Welcome to the SQLSaturday blog, which has links and documents related to the SQL Saturday brand and the non profit corporation.

Changing Our Description

Posted on 24 October 2024 by Steve Jones

I made a change today to the website. I changed the description for SQL Saturday to:

“Welcome to SQL Saturday, the free community event franchise for database professionals and those...

 

Another Donation

Posted on 11 September 2024 by Steve Jones

We received another USD$150 donation from Benevity, which is fantastic. While we do not have many expenses at SQL Saturday, we do occassionally loan money to events in anticipation of...

 

SQL Saturday Houston is Back!

Posted on 29 August 2024 by Steve Jones

SQL Saturday Houston is back!

We are planning SQL Saturday Houston 2024 (#1098), with a date of December 7, 2024. We are looking for speakers, sponsors, and volunteers.

And,...

 

A Design Change for the Table of Contents

Posted on 28 August 2024 by Steve Jones

For a long time I’ve had a menu at the top of each SQL Saturday event. This has looked like this:

Event table of contents

This has...

 

The First SQL Saturday in Syracuse

Posted on 05 July 2024 by Steve Jones

I started university in 1985 at Syracuse University. I’d never been there prior to that summer, but my Dad had lived near there, and they had a fantastic computer...

 

Take the SQL Saturday Topic Survey

Posted on 20 June 2024 by Steve Jones

Most events pick a schedule from the submissions they receive from speakers. However, that is a limited set of topics, and reflects what speakers are interested in (or they think...

 

VMWare Sponsoring SQL Saturday

Posted on 10 April 2024 by Steve Jones

I am pleased to announce the VMWare/Broadcom has agreed to sponsor a number of SQL Saturdays in 2024. They have allocated funds from their marketing budget and are working with...

 

Filing 2023 Tax Returns

Posted on 27 March 2024 by Steve Jones

I filed the SQL Saturday Corporation tax return as a Form 990-N today. This is a short form filing for organizations that have less than USD$50,000 in revenue. That suits...

 

Building Better Habits

Posted on 07 February 2024 by Steve Jones

Some of you probably know that the SQL Saturday website and the corporate SQL Saturday website run from GitHub. We have repos for the main site and...

 

The 2024 Janunary Update

Posted on 31 January 2024 by Steve Jones

Welcome to the January 2024 SQL Saturday Update. This month we have a few

  • Upcoming Events
  • News

Happy New Year! I hope everyone is having a good start...

 

The 2023 SQL Saturday Year End Review

Posted on 21 December 2023 by Steve Jones

It’s the end of 2023, the second year of the independent, US 501.c.3 charity that runs SQL Saturday. I wanted to take a few minutes to review the year and...

 

SQL Saturday November 2023 Update

Posted on 10 November 2023 by Steve Jones

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

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

 

SQL Saturday Advertising

Posted on 08 November 2023 by Steve Jones

Part of the long term concern for maintaining the SQL Saturday charitable foundation is raising enough money to fund our efforts. We don’t have a lot of expenses, but we...

 

SQL Saturday Vitória 2023

Posted on 30 October 2023 by Steve Jones

In 2023, we’ve had quite a bit of growth in South and Central America for SQL Saturday. This has been an area where a number of communities have been running...

 

A Fun Networking Game at SQL Saturday

Posted on 18 October 2023 by Steve Jones

I was lucky to attend SQL Saturday Boston 2023. At the end of the raffle, I helped run the prizes for a networking game, which I really enjoyed. They did...

 

SQL Saturday October 2023 Update

Posted on 17 October 2023 by Steve Jones

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
...

 

A Donation from SQL Saturday Boston

Posted on 17 October 2023 by Steve Jones

I was lucky to attend SQL Saturday Boston 2023. At the end of the event, the organizers wrote a donation check to SQL Saturday for USD$100.

This was a very...

 

Another Donation

Posted on 03 August 2023 by Steve Jones

A surprised awaited me in the snail mail recently: a check.

SQL Saturday is registered with Benevity as a charity since we are a 501.c.3 registered charity in the...

 

SQL Saturday South Florida 2023 Review

Posted on 10 July 2023 by Steve Jones

It’s been over a month, but I finally caught up on some blogging after a lot of travel. This post looks back at SQL Saturday South Florida 2023, which was...

