initial Call for Speakers. Emphasize in your Call for Speakers announcement emails that you have a desired track list, and it includes nontechnical tracks. Advertise in your event when announcing it to local user groups, schools, and companies: "Bring your boss! We have a track for IT Manager and CIOs". And yep, these tracks are fairly well attended. Not always full rooms, but we get a critical mass of people for good audiences and conversations. 

Firstly, jobseekers/career switchers/students is an obvious audience, they're probably already in attendance at your SQLSaturday event. It's the IT Management/CIO-level content that we try to add too, because that attracts net new attendees and even more importantly the decision-making crowd, which increases your event's attractiveness and ROI for the sponsors. 

So how do you get speakers for these two audiences/tracks?

Well, marketing budgets aren't exactly a thing. We remain mostly attended by word-of-mouth, we believe. We have a slick one-pager (feel free to copy), and we've put it in various break rooms, coffee houses, bulletin boards, etc. Reach out to local colleges and universities of course. But to get speakers during your Call for Speakers campaign, you need to reach other motivated professionals like yourself. Start with social media platforms of course, Slack, Twitter, LinkedIn, are good starts. But as a community event organizer and/or SQL Server user group leader, try to become aware or at least reach out to network with organizers of user groups for .NET, SharePoint, VMWare, game developers, Women in Technology, Agile development, IT Pro, etc. 

To fill non-technical tracks for career-minded professionals at your SQLSaturday events, the formula is takes some legwork, but is probably familiar to you:

1. You can encourage your speakers to submit non-tech topics, most professionals do already have tips for being interviewed, career growth tips, lifehacks type of presentations. In general, you should always advertise a list of tracks/topics to fill during your Call for Speakers.
2. We encourage these types of professional talks at our annual networking night, and provided some sample topics here.
3. Reach out to leadership development and young leaders groups. Reach out to local versions of "Shark Tank", young entrepreneurs and similar groups, make sure they know there's a local conference with a track for their topics.
4. For topics geared towards resumes, interviews, and job hunting, reach out to local HR departments or the Society for Human Resources Management (SHRM).
5. Reach out to Toastmasters International. They're great for this sort of thing, and can likely provide either a sample Toastmasters meeting or communications-focused sessions.

I bet there are presences from both SHRM and TM (or similar) in most towns in the USA. Both of these groups have conferences of their own where they give talks on interviewing/being interviewed, career development, professional communications, etc.  (Keep in mind some speakers in these organizations may be used to getting paid for speaking - be professional and polite about telling them that your conference is a free conference.) 

To fill tracks for the IT Management/CIO track, here are some ideas for recruiting sessions and speakers. At SQLSatBR, we've had IT Management/CIO/Executive tracks at the last three events. Take a look to see what kind of speakers and sessions we picked in the past, and feel free to reach out to those speakers for your own events.

• 2015: IT Management and Executive tracks: http://www.sqlsaturday.com/423/Sessions/Schedule.aspx

• 2016: IT Management and Executive tracks: http://www.sqlsaturday.com/515/Sessions/Schedule.aspx

• 2017:  IT Management tracks: http://www.sqlsaturday.com/628/Sessions/Schedule.aspx

Presentations for those who perform interviews can be especially useful for the IT Management/CIO-level crowd, especially if you can find someone (like my wife and most HR professionals) who know the law around what you can/cannot ask in an interview, not just to be EOE compliant, but to avoid discrimination. IT leadership will definitely want (need?) to attend that. Some IT professionals may also give presentations on technical interview tips.

Other good ideas for tracks for the IT Management/CIO crowd are "strategic" (aka salesy) presentations by Microsoft or other vendors, without being too technical (or too salesy). Reach out to local IT consulting firms or offices. They probably already run their own "CIO luncheons" or "executive roundtable" meetings. The head of my employer, an IT consulting firm, pulled in all the CIOs he knew (many of which were customers) and honored them with appearance on a panel about "cloud strategy" or "modern IT strategy" or "hybrid datacenters." CIOs eat that stuff up.

