Tag: foundation

With SQL Saturdays being rebooted, and the SQLSaturday.com website live, it’s time for events. I am reaching out to some people that have run events in the past, but I really would like a more people to think about running an event in 2021. Please, contact me if you need help.

We are still in a pandemic around the globe, and while vaccinations are happening, I don’t know that many people will be able to attend a live event in 2021. With that in mind,

2021 is about the schedule.

By that, I mean that attendees don’t have to travel and block out a particular day to go to a SQL Saturday at a local venue. Instead, they can attend any SQL Saturday in a close time zone, if they have the time. Therefore, I don’t care when the Denver SQL Saturday takes place, but rather, I care that I watch a session or two when I do have time. I may not be able to spare an entire Saturday, but I can watch a session or two if I have the choice on any given Saturday (or other day).

Therefore, I have a goal.

A SQL Saturday every week for the rest of 2021.

I realize it won’t be every week, as it takes at least a few weeks to get an event together, but I want to plant the seed now. Let’s aim for one every week from June 1 on.

To make it easy, I’d give organizers these targets:

• Stick to 2-3 tracks only, 4-5 sessions each.
• Broadcast in a cheap, simple format. Streamyard is cheap, and Agorify looks interesting.
• Use mostly local speakers but pick others if you need them. Make this “local” with local talent.
• Use a short call for speakers (2 weeks) and then just promote your event.
• Promote locally as much as you can to attract and engage your local people for 2022.
• Don’t worry about speaker gifts or other extras.
• Make it a fun day for you and your fellow organizers, but easy.

No matter when you normally have a SQL Saturday, think about just scheduling one for some time this year. We will get dates on the site, and without the need for a venue, you just need a Saturday when you are free. Or really, any other day of the week. Don’t let the “Saturday” limit you. There have been physical events on other days. Run your event on a Friday, or a Wednesday. Whatever suits you.

If a full day is too much, try to do a half day, 2-3 sessions across an afternoon and evening.

If you have never run an event, a virtual one is much easier, and it’s a good first step before you run a physical one. Take this year to practice giving back to the community.

Why Run Virtual Events?

Many of us are tired of physical events. We miss seeing others, and we miss the networking. Virtual events do not do a good job of duplicating what a live event is like.

I get that. I tend to dislike virtual events, both as an attendee and speaker. I am tired of video “stuff”.

However.

We want events to come back in 2022 and beyond. We also want to keep learning and growing. This is for attendees and speakers.

Running your local event, say the Elizabeth SQL Saturday (my local city), means that I can engage my local audience and speakers. I can use this as a way to excite some of my local membership and get them thinking about the future. They may long for the event next year, even if they find attending a virtual SQL Sat LA to be better than my SQL Sat Elizabeth.

This also gives speakers opportunities to practice their skills, deliver new content, and get excited. There are fewer opportunities virtually and having a locally focused event might give some people a chance to improve, or start, speaking to give back to the community.

I really, really, really, really (can’t use enough reallys here) hope we get back to physical events by the end of this year, but I’m not counting on it. I do think we will be able to get venues and run events in 2022, which means looking forward, but keeping SQL Saturday going.

I’m pleased to announce that I have selected an initial board of directors for the SQL Saturday Foundation. I’m honored to be a part of this group:

• Andy Warren  (b | t) – USA
• Carlos Lopez (b | t) – LATAM
• Heidi Hasting (t) – APAC
• Johan Brattås (t) – EUR
• Stacia Varga (b | t) – USA
• Steph Locke (b | t) – EUR
• Steve Jones (b | t) – USA
• Taiob Ali (b | t) – APAC/USA
• Dr. Victoria Holt (b | t) – EUR

I think this is a diverse group, representing many different views on our industry and the world, and I hope you agree. Please join me in congratulating them.

This was a very hard decision, and in keeping with the spirit of disclosure, I’ll write a bit about the process I followed, without disclosing other names.

This has moved far slower than I would have liked, mostly my own fault with other distractions in life causing delays. Things are starting to move now, and I will start to get the board together to begin setting the path forward. I have avoided making too many decisions so far, so we have a lot of work to do.

I hope many of you organizers and local leaders will start thinking about holding virtual events this year and look forward to physical ones in 2022.

I am still looking for a suitable place we can publicly discuss things as a group, without others posting within our discussion. I will ensure there is a place for public comment on our work, but any working group needs a way to discuss things among themselves, even in public. Suggestions for how to do this are welcome.

