Welcome to the August 2025 SQL Saturday Update. This month we have a few

  • Upcoming Events
  • News
  • Recent Blog Posts

Every year since the pandemic I’m optimistic about the number of events growing, and to date this has come true. I’ve been surprised by a few events every year, and this helps motivate me to keep working with sponsors and reaching out to organizers.

However, this year the number may stagnate or even decline slightly. Running events has become challenging for many communities. Organizers are busy, space is hard to find, and costs are rising. Sponsorship is challenging and I am thankful that Microsoft and AMD continue to be supporters of all SQL Saturday events. I am also grateful to Redgate for continuing to provide a free PASS Summit ticket to each event.

I get emails from people asking about events in their cities, and I refer them to their local user group. Unfortunately, there are fewer and fewer local user groups meeting.

My advice to those of you who want to attend an event in your area is to volunteer to help your local user group in running an event. This can be something as simple as helping compose an email or offering to staff a desk on event day. There are lots of tasks, small and large, and every bit of help makes the event run smoother. It also reduces the stress on the organizers, something they greatly appreciate.

The biggest challenge in running events is finding space at a reasonable cost. Many Microsoft offices are closing, which were strong supporters of events in the past. I have had luck getting space from educational institutions, but it requires an effort. Time spent meeting people and begging for a community donation in the form of space. It’s an art and skill, and if any of you have contacts at colleges, universities or even schools, I urge you to use them to help find space for events.

I hope that SQL Saturday events continue to thrive in the future and that I get the chance to attend more events and meet more of you in new and different cities.

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

Upcoming Events

Here are a list of upcoming SQL Saturday events in the fall of 2025.

For a full list of SQL Saturday and other data platform related events, check out the SQL Saturday home page. SQL Saturday News We completed our contract with Microsoft and AMD for the second half of 2025 and I believe all events will receive some funding. That’s fantastic as sponsorship is becoming harder to find.

Microsoft and AMD both continue 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.

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.

##Recent Blog Posts

Here are a few posts from our blog:

Reminders

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.

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