Inviting local IT Managers/CIOs to be on a panel can be a nice honor, especially if you advertise it as such. Don't be afraid to organize your own panel, perhaps facilitate it yourself with questions about IT strategy, future trends, past successes/mistakes, etc. A good panel discussion may be 50/50 panelists/audience Q&A. It's not difficult at all, in fact we do a similar panel-style presentation around Jobs in IT. 

Finally, if you're looking for sessions to place in a CIO track, Business Intelligence talks work well, especially presentations for "executive dashboards". PowerBI sessions, as long as they are not too technical, would be very popular for a IT Management track. Anything on data warehousing, data lakes, "big data", or presentation-layer stuff (like SSRS mobile reports) would be appropriate. 

So fill non-technical tracks for the IT leadership/decision-maker crowd:

1. Reach out to SHRM or other organizations for HR professionals. 
2. Reach out to IT consulting firms, especially ones that do Business Intelligence consulting. 
1. Reach out to anyone in your town who has ever presented a "CIO Executive Summit" or similar.
3. Reach out during your call for speakers to local chapters of the AITP, ACM, itSMF, VMWare, IT Pro, and other technology chapters. Again, something I've encouraged for a long time - involve other community user groups in your SQLSaturday event, including but not limited to the .NET group.
4. Reach out to anyone in your town who does "leadership consulting" or "executive coaching", they'd probably jump at the opportunity to present and work in a subtle pitch for their own services. Be sure they are familiar with the format and expectations of your event.
5. Consider organizing your own Panel discussion of local IT leadership or thought leaders.
6. Consider some Business Intelligence sessions for a CIO track, especially sessions involving executive dashboards, or BI sessions that are more strategic or design-oriented in nature.

Let me know if you have any questions, and best of luck organizing your next SQLSaturday event!

Careers in IT Panel discussion at SQLSatBR 2016

SQLSat Organizers and UG Leaders Meetings at PASS Summit - Tips and Tricks notes

At the SQLSat Organizers and UG Leaders Meetings at PASS Summit meetings last week, we were given an opportunity to share "tips and tricks" with other leaders, and I had the opportunity to.

Now that I'm home (despite a thrilling late-night sprint through IAH to make a connecting flight) and starting to get caught up on sleep and email, here's my notes I typed up, annotated with some links.

Happy to share and thanks for the followup questions afterwards, let me know if you have any more.

SQLSat Organizers Meeting

• First off the Microsoft global sponsor is a big deal, I have strong positive opinions in that, thank you for that.
• I am a big-budget SQLSat organizer, I think this is a really good thing. Bravo Microsoft.
• Broad set of topics, “for everyone in IT”
• We pull in 400-600 each year for past 5 years
• We invite the developers, sysadmins, students, IT managers and CIO's, SharePoint…
• More ROI for sponsors, a bigger audience that includes decision makers
• Join the Empire - Fundraising for foundation (for local schoolsystem?)
• Call your local chapter of the 501st Legion - star wars
• They'll help you raise money for whatever charity you pick
• Jambalaya is cheap
• Rice, meat, spices, salad, sides, plates, $4-5/head
• Similar dishes: arroz con pollo, paella, fried rice, shawarma and rice
• It's also gluten free!
• R is hot, what else is?
• Example: Chris Hyde at capacity in 60-person room for R
• Pay attention to the hottest topics if you have opportunity use your bigger rooms
• Speaker goodie bags
• ~$30 of items useful for speakers on the day of, I put a blog post up about it detailed what is included
• Not my idea, stolen from others, including Tamera Clark from SQLSat Nashville
• Total info here: http://www.sqltact.com/2017/10/the-sqlsat-speaker-goodie-bag.html
• Sticker game - part of vendor ROI

• We give stickers to the vendors with instructions to give them out to folks who actually show interest
• Attendees have to collect 4 out of 5 stickers, n-1 on a game sheet
• They get to keep the one for their field, the stickers have said in the past, "I'm building" or "Performance Tuning" or "rising", so it's SQL or Careers or Code or Servers or BI
• About $300-400 for five 500-count rolls of stickers (pictured, right)
• Sample game card here.

