October 2011 – Curious..about data

We had our 3rd sql saturday at Louisville on 28th October 2011. It was a huge event with over 230 people attending, 5 tracks and six sessions each. There were many things we learnt out of running an event like this (when i say ‘we’ i am referring to me as key organizer and our volunteering team). Let me start with what went well –

1 282 people registered, 230 showed up. More than double since last year, and very unexpected. Our feedback shows several people impressed with sql saturdays in general is the reason, and that is a great trend.
2 Number of sponsors was much higher, double than normal (although amounts of sponsorship were lower). I still consider this a great trend.
3 Local sponsors (Teknetx and Ebits) were very impressed and want to come back. Building local sponsors is a very difficult task and I consider it very significant that we succeeded this year.
4 Most speakers (other than one or two) seemed happy and wanted to return. This is also a great trend.
5 There was definitely a lot of interest in non technical subjects – toastmasters and women in technology sessions showed good attendance and this is something we want to continue to do.
6 Seating sponsors near lunch area seemed to attract good crowds to them, this is also something we want to continue to do.
7 Buffet lunch went very smoothly and was a great idea compared to boxed lunches.
8 Pre conference with Kevin Kline – had a great turnout – again much higher than expected and was very smooth. Most people including volunteers enjoyed it greatly. We definitely want to do more of these, perhaps with speakers who are close to town and can get in easily.
10 I got some great feedback on quality of speaker shirts, some internal signage especially posters, and printed schedule book. We will continue doing them, although the printed schedule would depend on the budget.
11 Costumed volunteers and speakers seemed to go down very well. Even met an attendee at a crowded Trader Joe’s today who asked me if I was the ‘lady in the pink hat’ at sql saturday, and complimented us for turning out in colorful costumes. I am definitely going to save that hat , perhaps wear it next time around also 🙂 In short this means creativity is appreciated and we will definitely look at this further.
12 Timing was good in terms of weather and other logistics, not to mention creativity added on by Halloween. This looks like a good time to have the event every year.

What did not go well – am afraid this was a little more than what we expected this year. There were two main reasons – one of them was that we needed lot more volunteers than what we had for an event of this size. Finding committed volunteers is a very hard task. Our existing volunteers were stretched to the bone,and last minute efforts at finding more people did not succeed. Most people on the sign up list did not respond to emails and we only had those who had been with us through the event planning. Second, we really did not expect double the number of people. This is very hard to plan as around 60% of registrations happen in the last month or so, when we are set in terms of planning location, budget and volunteers. We assumed a 50% or so increase, but not this much and this is what caught us off guard in many respects.

1 Breakfast – any event organizer’s nightmare come true, happened to us. The caterer was known for their reputation and quality, but just happened that they had a staff turnover and the new team had us as their #1 client. So breakfast showed up 40 minutes late – after several desperate calls. The driver had lost his way and gone to the other side of town. When it arrived the coffee was cold, there was no cream, bagels had no sides. We asked for a second delivery of coffee, and it was delivered again, but with no cream! (talk of software programs with bugs, looks like people have them too). Anyway, the caterer and several people on their side called repeatedly to apologize.

2 Registration – our volunteers were caught up in sorting raffle tickets which apparently sorted wrongly by the print shop on a batch basis instead of a person basis. This made it very hard to hand over a batch of tickets to the right attendee. Lots of people also showed up earlier than opening time, and with no coffee around it made it seem really long for them.

3 Lunch was delivered early – again this was an issue arising due to some logistics. There was a tailgating party/soccer match in the vicinity and we were warned of traffic holdups in the area. Despite checking with several people we were unable to get a good idea of how bad this situation was and how much we needed to plan around it. So we decided to play it safe and ask the caterer to deliver early. The caterer messed up breakfast and was eager to make us happy, he delivered more than an hour early. This left several people displeased although there was plenty of food to go around.

3 Session scheduling – this was a blunder on our side. We used the default template PASS had which had no breaks between sessions. We also had several sessions that seemed too good and limited rooms to work with so we went with 45 minutes per session (which is by the way how we do it at user groups). This was definitely a bad idea, and a couple of speakers were really put off. We will have to work with lesser sessions per track but more tracks/more rooms next time.

4 Location was crowded, registration area small and so on – This was some of the feedback we received from attendees. Again the turnout was unexpected and the location was clearly not built to handle such a crowd. We will definitely look for bigger locations next time.

5 Post event social was not on premises – One attendee suggested a party on premises including an open bar 🙂 I guess with the growing number of well funded sql saturdays lot of people tend to forget that some events may not have funds, and secondly our event was on school premises, there is no chance of having an open bar there even if we could have afforded it. The problem with post events generally is that again we don’t know how many people are going to show up. We planned one the first year and there were only about 20 people. That number is not enough to book a restaurant or any place, especially around halloween when there is a lot of demand. The second issue we have is that volunteers were extremely tired and none of us had any energy to do a social. We will address both issues with next event.

6 Raffle drawing – This was scheduled for 5 30 pm. By 4.45 or so several vendors started to pack up, did their own drawings and gave me the gift with winner’s name and left. I was not sure if waiting until 5.30 pm was a great idea so we had it early, at 5 pm. This left out several attendees who were in the other building attending a session that went over a little. This is an issue we plan to address both with vendors and advisors of sql saturday. There was also some feedback regarding ‘more gifts and prizes’ – again I believe this arises out of some events having a lot of funding to play with. We had three Ipads, one XBox Kinect and several small prizes. It was good for an event of this size, and don’t plan to address this any further.

