Every year for the past 5 years at the PASS Summit, SQLServerCentral.com has hosted an opening night event where we meet the community and give thanks back to the many people that support the site. The first one was a little rough and unorganized, but the last 4 have been great and an event I've always looked forward to attending.
The party started as a way to raise our exposure with the PASS members but has evolved into a way to have some fun and meet other people from the site. Initially we worked with PASS to refer people to the Summit and in return received a $50 per person referral fee. Since that added up to quite a bit of money, and this wasn't a proft center for us, a long time ago Andy, Brian, and I (the three founders) decided to blow all the money on the party and give out lots of prizes. We've given away XBOXs, iPods, DVDs, and more, to people that attend, often randomly to try and get as many people as possible to talk out with a prize. We've also produced a Best Of SQLServerCentral.com book and a polo shirt that we've given to everyone that attends.
One year we had an XBOX LAN party, but over the last few years I've hired a casino company to come in and run a series of games (blackjack, poker, roulette, etc) and let people have some fun around the gaming tables and it's a nice way to relax on the opening night of the Summit.
I'm writing this partially to get some of you to sign up and make the party bigger and better, and partially because some of you that have come in the past need to give me feedback.
If you're looking to go to the PASS Summit in November 2008, and you don't have a discount code, use the SSC6 code when you register and you'll get $100 of the registration price and get an invite to the party. It's a lot of fun with some links below on the past parties. So remember:
SSC6
The Changes This Year
Many of you have been there in the past and know how it works, but things have changed a little with PASS. It used to be that there were two codes you could use at registration: a source code (what we used) and a discount code. This year there's only one code, which means that you only get one discount code. Our SSC6 code gives you $100 off the cost, but if you have one that gets you in for half price or less, then that doesn't help.
This primarily affects speakers, chapter leaders, volunteers, and others that get to go for free. This means that you won't have an invitation for the party if you use the discount for your free or heavily reduced conference rate.
Now I'd like to just let you in, but the management of who gets prizes and who doesn't, not to mention the costs of the party, mean that this is a problem for me. I slightly blew over my budget last year, and I'm not sure my boss was that thrilled with my lack of financial controls.
So, I'm thinkingof handling this in a few ways:
- No one gets in without an invite
- Purchase tickets
- ??
The first option isn't great because it makes for a smaller party, less fun, etc., plus many of you won't get in. I'd prefer to avoid this one.
The second option is the one I'm leaning towards. I'm not too worried about the catering cost since that's somewhat fixed, but the prizes are a bigger deal. If I go on past parties, I'd probably be looking to sell tickets at $25 in advance and maybe $30 at the door to cover the costs of the party. I'd really like to know if you're interested, and if you're want to Paypal the money to a SQLServerCentral.com account. Right now I'd have to handle this myself, and I'm not thrilled with that, but if people are interested, I'd like to do something like this.
The last option is something I'm not sure about. Any ideas out there? Something I haven't thought of or something you'd like to see? Let me know in the discussion for this article.
Steve Jones
Past Parties
If you're interested, here as some notes from the past Summits.