A few things to start. First, this is about SQL Saturday events. Only.

This is NOT about the future of the Summit. Redgate is working on that separately from this project.

This is NOT about user groups, which Microsoft and DCAC are helping, each in their own way. If you are interested in those efforts, or want to help, please contact others that are supporting or managing those events.

Second, this is NOT about replacing PASS or taking over their mission. There is no intention from me, or Redgate, to replace the PASS organization.

Third, this is my vision. This is what I think now, and this is completely subject to change when a board of directors gets together in the SQL Saturday Foundation and starts to vote. I’ll have one of nine votes, and everything I think now could be changed. I may start something in the next few weeks to get SQL Saturdays moving that will get abandoned over time.

That’s fine. The important thing for me is to start moving. With that in mind…

The Vision

I have come to love and appreciate all the different ways that SQL Saturday events have run in the last 14 years. With that in mind, my goal in working to get this foundation set up is to continue to facilitate and promote local, free events organized by individuals in some area.

I see a foundation doing this in a few ways:

• Hosting a landing page for events
• Provide a non profit umbrella
• Tooling that integrates services needed (payment, speakers, registration, etc.)
• Connecting organizers with mentors or volunteers
• Collaborating with other events
• Assisting with fundraising

The first item is easy, and with credits from Azure or AWS as a non-profit, I envision a site like the Data Saturday project to host landing pages for the site. In fact, my first attempt really duplicated a lot of the style from that project.

Likewise, having a non-profit entity is something that needs to get completed. This is likely a US 501(c)(6), allows many organizations to donate to the event and take a tax deduction. Redgate is donating some resources and has engaged lawyers to get this set up.

Tooling

Tooling is more complex. While I think a lot of the tooling from the old SQL Saturday site was useful, some needed work. I don’t anticipate anyone funding this, but I do think their either an OSS project under this foundation, or under Data Saturdays, can help here with the tools needed.

I don’t anticipate tools being an issue in 2021, as most events a likely to be virtual, but 2022 will need some things. What, I’m not sure. The board will need to prioritize and help here, likely with some committees weighing in.

Mentoring

When we started SQL Saturday, a lot of the time and effort in the first few years were mentoring other organizers. No one really knew how to run an event in 2008. Now we have hundreds, maybe thousands of organizers worldwide that can help. Now I don’t anticipate the foundation being more than a repository for knowledge, and a way for inexperienced organizers to connect with and ask questions of others.

That being said, the board will need to disclose their experiences and help us mentor future board members.

Collaborating

I knew last year that SQL Saturday would be in trouble. Part of my concern led me to join the Data Saturdays project. I’ve helped SQL Saturday events that were scheduled move over and supported them. I think it’s a great project, and I hope that I can work with them as part of SQL Saturday.

There may be other projects or event umbrellas, like Sharepoint Saturday, that we can work with, share tooling, help each other with marketing, and more. My goal is to work together to get more events (and more types) rather than compete.

I want more people to experience a one day conference and get inspired by others. I want more speakers sharing in person. And these days, I really want to get back to in person events at some point.

Fundraising

One of the best things I saw from the previous management of SQL Saturdays was the global partner program, which allowed a sponsor to provide a pool of money that would be allocated to events. This reduced the burden on sponsors, which certainly can be a resource issue. It also provided a base for some events to get started in funding their effort.

In order to provide this program, a legal entity is needed. Unlike the former program, this one will look to send 100% of the sponsor funds to events. I would anticipate fees being minimal here, and those ought to be covered under the annual operating expenses of the foundation.

To me, this is the big work of the foundation. Raising money, deciding how to allocate to events, and publicly accounting for every penny.

Overall

We built SQL Saturday to ensure that a lot of people would have the conference experience. They’d get the chance to attend an event, with lots of speakers, with vendors and swag, and get to meet other professionals.

It succeeded beyond any of our expectations thanks to the amazing volunteer efforts of organizers and speakers. SQL Saturday become quite a phenomenon. I want that to continue into the future, with lots of events, lots of volunteers, and lots of collaboration with others.

As I mentioned, this is my vision for now, but subject to the opinions and views of the foundation board of directors.

I wrote recently about looking for candidates and the criteria that I initially considered. I am happy to say quite a few people expressed interest, and my list of people grew quite a bit. I wanted to disclose a bit about the process that I am following and take any feedback on my direction.

