Somehow two years have elapsed since my last update; hopefully it won’t be that long before the next one. My last post was about SQLSaturday Orlando 2023. Since then, we’ve transitioned leadership of the group to Doug Leal who has done a wonderful job of keeping the group going – he managed all of these these events:
- December 2023. Holiday Dinner
- April 2024. Happy Hour
- May 2024. Meetup (Fabric)
- June 2024. Happy Hour
- August 2024. Happy Hour
- September 2024. Happy Hour
- October 2024. SQLSaturday Orlando
- December 2024. Holiday Dinner
- May 2025. Happy Hour
- July 2025. Meetup (Migrating to Azure)
- August 2025. Happy Hour
- October 2025. SQLSaturday Orlando
- December 2025. Holiday Dinner
Meetups (traditional user group meetings) continue to be a challenge. Our average attendance is about 10 except when the topic is PowerBI/Fabric and then it jumps to 20-30. We’re lucky to have a stable venue (about our 10th one over 20 years) thanks to Chris Lagreca, but even with that organizing a meetup takes effort and I think as with most groups we struggle with the effort to reward ratio. I think having one or two a year is a reasonable/sustainable goal.
By comparison, our Happy Hour meetings (and the Holiday Dinner where we encourage plus ones to attend) are easy. We use the same bar & grill for all of them. Good parking, center of Orlando’ish, affordable, and they are easy going about setting aside space for us on their covered patio. All we have to do is add the event to Meetup and call the restaurant to let them know we’re coming. No speaker, no sponsor, no projector. Attendance is 10 to 15 people, with a few regulars and a lot of new faces each time. On average we’re there two hours, sometimes it will stretch to three depending on who is there. We’ve been targeting one per quarter which seems about right. These always seem to happen on days when work has been long and tiring and I’d rather just have quiet time, but I go anyway and it never fails to help me recharge.
Related to that, Doug has been customizing the logo using AI which I think is a great application. Not something we’d want to spend time or money on, but it does make the message more interesting. Example below, and you can see a few more at https://www.meetup.com/sqlorlando/events/past/.
SQLSaturday remains our key event measured by attendance and value provided. Attendance is still down compared to pre-Covid, averaging 150-175 each year, but for me that’s still a win and is the new normal. Our partnership with Seminole State College remains strong. Aside from having to provide an insurance certificate (about $125) the venue is free and we work hard to maintain the relationship. We no longer do the Student to IT Pro seminar for students. It was a fun and valuable, but it was basically running a second event on the same day. It was a bit of a relief when the college said that we could stop, preferring to just do a targeted session for students mixed into the schedule. We’ve also stopped doing printed raffle tickets as part of simplifying the event logistics. They added value, but they also added real work. Overall, we’re trying to produce an event that delivers value in a way that we can sustain over many more years. That doesn’t mean that some years we won’t do more, but I can’t say enough that even the simplest things take time, and it all adds up for the organizer and event team.
I think all of that adds up to something that is valuable to the local community and sustainable by a few key volunteers.