UG Leaders Meeting

• South Central Regional Leadership meetings held bimonthly with fellow RM Keith Tate
• Talk to your local .NET
• Build a critical mass of people for networking , but also for sponsor ROI
• They have a new parent organizer, the .NET Foundation, which is finally stepping in
• For a long time we’ve enjoyed being a chapter of PASS, and I think sometimes we take it for granted how great it is, other technologies don’t have it
• Remote speakers? Must have a good AV setup
• We’ve had remote speakers more often recently because our venue has given us a conference room with a big TV
• Do NOT try to do remote speakers with a shabby AV setup. It will discourage people.
• Always prefer building a local new speaker
• You can still have a local lightning round speaker as the remote speaker stands by
• Networking Night
• Every year the month before our SQLSaturday, we add to the vendor ROI by hosting a networking night.
• This is one of the biggest meetings of the year for us, 75+ folks show up, many new faces with resumes in hand
• We have lightning round style talks on career topics, soft skills, entertaining etc. My wife gives a different talk from some aspect of the HR interviewing process every year.
• http://www.brssug.org/group-news/batonrougeusergroupsnetworkingnight2017
• Meetup
• We paid for it with leftover sqlsat money in 2017
• So far, we have gotten a handful of first timers from meetup, but few retained regulars
• Other User Groups have had A LOT of success with Meetup.com
• More social events
• We’re trying to build more social camaraderie so we’re going to do official self-pay events at various locations around town
• Especially in December annually

The #SQLSAT Speaker Goodie Bag

Last summer, I heard about an awesome idea for speaker gifts at SQLSat Pensacola 2017 from organizer Karla Landrum and Tamera Clark (SQLSat Nashville). It was our 9th year of SQLSat Baton Rouge, we've had polo fatigue and were looking for fresh ideas for useful, memorable speaker gifts. SQLSat Nashville's speaker goodie bags, full of day-of-conference supplies, was an inspiration.

I personally heard that at least three speakers went to the bag during SQLSatBR, specifically for the Mini DisplayPort-to-everything video adapter common to laptops. It's an annual occurrence that someone with a newer laptop is dismayed to find they've left their adapter at home, and they don't have a way to hook up to the room's VGA or HDMI cable. I've heard other speakers mention it at user groups meetings since. And just today, my wife Christine (hrtact.com) mentioned that at work she pulls it out for the various useful items.

So in advance of the SQLSat Organizers meeting at PASS Summit this week, I figured I'd list out the contents and sourcing for the goodies that made it into the bag. For some of these, you can even "subscribe and save" via amazon for a huge discount... for one month. ;)

The idea is to give a useful pack of inexpensive things in a bag that sits nicely inside of a laptop bag. The goodies are small, bulk-purchased, inexpensive things that someone would need the day of a speaking event. Links to the items, almost entirely sourced from Amazon.com, are provided only as examples.