As a disclosure, no one else at Redgate is under consideration for the items below, though I am talking with a few others that can give me advice and thoughts on the process. It’s a good check for my thoughts, while respecting the privacy of people involved.

BTW, if you are one of the people I’ve contacted, make sure you reply to my email.

Advisors

The first thing I started to think about as I went through the list is that this is really, really, really hard. There are amazing people already out there helping the community, with tremendous passion. They are also diverse, in many ways.

Trying to decide on a list of 8 is very hard. I also am self-aware enough to know that I have my own internal biases and thoughts. I might not see something others will.

As a result, I decided to put together a list of advisors that can glance at my short list and let me know if they see anything wrong. I am not asking them for votes, but really to point out where they think I might not be adhering to my own guidelines, aware enough of diversity, or making a mistake based on my own ignorance.

As with other parts of this process, I am not disclosing names, as these individuals have a right to privacy, and I do not wish to expose them to any trolling or harsh judgment on the Internet. I know, this might not be perfect, but this is a semi-messy process at this point.

At this point, I have 4 people that have agreed to help and a few other requests outstanding.

I will also make final decisions, so mistakes are my fault.

Previous Pass Leadership

One of the things I am not doing here is replacing PASS. This is an effort to restart SQL Saturdays, learning from the last few years. There are also legal considerations with the insolvency of PASS and NDAs.

I am not looking to include anyone on this board that served on the board of PASS in the last 3 years. Many of those people may look to be a part of this effort in the future, and I would welcome their interest, but for now this is an attempt to make a clean break with the recent past, and return to something more like the aims and goals of SQL Saturday during its origins.

Candidates

My initial list of 24 got cut down to about 18 at first, with several people declining because of personal reasons. My post also generated a dozen more, and I got recommendations from some people I contacted.

I sent out 33 initial interest notes. As of now, I have 12 people that are on the super short list that expressed interest. A few dropped out, and a few are busy at the moment. A few gave me more names.

My initial outreach was pointing them to my previous post. A follow-up in email contained this message:

“Thanks for your interest in the SQL Saturday foundation. For lack of a better name right now, I’ll stick with SSF.

This is my initial view of what I want candidates to think about and commit to.

My vision is a BoD that meets a few times a year, has legal and fiduciary obligations to the non profit (though no personal, legal, or financial liability). The meetings initially are likely to be more email and debate/discussion. I hope to have close to 100% of the discussion publicly published, except where legalities might cause an issue. So you’d have to express thoughts and opinions strongly.

I am not looking for someone to agree with me or think like me, but for diverse thoughts on how to improve/grow/advance the SQL Saturday brand and franchise. My thought is that we will aim for an initial term of 1 year, but I would prefer not everyone leave at the same time, so the board will have to decide to potentially extend some people to 18-24 months so there is some continuity from board to board.

If you are still interested, let me know. I’m not publicly disclosing candidates right now for their own privacy. At some point, I will need to make a decision and reduce the list to 8 people and announce their names. I also don’t intend to disclose those I haven’t chosen, unless they wish to.

Steve”

To those that replied positively, I’m adding them to the super short list. Those that haven’t, need to do so or they will be dropped.

I expect that I will get more responses in the coming days, and maybe this post will get a few people to think or respond.

Decisions

While I to need to work with people, I do not want them to defer to me or agree with me just because it is me or I’m leading this effort. In fact, I am thinking a little more heavily about those people that have disagreed with me in the past. We need debate and discourse, in a civil manner, but we need people that think differently and come to rough consensus, not unanimous agreement. I think unanimity often leads to some blind spots.

I am thinking about diversity, about geography and gender and ethnicity, as well as how people have struck me as thoughtful, with some insight and consideration.

I am going to give people a week to respond. I know some might be on vacation, might need to think for a day or two, and I would still like more names outside the US/UK/ANZ world. Not that I need more choices, or want them, but because I think I should get more, and this should be a hard decision.

Timeline

I have no set timeline right now. I am waiting on some legal things to finalize, and really cannot move too far forward for now. However, I know that having a board ready is important, so that we can get events moving up and running.

I am hoping to start cutting down the list next week (22 Mar) and trying to get to 12-15. I have had to make personnel decisions before, and I have found it helpful to do this in stages, rather than all at once, so that is what I’m doing.

I welcome thoughts, comments, and criticisms of this process. It will help me ensure I am not making too many mistakes.