SQL Saturdays are all about giving back and if you have been to a SQL Saturday I hope you have seen that first hand. This year at SQL Saturday #297 in Colorado Springs, Co. we want to emphasize this as much as we can. We are doing this by organizing a food drive, the idea for the food drive came to the leaders as we were touring the facility where we could host the SQL Saturday this year. As we were talking this over with our many long time supporting vendors we received overwhelming positive reactions. So positive in fact most of the sponsors this year are going well above and beyond the traditional SWAG donations. For example, as of right now we are planning on how to give away an autographed, AC-DC guitar with certificate of authenticity, also in the potential SWAG gifts we may have a MSDN subscription. We have many items that will be in the SWAG giveaway, and if you consider we only have enough room for 200 attendees this makes an individuals chances pretty good at taking home some sort of give-away. What we are asking is that when you come to the event on April 12 th that you bring with you food items that you would like to donate the more items that you bring the better your odds are in taking home one of these awesome SWAG items. We will soon be sending everyone who is signed up more details on individuals can participate in our food drive. You don’t have to bring any food items to be registered for the giveaways and there will be opportunities to participate in our Data-Rodeo for additional chances to win. Why a Data-Rodeo you ask? This year’s theme in going to be centered around the old west, our event will be taking place in a historical building that is over 100 years old, in the heart of the oldest part of town. What we really hope everyone sees is the benefits in coming to a SQL Saturday, if not this one any SQL Saturday that you can get to. If you haven’t been to an event before the quick run-down is this: There is a free day of training (sometimes you may be asked to donate $10.00 for lunch to help cover the cost). This is a great opportunity to network with people who work with SQL Server or people who want to hire SQL Server Professionals. This is a way to get involved with moving your career down a path to speak at National events. You can visit the vendors and ask them questions about their products, in an environment where they don’t expect you to make a decision right there. Get free SWAG. And now give back to the community. SQL Saturdays are all about giving, sure the primary goal for an attendee is to learn as much as you can without having to pay or travel to a conference. These are the some of the same speakers that will speak at many of the national events you hear about. So why is it about giving? These speakers often pay their own way to get to the event; they donate time they could be spending with their family. Not just the time to travel to the event and the time at the event, but consider all the work that goes into prepping for an event like this. I know, I have spoken at many of these. The vendors sponsor these events and without them we could not pay for the venue, or the food, or the many costs associated with the event that you never realize until you put one of these together. Even the name tags have a cost around them. If it were not for the vendors, I am pretty sure we would not be having 5% of the SQL Saturdays that we do. The volunteers put in more hours that I can explain, this is my third SQL Saturday that I have organized, and it takes a lot of time to make sure that something goes off without a hitch. The volunteers do this with nothing more than a promise of a free lunch. There are people that work behind the scenes that may never even make it to the event, people at PASS who help us plan, and host the website. I really hope you come to the SQL Saturday 297 that we are putting together for you. Donate food if you can, help with the cost of lunch a little, but most of all we want you to come, learn and enjoy networking with SQL Server Professionals. You don’t even need experience with SQL Server to join the event; everyone is welcome as long as you want to learn about SQL Server.
↧