• The bag itself is flat, clear, with a zipper: http://a.co/86Hnce0
• Mini DisplayPort to HDMI/DVI/VGA 3 in 1 adapter: http://a.co/77qYk1c
• Cheap SQLSat logo stickers, slapped on top of the bag: stickermule.com
• Gear Ties: http://a.co/ezL24rh
• HDMI extender adapter: http://a.co/50V6CUQ
• Hand sanitizer wipes: http://a.co/606zVWA
• Dry Erase Markers: http://a.co/1UB6e2u
• Miniature dry erasers: http://a.co/9ebmwPV or https://amzn.com/B07FKPLFJL/
• ZipFizz powder: http://a.co/gdsB5y4 (for use in a not-full water bottle, lol)
• USB 3.1 Type C (USB-C) to Micro USB Adapter: http://a.co/j9Q5brz
• Chapstick: http://a.co/2JZ1W3m
• Pepto Bismol Individual Sealed 2 Tablets in a Packet: http://a.co/3iw5ErI
• Throat lozenges: http://a.co/bBytbsW
• 2 AAA Batteries (common for presenter mice, laser pointers)
• Ritz crackers, granola bars, etc
• Ink pens from the conference attendee bags (if leftover)
• Werther's Originals candy (mostly for laughs)
• Hi-Chew (my kid's favorite)
  
  2019 additions to the bag:
• Tony Chachere's Cajun seasoning 
• Mini Tabasco bottles
• Mini alligators from a hobby store :)
• Homemade Pralines from New Orleans
• Some postcards and map goodies from VisitBatonRouge.com
• The scent of warm bread pudding which we ate while packing

The total cost per bag ended up being around $31, or a little more than the cost of an embroidered polo shirt. The biggest single expense (and most often used) item was the mini DisplayPort, roughly half the cost of the entire bag.

Saturday Event Planner's Calendar

We just completed our 9th annual SQLSaturday Baton Rouge. In my post-mortem of the event, I've updated and tweaked the living, breathing SQLSaturday Planner's Calendar that I've been crafting for a couple years now.

If you are a SQLSaturday organizer of any level of veterancy, you may find this calendar helpful in remembering to keep up with the months-long building to your event. If you're on some of the SQLSat Slacks you have may seen an earlier version of this doc, and already I've received a ton of good feedback. I am open to feedback on what to add/move/modify in this calendar, please reach out one or another if you have some wisdom that another SQLSat organizer or I need to hear.

Link:
https://1drv.ms/x/s!ArJKDbZJcmzGgYUkumO4G1BeOzWrSw

Let me know if you have any questions or feedback!

Registrant Job Title Data from SQLSaturday Baton Rouge events 2014-2016

In a blog post on the Sparkhound website, I laid out the strong case for a sponsor's Return on Investment (ROI) for sponsoring local SQLSaturday events. Part of my argument in favor of sponsoring SQLSaturday events are the diversity of attendees and their responsibilities, and particularly, the presence of decision makers.

Attracting the Decision Makers and Influencers

At a large-tent event like SQLSaturday Baton Rouge where we have tracks for IT management, server admins, and .NET developers, the cross section of responsibilities in the registrants skews heavily towards developers and especially decision makers, as evidenced in the below graph:

I believe the percentage of attendees in a decision-making capacity in their workplace is understated at SQLSaturday events, broadly. This is a fact that should be emphasized by SQLSaturday organizers and promoters to potential sponsors.

At SQLSaturday Baton Rouge we have sought out speakers for "IT Management" and "CIO" tracks over the past few years. The speakers remain the type of experienced, highly motivated volunteer professionals that speak in technical tracks. Topics include SQL Server disaster recovery and high availability, the value of business intelligence dashboards, and cloud adoption strategy. The typical "career" track with soft-skills sessions can include giving feedback to employees, or how to best conduct interviews, and how to be more inclusive of women and under-represented demographics. The value of having "something for the boss" at a SQLSaturday translates directly to sponsor ROI.

What about small SQLSaturday events?

To sponsors, the size of the event is a factor, but it shouldn't be the only one. Significant ROI can be returned merely by a sponsor's presence at a local event, showing support for the local IT community. Whether the sponsor is looking to recruit, drive sales, or increase market recognition, the size of a SQLSaturday event doesn't necessary translate to higher ROI.

In fact, smaller SQLSaturdays may provide a bigger share of the spotlight, a more recognized local contribution, and more face time with local IT connections. There are SQLSaturday events held locally around the world almost every weekend of the year - meaning that at least one a year, almost any company has a local, authentic, home-grown opportunity nearby.