Takeaways:
1 Find a bigger building and have all sessions in the building. Have more tracks and less sessions with 15 minute gap between each session.
2 Divide breakfast between coffee and food, again I may be paranoid here but I think we should make arrangements for that java to arrive and be ready before people do.
3 Get more student type volunteers or those who have no interest in sessions to sit in all day at registration and at food table.
4 I hate to say this but I want to – that is not pick speakers who are hyper critical or not understanding of effort that goes into organizing a free event. Granted some things did not work as expected but to remember these events are free and done with huge amounts of effort.Atleast try to talk to organizers cordially, offer some feedback in encouraging ways, not just dump us and take a high handed stance. If you are so demanding our response would be ‘sorry, we want to work with friendly people next time’ – there is no shortage of them in the sql community.
5 Do more precons – particularly with speakers who are close to our area and do not have huge demands on number of attendees.
6 Work harder on hosting a good post social.

SQL Saturdays are a huge amount of work. But to date, i have not met one volunteer who regretted doing it. Most of us feel empowered in fact to do more and better. That is in itself proof of community and learning. So here is a huge thank you to all of you who supported us and worked with us, and hope to see you again until next year!!

After running two sql saturdays and a third one coming up I have had exposure to a wide range of comments and experiences. Most of them, am glad to say, have been positive and encouraging. There are however, the few – among speakers, attendees and volunteers that are really irksome and indifferent. Buck Woody wrote a post a while ago about speaker responsibilities around conferences/events – following that i was inspired to write a few lines on my own thoughts in this area.

Attendees – Most attendees are appreciative of a free event and leave with positive feedback. Some are,though,completely oblivious to the amount of hard work it is. Some are baffled by why volunteers do so much of hard work for free and wonder if we have a life. Some simply don’t care to spend so much personal time on something work related. A lot of prospective attendees strongly believe their boss has pay for their time to attend, and/or saturdays and holidays are personal time that they will not consider spending at a technical event. Fair enough..but only if you think your boss is going to be the same guy (or company) for quite some time and you are happy entrusting your career in his hands.

Some guidelines for attendees:
1 Learning is for your benefit. It is proven enough that those who do self learning progress far more than those who don’t. People who know better have more choices and therefore are treated with more respect. Take initiative to go to free events and learn.Think before saying your boss does not support it, maybe he doesn’t but this is for you, not for him.
2 Show up if you register, or cancel if you can’t. You may be getting in way of someone who really wants to go and can’t because all seats are taken.
3 Care to fill out feedback forms for speakers – most speakers take your feedback very seriously.
4 Be considerate with criticism – a huge amount of work goes into organising events, and all of this is done by people like you who have families and full time jobs. Let them know what they can do better, but never forget that it is professional world class training for FREE.
5 If you are asked to pay for lunch – understand that it is probably because the event funds can be better used elsewhere. If you feel so strongly about it you are free to eat outside . I would not gripe about that 10$ when I get a great lunch and so much more in return.

Speakers – Most sql saturday speakers spend considerable amounts of their time and effort travelling and speaking, it is very hard to come up with criticism against them..but some general points not just for sql saturdays but for volunteer events in general:
1 Honor your commitments – there is no force to speak at any event, it is purely out of your own volition. Do think of factors such as travel time, expense and stress before committing to any event.
2 Please read emails asking for confirmation if you are selected and respond as early as you can.Many times it takes multiple emails/tweets/phone calls to confirm if you are fine with the date and selection.
3 Please be considerate if you have to cancel – try to let the organisers know as early as possible. And if it is possible to find a replacement offer to do so.
4 Please let audience know if you are filling in for somebody – i heard more than one comment from attendees when they went into a session that somebody was filling in, only to find the speaker poorly prepared and unsure of the subject. There are lots of ways to do a fill-in session and the audience will be lot more sympathetic if it is something you are doing in a hurry. I still remember Grant Fritchey’s session in SQL Rally where he filled in for someone – he made it real clear that he was doing so. The session was lively, fun, interactive and lots of learning came out of it.

Volunteers – Let us admit right away, volunteer work is hard. It takes away considerable time from personal life, and yes, it is thankless and frustrating when you read trivial comments and overt demands from some attendees. But volunteer work is also hugely rewarding because of the connections you make, the shared stories and the occasional emails from attendees who talk about what a blast the event was and how it helped them connect with so and so and find a job and so on.
1 Same as speakers, honor your commitment. Don’t take on more than you can do if possible, although for some of us it is impossible 🙂 Try to spread work out and take care of yourself personally.
2 Be an initiator, not just a follower. It is easy to do task lists and let someone else do the thinking, but it is very burdensome for the person in charge to keep handing out task lists. Offer to take on parts of the event and do it yourself with feedback from others. Ask for a budget amount maybe, and be creative in what can be done with it. We had a volunteer who did an event booklet with hand drawings of venue and a graphically creative appearance. She also found us our first local sponsor all on her own. Another volunteer did event signs by hand. Two years ago when we were really short budget wise she started this all on her own and has been doing it since.Those are some examples of what i would think of as role model volunteering.
3 Let key organiser know and be considerate before cancelling – committed volunteers are hard to find and even harder to replace. Try to avoid last minute other commitments.
4 Above all, understand that it is a *lot* of work. Majority of my volunteers who did not show up were those who thought it was easy work like throwing garbage out after the party. There are definitely trivial tasks involved and does not hurt to ask for small roles, but to be a committed volunteer it takes a lot more than that. Don’t do it if you dont have a calling for it or cannot do so for some personal reason.

That is just a few thoughts for this time. Maybe this event will bring in more. Thanks for reading and do leave comments for me.

Inspired by:

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/buckwoody/archive/2011/10/20/bonus-rant-conference-speakers-and-the-golden-rule.aspx