SQL Saturday #252 Christchurch, New Zealand

G’day,

Well, these are exciting times for the Christchurch SQL SERVER User Group.

After a period of fragmentation where our meetings seemed to be at random intervals – mainly due to certain major events outside our control – such as earthquakes, the city being rebuilt and accomodation challenges, we regrouped and relauched with a new leadership team. We had a local company – SQL Services - step up and offer us regular accomodation for our user group meetings and we got ourselves affiliated to PASS – who’ve offered us quite a bit of support.

Now, we’re proud to annouce that on Saturday 10th August 2013 we’ll be hosting the very first SQL Saturday on the South Island of New Zealand.

We’ve combined SQL saturday #252 with events from other local IT user groups – we’ve got the local .NET group presenting a development track, we’ve got a huge amount of synergy there to help each other out. The local infrastructure group is presenting aother track and again, we’re ideally placed to tie in with that particular track. The local Sharpoint and CRM guys are also providing their own brand of education.

So, in the unlightly event that an SQL Saturday session fails to grab your interest there’s plenty going on around the place – and if all else fails there’s some good cafe across the road where you can stock up on coffee. Remeber that we’d like to hear all your feedback about this event so that next year we can make it even better.

There’s some great prizes and giveawys on offer – as I’m sure you’d expect from any self-respecting SQL Saturday.

The schedule has been published and is up on the SQL Saturday site.  In addition to some of the great local speakers, such as Brent McCraken, Dave Curlewis, Dave Dustin that are coming to the event, we throught we’d try a remote session with Argenis Fernandez - who’s pretty much the first MCM to speak at any of our user group events. We’re keen to maybe do more of this in the future at some of our regular user group sessions, so if there are people out there who are interested in this oprtion them please just get in touch via Twitter or drop me an email.

I’ve visted a few SQL Saturdays in New Zealand and the States and seen how its done there and on the whole I’ve been very impressed with the level of interaction and quality of the free education on offer and so it was only a matter of time before the Christchurch SQL SERVER User Group stepped up to host its own event.

If any of you are ever holidaying in this part of the world or here on business, please get in touch. We’re always keen to make new friends here.

We’ll keep you all updated with the events progess and thanks to everybody who submited sessions and offered support.

Here’s to a great event.

have a great day.

Cheers

Martin.