Job Title Categorization

If you're curious for how the job titles were categorized, I've included the relatively simple TSQL categorization logic below:

...  set JobTitleCategory = CASE
      
      WHEN [job title] like 'C%' and len([job title]) = 3 
       OR [job title] like '%Chief%'   
       OR [job title] like '%Director%' 
       OR [job title] like '%President%'   
       OR [job title] like '%Officer%' 
       OR [job title] like '%Owner%' 
       OR [job title] like '%CIO%' 
       OR [job title] like 'VP%'
       OR [job title] like '%Partner'
       OR [job title] like 'Founder'
       OR [job title] like 'Attorney%'
       THEN 'C-Suite'

      WHEN [job title] like '%Manager%' 
       OR [job title] like '%Senior%Associate%'
       OR [job title] like 'Head%'
       OR [job title] like '%manger%'
       OR [job title] like 'HR%'
       OR [job title] like '%supervis%'
       OR [job title] like '%coordin%'
       OR [job title] like '%Advisor%'
       OR [job title] like '%Legal%'
       OR [job title] like 'Managing%'
       OR [job title] like 'team lead'
       OR [job title] like 'Process Optimization%'
       OR [job title] like '%Mgr%'
      THEN 'Management'

      
      WHEN [job title] like '%dba%' 
       OR [job title] like 'data%admin%' 
       OR [job title] like '%data%base%' 
       OR [job title] like '%ETL%'
       OR [job title] like '%SQL%'
       OR [job title] like '%PASS%'
       OR [job title] like '%Chapter Leader%'
       OR [job title] like '%DB Admin%'
       THEN 'DBA'
       
      WHEN [job title] like '%BI %' 
       OR [job title] like '%Business Intelligence%' 
       OR [job title] like 'Data%Scien%'
       OR [job title] like '%analytic%'
       OR [job title] like 'Math%'
       OR [job title] like '%data%Architect%' 
       OR [job title] like '%report%' 
       OR [job title] like '%warehouse%' 
       OR [job title] like '%data%specialist%' 
       OR [job title] like '%data%analyst%' 
       OR [job title] like '%Informatics%'
       OR [job title] like '%Information%'
       THEN 'Business Intelligence'

      WHEN [job title] like '%Studen%' 
       OR [job title] like '%grad%'
       OR [job title] like '%Candidate%'
       OR [job title] like '%Intern'
       THEN 'Student'

      WHEN [job title] like '%Accounting%'
       OR [job title] like '%CPA%'
       OR [job title] like '%AP %' 
       THEN 'Accounting'

      WHEN [job title] like '%design%' 
       THEN 'Design'

      WHEN [job title] like '%access control%' 
       OR [job title] like '%security%' 
       OR [job title] like '%sec%' 
       THEN 'Security'
       
      WHEN [job title] like '%Instructor%'
       OR [job title] like '%Teacher%'
       OR [job title] like '%faculty%'
       OR [job title] like 'Research%'
       OR [job title] like 'Editor'
       OR [job title] like 'Librar%'
       OR [job title] like '%school%'
       OR [job title] like '%education%'
       OR [job title] like '%science%'
       OR [job title] like '%instruct%'
       OR [job title] like 'Fellow'
       THEN 'Academia'

      WHEN [job title] like '%programmer%'  
        OR [job title] like '%software%developer%' 
        OR [job title] like '%Software%Engineer%'
        OR [job title] like 'App%Dev%'
        OR [job title] like 'Dev%'
        OR [job title] like 'Comp%Scien%'
        OR [job title] like 'App%Dev%'
        OR [job title] like '%developer%' 
        OR [job title] like 'Tech%Lead'
        OR [job title] like '%application%'
        OR [job title] = 'P/A'
        OR [job title] like 'Program%'
        OR [job title] like '%Architect%' 
        OR [job title] like '%software%' 
        OR [job title] like 'Code%' 
        OR [job title] like 'Analyst%' 
        OR [job title] like 'pgmr%' 
        OR [job title] like 'E-%' 
        THEN 'Developer'

