This coming Thursday is the SCSUG meeting.  This is no normal meeting.  Instead of the standard format of pizza/socialization followed by a single speaker who will cover a topic for 1.5-2 hours, we are going to have not 1… not 2… but 6 speakers.  Each speaker will cover a topic for 15 minutes and then we’ll switch it up.   The idea here is to allow people to give presenting a shot in as low pressure an environment as possible.  It also lets them try out presenting to see how they like it without having to devote the time to putting together a massive presentation.   Much like Blogging, I believe presenting is probably something that you need to do a couple times before you really “get” it.

The presenters will be

Christian Loris (Blog) :  Fuzzy Lookups in SSIS

Frank Cowan :  How to Extend the SSIS User Interface

Bonnie Allard (Blog | Twitter) :  Dealing with Deadlocks in SQL Server

Bob Blaydes :  How to give an effective Technical Presentation

Sandeep Vatsavai :  TBD

Seth Phelabaum (Blog | Twitter) :  An introduction to Tally Tables

Of the 6 speakers, 4 have never given a technical presentation before(Frank, Bonnie, Sandeep and Myself).  Bob is still fairly new (To my knowledge he has only given one other 15 minute presentation) and only Chris is a seasoned speaker.

Originally, I had planned to make a game out of the whole thing with some score cards where the best speaker of the evening would be declared the ‘winner’ and get a free beer afterwards or something… but unfortunately I just haven’t had the time to put this together.  Post 2K8 upgrades along with upgrading my main workstation from 32 bit windows XP to 64 bit windows 7 (so, complete reinstall) has kept me too busy to set this up.  It’s still possible that I’ll get something together by Thursday night, but considering I still have 2 presentations to put together before then, it’s pretty doubtful.

We’d love for anyone interested to come out and join us for a chance to see 6 different speakers get their feet wet.  Meeting is in the normal location at SCCU Headquarters.

You can RSVP here.  As always, RSVP’s are always appreciated but not required. (We just want to make sure we order enough food for the meeting)