Welcome to the October 2023 SQL Saturday Update. This month we have a few items in the newsletter:

  • PASS Data Community Summit
  • Upcoming Events
  • News
  • Recent Blog Posts

We’re coming to the end of 2023, and it’s been quite a year. My apologies for the erratic schedule of newsletters, but travel has been a bit of a burden for me. I knew September and October would be tough, but I underestimated how distracted and worn out I’d be. I’m approaching 100 nights away from home this year. I’m looking forward to a quiet Q1 in 2024.

We still have a few events coming, and I’m pleased that a number of them are in South America. It’s great to see growth outside of the US for SQL Saturday, and I hope to see more in 2024. If you are part of a group, or run one, in another country, please contact us if you’d like to run an event in your area. We offer sponsorship from Microsoft (working on others) as well as a free Data Community Summit admission for organizers.

I was recently at a few SQL Saturday events, which I really enjoyed. In September I attended SQL Saturday Denver 2023, which is my hometown. I was honored to speak, and while I was had to leave early, it was good to catch up with a number of people from the local area. I especially enjoyed going to lunch with a few people (some local, some not) at a nearby restaurant. Food can be expensive and this event didn’t provide lunch. However, most people found a few others to join them and went to one of a few nearby restaurants to eat. I was glad to see most of them enjoyed the outing and came back for the afternoon sessions.

I also attended SQL Saturday Boston 2023, which continues to grow and thrive. This event was larger than 2022 and ran as smoothly as any event I’ve been to. The organizing team is strong, motivated, and generous with both speakers and attendees. The raffle at the end is especially fun with cash prizes given to those that played their networking game. I’d love to see more events try something like that. And I was honored by a very generous gift. Many thanks to the New England SSUG team.

If you have any comments, questions, or ideas, please feel free to reach out to us at admin@sqlsaturday.com.

Thanks for reading,

Steve Jones President, SQL Saturday

PASS Data Community Summit 2023

The annual PASS Data Community Summit is coming in November to Seattle. This is an in-person event only and it’s the largest data community conference in the world. This year the event is Nov 14-17. You can still register today and come to connect, share, and learn with your data professional peers.

The schedule is out and many of the speakers you might see at a SQL Saturday will be there presenting on similar topics as well as new ones. If you’ve enjoyed a SQL Saturday, make a case for your boss to send you to Seattle and learn even more. It’s a great investment in your career, and a good investment for your company as you’ll make contacts and gain new knowledge on how to architect, design, code, and solve problems.

Hopefully I’ll see some of you there. If you come, please stop and say hi if you see me.

We will have a Community Leaders meet and greet as well, if you want to get together with other user group leaders and SQL Saturday organizers.

Upcoming Events

Here are a list of upcoming SQL Saturday events:

SQL Saturday News

I’m looking forward to 2024 and reaching out to various groups for their plans. Hopefully we’ll have even more events in 2024 and I’ll meet some of you at one of them.

Microsoft continues to sponsor events as a global partner and we are passing through 100% of their sponsorship money to the events. SQL Saturday is not charging any fees for this nor making revenue from sponsorships.

I also want to remind people that SQL Saturday is an independent US 501.c.3 corporation organized as a public charity. We are not owned by, or managed by Redgate Software. Redgate donated the brand to the corporation and gave us a grant to run events, but there is no oversight of the corporation. Redgate does maintain a permanent seat on the board of directors, currently occupied by Steve Jones, but has no more influence than any of the other members of the board.

No office hours in November with Steve traveling for work and holiday. I am looking to move to monthly updates, both on the blog and on YouTube. I’m somewhat inspired by Brent’s Office Hours, so let me know if that’s something you like or if you’re prefer office hours.

Recent Blog Posts

Here are a few posts from our blog: • [A Donation from SQL Saturday Boston]https://sqlsaturday.us1.list-manage.com/track/click?u=7b7aad7b6c9d8f9f19e674dca&id=0fa9025441&e=714c53215c) • Another Donation

More events at https://sqlsaturday.com/

If you or others want to join our mailing list, you can register here: http://eepurl.com/hwVBKn. Please feel free to pass this along to others.