      WHEN [job title] like '%System%Ana%' 
       OR [job title] like '%Comp%Ana%'
       OR [job title] like '%Sys%eng%' 
       OR [job title] like '%Sys%admin%'
       OR [job title] like '%Net%Admin%'
       OR [job title] like '%IT%Tech%'
       OR [job title] like 'IT%specialist%'
       OR [job title] like 'tech%specialist%'
       OR [job title] like '%Engineer'
       OR [job title] like 'MCT%'
       OR [job title] like 'Implement%Spec%'
       OR [job title] like '%technic%'
       OR [job title] like '%Administrator'
       OR [job title] like '%Network%'
       OR [job title] like '%integration%'
       OR [job title] like '%repair%'
       OR [job title] like 'helpdesk%'
       OR [job title] like  'IT%Pro%'
       THEN 'Server Admin'

      WHEN [job title] like 'Customer Support Specialist'
       OR [job title] like 'Tech%Support%'
       OR [job title] like 'Dispute Resolution%'
       OR [job title] like 'Specialist'
       OR [job title] like '%IT%Supp%'
       OR [job title] like '%IT %'
       OR [job title] like '%Support%'
       OR [job title] like 'field%service%'
       OR [job title] like 'desktop%'
       OR [job title] like 'service desk%'
        THEN 'Customer Support'

      
      WHEN [job title] like '%QA%'
       OR [job title] like '%Quality%' 
       OR [job title] like '%test%' 
       THEN 'QA/Testing'

       
      WHEN [job title] like '%SharePoint%'
       THEN 'SharePoint'

     WHEN [job title] like 'Acc%Exec%' 
      OR  [job title] like '%Sales%'
      OR  [job title] like '%Account rep%'
      OR  [job title] like 'Business%Dev%'
       THEN 'Sales'

      WHEN [job title] like  '%Recruiter%'
       THEN 'Recruitment'

      WHEN [job title] like  '%Admin%Assistant%'
       OR [job title] like  '%Assistant'
       THEN 'Administrative Assistant'

      WHEN [job title] like '%Admin%'
       OR [job title] like '%systems%'
       OR [job title] like '%engineer%'
       OR [job title] like '%technolo%'
       OR [job title] like '%operat%'
       OR [job title] like '%IT%'
       OR [job title] like '%server%'
       OR [job title] like '%system%'
       THEN 'Server Admin'

      WHEN [job title] like '%Business%Analyst%'
       OR [job title] like '%Analyst%'
       OR [job title] like '%Auditor%'
       OR [job title] like 'BSA%'
       OR [job title] like '%process%'
       OR [job title] like '%product%'
       OR [job title] like 'BA'
       THEN 'Business Analyst'

      WHEN [job title] like 'Self%Employ%'
       THEN 'Self Employed'
      
      WHEN [job title] like 'Social Worker'
       OR [job title] like '%nurse%'
       OR [job title] like '%dental%'
       OR [job title] like '%health%'
       OR [job title] like '%clinic%'
       OR [job title] like '%medical%'
       OR [job title] like '%nutrition%'
       THEN 'Medical'
      
      WHEN [job title] like '%legal%'
       THEN 'Legal'
      
      WHEN [job title] like '%Project%' 
       OR [job title] like '%PM%' 
       THEN 'Project Management'
        
      WHEN [job title] is null 
       OR [job title] = '' 
       OR [job title] = 'Mr' 
       OR [job title] = 'NA' 
       OR [job title] = 'n' 
       OR [job title] = 'n/a'
       OR [job title] = 'not provided'
       THEN 'Not provided'
      
      WHEN [job title] like '%Consultant%'
       OR [job title] like 'Principal%' 
       THEN 'Consultant'

      ELSE 'Other'

      END

Connect with your SQL Community on Slack

Slack is a popular tool for team interaction. To describe it quickly, it's a feature-rich persistent chat room, with threads, multimedia, alerts, etc. There is a web interface, a desktop app, and a mobile app.

