Tag: PASS

Every Monday night on the week of the PASS Summit. Andy Warren and I host a networking dinner. This year we’re at the Yard House, and we’d love for you to come by if you don’t have plans Monday night. The event is from 6-9, but come early, come late, whatever works.

You are responsible for paying your own way. You don’t have to eat dinner, but Andy and I will greet you and then introduce you to a few others that we hope you can enjoy an our or so with. All we ask is that you register so we know how many people are coming.

We Can’t Do It All

We set up the dinner as an event that people might enjoy if they didn’t have other plans. While there are a number of parties going on all week, most of the attendees don’t get invitations.

We want to help everyone have a good time.

With that in mind, we have asked a few people to think about hosting their own events after ours on Monday. The event could be anything from going to taste beers at the Tap House to having a cup of coffee at Barnes and Nobles (Andy’s choice) to listening to a local band at a bar somewhere near downtown. Pick anything you like to do and host a small event. It doesn’t have to cost anything, and who knows who you’ll meet.

We have a few suggestions if you’d like to do something.

• Choose an event you enjoy.
• Pick something within walking distance from the Convention Center. The Space Needle is about as far as I might go from downtown.
• Setup an event on EventBrite, Meetup, or somewhere else. Set a small limit to your tickets.
• Let people know if there’s a theme or what you are looking to do. For example, chatting about good books at Barnes and Noble is a great choice.
• Let people know if there is a cost. I’d highly recommend someone try to get people to do the Underground Tour. However you probably need to let them know to buy tickets in advance.
• Enjoy

This is a great way to meet some of your fellow data professionals. I’d love to see a few dozen events pop up every night during the week.

If you’ve got questions, ask. If you have events, let me know, and I’ll try to publish them. We already have one, from the Midnight DBAs. Register for their Top Po Donuts get together on Monday night, or feel free to come to our networking dinner.

Register for the Networking Dinner Monday, Oct 26

A few years ago Andy Warren had this idea for a networking dinner. We had been chatting about all the parties and events at PASS, with many of them limited to select individuals. We talked about trying to get more people involved in the community and giving them something to do, so they wouldn’t get stuck in a hotel, as Tim Mitchell did years ago.

This has been a success, but we have growing pains, and we’re looking for some ideas from people in the community, especially those of you going to the PASS Summit for the first or second time.

Skip the history part and drop down if you want to know the issues.

History

We decided we’d host this as a meet-up, just publishing a location and seeing who showed up. We choose a small restaurant in the Pike Place Market that wasn’t busy on Monday night and put the word out. Evidently we know a lot of people because the place was packed. The staff struggled, service was slow, it was hard to move around, but it was fun.

We moved the location to the small mall and the Gordon Biersch in downtown Seattle the next year and sent a notice out earlier. Once again, Andy and I met people at the door, tried to pair them up in groups of four, and let them eat. Once again, it was a bit of a madhouse.

Last year we had a reservation at Buffalo Wild Wings, but apparently some wires got crossed and they lost our reservation. Andy couldn’t make the Summit, but fortunately some friends helped me out, finding a good spot at The Yard House. A couple of us greeted people at BWW and sent them down to the Yard House. It wasn’t ideal, but it worked.

Issues

This year we’re having some trouble nailing down a location. The invitation is up, as is the EventBrite, but we don’t have a location. Here are a few of the issues.

Busy Places – A few places we’ve checked are busy on Monday nights with Monday Night Football promotions. Many don’t take reservations. We could just go, and we’ve asked them if they might bring in extra staff, but we worry that the waits will be ridiculous there.

Reserving a Bar – We did find a couple places that take reservations, but they’ve asked for $600+ for the space, before food and drinks. Andy and I don’t mind spending some money on this, but we weren’t really looking to rent space at $300 apiece.

Possible Solutions

This is where you come in. We’ve talked about a few different ideas, but we don’t like any of them. Let us know what you think.

Using the Convention Center

We could probably get space from PASS. However, food and drink is expensive in the convention center, it’s not great, and it’s a pain. Plus we’re spending all week there, so we wanted to get out.

Finding a Sponsor

I work for Redgate Software, and both Andy and I have good relationships with lots of vendors. We could try to get a sponsor for the event and cover the cost.

However.

If Redgate sponsors, someone will be upset. If someone else sponsors, my boss might be upset. However I’m OK with most of that. What neither Andy or I want is someone using a casual networking event to promote something. We don’t really want to be in the stadium name game and sell the name of the event. We don’t want to push emails out to attendees from a vendor.

In short, we don’t love this plan.

Charging Attendees

We’ve gotten around 200 people each year, and I bet we’ll get the same. Certainly we could charge $3-5 for tickets, and I think people would pay. We’d rather not, but it’s an idea.

Raffles

We could raffle off something. Prizes cost money, however, and they could easily turn us more upside down than we are already for the space. We did think about raffling off easy things, like:

• a private dinner with Andy or I (or some well known volunteers) – We’d fund part of the dinner, or ask our hosts to donate this. However then we’re asking others to spend their own money.
• some old swag, like some of my Friday shirts. Not sure how much money this raises
• Some mentoring time – Perhaps some dedicated,private time for mentoring from Andy, myself, or others. Personally I don’t like this as I think mentoring is a gift, and gifts should be given, nor purchased.
• ??

Staggering Times

We’re already getting tickets reserved (no charge), so we hesitate to change things, but one idea is to limit the number of tickets to a set number every half hour. Say 30-40 people, with multiple sets of tickets. We’d probably do

• 5:30 – 30 tickets
• 6:00 – 30 tickets
• 6:30 – 30 tickets
• 7:00 – 30 tickets
• 7:30 – 30 tickets
• 8:00 – 100 tickets

This might make it easier to just pick a restaurant, but it doesn’t mean that there won’t be waits or that any additional staff will be on hand.

Multiple Locations

We’ve thought about picking 3-4 places in a small area, having attendees meet us somewhere, and we’d pair them up and send them out to restaurants, round robin style. This could work, but I dislike splitting up the crowd.

Thoughts?

A Good Solution

We haven’t come up with  a good solution, but we’re still looking. If you’ve got ideas, especially if you’ve been to one of the other dinners, let us know.

Ultimately this is about getting people to meet each other and interact, so we’d like to keep it low key, low cost, and casual.