PASS Advice – Marketing Pre/Post Conference Seminars

Last week I attended the PASS Performance Virtual Chapter’s presentation by Adam Machanic on Parallelism and Performance. It looked interesting, so I logged on and listened to Adam while doing a little busy work. I had gotten an announcement over at SQLServerCentral for it, and had run it, but hadn’t thought much of it.
In doing so, I missed this short sentence at the end of the description: “This session is a small preview of some of the material that will be covered in Adam Machanic’s full-day PASS Summit post-con, “A Day of Doing Many Things at Once.”
I don’t know if this has been done in the past, but this is a great way to market the pre and post conference seminars. Prior to sitting in for part of one a couple years ago, I had questioned whether these seminars were really with the cost, and the time, of attending an extra day at the PASS seminar. I have to say that I think they are definitely worth it, at least this one is.
This is also a great marketing technique. I checked Adam’s post con seminar page, and there’s no mention of this presentation. To me, this ought to be linked on the page, on the page with all pre/post cons, and in marketing messages, including the ROI page.
In fact, I’d suggest that every pre/post con speaker actually do a 30 minute preview of their session in an online presentation. It’s great practice, good exposure, and a nice marketing message for the Summit. It helps out the VCs as well, as they are always looking for good speakers.
If I get elected to the board this year, I might even make this a requirement for the pre/post con speakers for 2011.