In addition to Twitter, which is also extremely popular in the SQL Server community, there are a couple Slacks to be aware of, specifically setup for the SQL Server community:

• pass-slack.slack.com - the international PASS Community 
• Signup: https://dbatools.io/slack/
• sqlcommunity.slack.com - general SQL Server community 
• Signup: https://sqlps.io/slack/ 

If you're a user group leader or SQLSat organizer in the PASS US South Central Region (NM, TX, OK, AR, LA):

• passscrl.slack.com - The PASS South Central region leadership
• Signup: email for an invitation: rm.us-southcentral@pass.org

And if you're in my hometown Baton Rouge, join:

• https://batonrouge.slack.com/ - developers, designers, marketers, business people, hobbyists, students, and other professionals involved in technology in Baton Rouge
• Signup: https://brslack.com/

Of course, Slack is a neat tool, but it cannot replace the in-person networking, training, and professional development that comes from User Group meetings and SQLSaturday events, so don't miss out on the IRL stuff too. :)

Why SQLSaturday? A SQLSat Career Case Study

We all know that SQLSaturday events are good for career networking, professional development, and technical education. Sometimes the perfect story presents itself as a real testimonial.

When fellow Baton Rouge SQL Saturday organizer Adrian Aucoin Jr. and I heard about John Wells' (@SQLServerDBA318) story of making a career spark happen in the vendor expo area of our annual event, I couldn't help but think that we had to capture this as a SQLSaturday case study. 

The idea that people find jobs, recruits, future colleagues, and clients at SQLSaturdays is widely accepted, but it's always nice to read about a real life one in your own town.

Since Baton Rouge in August of 2016, you might have seen John recently at SQLSaturdays in Huntington Beach, Birmingham, Dallas, Nashville, Oklahoma City, and San Antonio. I'll turn it over to John, then we'll do a Q&A with this prolific SQLSat fan:

---

John Wells, DBA and SQLSat connoisseur  

SQLSaturday is a great day of training and networking that I participate in as much as possible. I was sold after my first experience in Dallas May 2015. Quickly realizing how powerful this event was I made it a point to go to as many as possible moving forward. It’s quite an experience as you not only have great sessions of free training, but even more powerful is the networking involved. Most events have precon sessions for a small fee the Friday before that I have attended and are well worth it. 

The vendors and speakers make this event happen so I always go out of my way to thank them during breaks and after sessions. In my short DBA career, I have made several new friends and connections because of SQLSaturday. This has made me a big advocate and I try to attend 10 SQL Saturday’s a year. The SQL Server family along with PASS is not like any other organization out of there and I’m happy I found them. 

I can go on for quite some time about this, however, my SQLSaturday success story came out of Baton Rouge in 2016. I mean how can you go wrong with great training sessions, networking and Jambalaya all in the same day? I was excited when it came time for another SQLSaturday and this time close to home. I made the short trip down to Baton Rouge from Bossier City and was a volunteer for this event. 

It was another great SQLSaturday and I went around at lunch time thanking all the vendors as I always do. I approached the vendor booth for a large tech recruiter and began to speak to one of the representatives. I told the lady that I was a younger DBA and was curious about the positions around the Baton Rouge area. It wasn’t that I was looking for a new job because I wasn’t, but I was really just curious. She asked me a few questions and gave me her card asking for a resume, which I sent her when I got back home that night. 

Two days after I sent my resume I was contacted by another representative from the tech recruiter. She told me about two positions that they had been trying to fill for months and sent me the job descriptions. There was one in Baton Rouge that caught my attention, they were really looking for someone with more experience, but were not having any luck and were open to someone with not as much experience depending on their knowledge. 

The interview came a few days later and before I knew it I was heading down to Baton Rouge for a new adventure. 

I am now a DBA at a national, publicly-traded ad agency and love it here in Baton Rouge. Everything is going great and I have recently begun attending the Baton Rouge SQL Server User Group meetings. I continue to go to SQLSaturday’s and one day will speak myself at these events. Again, I can go on and on about PASS, SQLSaturday and the SQL Server family, but my success story will always be SQLSaturday #515 Baton Rouge.

---

Not only did John drive 250+ miles from Bossier City, Louisiana to Baton Rouge, get free SQL training, and find a job - he also volunteered!

John Wells (arrow) in his volunteer vest at SQLSaturday Baton Rouge 2016

I know one way in which John's story isn't unique: I owe a good bit of my own career trajectory to business and connections made through the Baton Rouge SQL Server User Group and the SQLSaturday it hosts. As an organizer of SQLSaturday Baton Rouge, I took the opportunity to ask John a few questions about his experiences at SQLSaturdays in general.

Q: Everybody's different, but what is it about SQLSaturdays that makes them worth giving up a Saturday and some travel time?

John: It's not just the Saturday - its the entire experience of SQLSaturday including pre-cons, great sessions and networking with similar minded individuals who share the same passion. I also look for the sessions and speakers as well. When I see certain speakers that are highly regarded in this industry that alone makes it worth my time to travel to an event to see their session.  I have driven as far as Atlanta just because of the session line up.  

SQLSaturday is a great tool to invest in yourself and I have also made some friends along the way.

Q: Is there a science to how you pick sessions to attend?

There definitely is and it breaks out into two pieces. First, am I familiar with the speaker and are they a well known name in the industry? I don't have to know who the speaker is, but someone like Kevin Kline or Grant Fritchey would be someone I would want to see speak regardless of the session content. A perfect example was last year in Oklahoma City where Bob Ward did two sessions so I went to both. 

Second, what is the session focused on? Anything to do with performance tuning, HA/DR and PowerShell are at the top of my list. However, there are still many other subjects I favor and also is it something that could immediately help me at work. I'm also lucky because I go to so many events that sometimes I will skip a session I want to see because I can see it the following month at another location.

Q: What should vendors know about maximizing their visibility and impact to potential job seekers?

I think it is how aggressive they are when they talk to attendees. Whether they are a recruiter or software vendor the way they interact with attendees sticks out. The ones that seem to be aggressive and happy to speak with me get my attention every time.

Q: Any plans on developing a technical talk yourself? We'd be happy to give you a trial audience at the Baton Rouge SQL Server User Group.

Absolutely! I have one in mind and hope to do it in the next few months. My overall goal is to be a speaker at SQL Saturday and I have 2019 in mind.

Q: We'll look for you then, John!  You're quite the a connoisseur of SQLSaturday events all over the Southern United States. Who's got the best food? 

No bias here since I'm not originally from Louisiana, but Baton Rouge owns that one. I mean SQLSaturday and jambalaya can't be beat.

Q: Give me more best-of from your SQLSat travels: most memorable session, vendor booth, end-of-day raffle?

There are so many great sessions I have attended in the past two years I can go on for awhile. One session, Branding Yourself, by Steve Jones was one. I walked away with some great ideas and have used them to my advantage. There was a pre-con, Performance Tuning for Mere Mortals, this past January in Nashville by Mike Lawell and Ed Watson. There were some major light bulb moments in that one. 

I have always enjoyed talking to the folks at Pure Storage and was able to thank Argenis Fernandez personally for answering a question two weeks earlier on #sqlhelp at Nashville SQL Saturday. 

I think all the end of day raffles are good, but Baton Rouge wins for entertainment.

Thanks again to John Wells (@SQLServerDBA318) for sharing, and congratulation on your recent career jump. Looking forward to seeing you on the SQLSat circuit!