 

SQL Saturday May 2023 Update

Posted on 30 May 2023 by Steve Jones

It’s late May 2023, schools are letting out in many places, and many people are getting ready for the summer in the Northern Hemisphere. The South is entering winter, and...

 

Getting Sessionize Speaking Banners

Posted on 26 May 2023 by Steve Jones

One of the more important things for many events is marketing and promotion. It is the hardest part of growing an event. Speakers can help here by posting their sessions...

 

Updating Site Docs

Posted on 02 May 2023 by Steve Jones

tl;dr - I have added a new menu item at SQLSaturday.com, called Site Documentation. This is intended to explain how the site runs and how to add/edit an...

 

Adding a Printable Schedule

Posted on 14 April 2023 by Steve Jones

There were two issues with scheduling. Size and ease of viewing this. We added two new features: an adjustable height and a print link. This post describes how this works.

...

 

Lessons from Running SQL Saturday Jacksonville

Posted on 10 April 2023 by Steve Jones

Jeff Taylor has run SQL Saturday Jacksonville for many years. His 15th event is coming up next month, on May 6. Please come if you are in the area.

...

 

Fixing the CFS Logic for SQL Saturday

Posted on 05 April 2023 by Steve Jones

Tl;dr I am a mediocre developer and realized I had some strange logic in the website. I think I corrected it. This post talks about what I did poorly, and...

 

SQL Saturday Austin 2023 Recap

Posted on 08 March 2023 by Steve Jones

John Sterrit wrote a recap for SQL Saturday Austin 2023. I was thrilled that this event took place, while being sad I didn’t attend. I actually forgot to submit,...

 

Creating a JSON API Endpoint in Sessionize

Posted on 12 January 2023 by Steve Jones

Many of the SQL Saturday events use Sessionize for their scheduling of sessions and speakers. This has worked great, and we’d like to capture this data for historical purposes....

 

An Unexpected Donation

Posted on 30 December 2022 by Steve Jones

When I opened the mail a couple weeks ago, there was an envelope addressed to SQL Saturday. It was from an organization called Benevity, who works with corporations that...

 

2022 SQL Saturday Finances

Posted on 28 December 2022 by Steve Jones

This is a report of SQL Saturday finances for 2022.

Amended 12/30/2022

SQL Saturday is an independent, US public charity recognized under the IRS 501.c.3 code. Our board of...

 

2022 December Newsletter

Posted on 28 December 2022 by Steve Jones

Happy Holidays and Happy New Year to everyone out there. I hope the festive season has been going well and you are healthy and safe.

I look forward to seeing...

 

Office Hours Cancelled

Posted on 09 November 2022 by Steve Jones

I’m cancelling today’s office hours as I have a personal conflict. Plus, Summit prep has buried me.

I’ll do a broadcast in December to close out the year as well...

 

SQL Saturday November 2022 Update

Posted on 08 November 2022 by Zach Golden

Welcome to the November 2022 SQL Saturday Update. This updates includes a few sections.

 

SQL Saturday Memphis 2022 Retrospective

Posted on 07 November 2022 by Zach Golden

For 2022’s SQL Saturday event, the Memphis Data Professionals (formerly known as MemPASS) decided to forgo a virtual or hybrid event and return to a fully in-person event. The...

 

A Need for Online Events

Posted on 24 October 2022 by Steve Jones

I was working with someone earlier this year that wanted to organize an event. They were interested in an online event for their non-US community, as they thought it would...

 

SQL Saturday Data Erasure Requests

Posted on 16 October 2022 by Steve Jones

Since I have rebooted the SQL Saturday franchise as an independent 501.c.3 corporation, I have gotten a number of data erasure requests. These seem to mainly come from Mine,...

 

Easy Room Information at SQL Saturday Boston 2022

Posted on 09 October 2022 by Steve Jones

SQL Saturday Boston 2022 took place on October 8, 2022 at the Microsoft office in Burlington, MA. This was a location that has hosted other SQL Saturday events in the...

 

Supporting Event Downloads

Posted on 19 September 2022 by Steve Jones

One of the things I’ve noticed lately is that events need to send things to others for downloads. While email works well, and certainly is good for notifications, it’s nice...

 

October Office Hours

Posted on 16 September 2022 by Steve Jones

I have set up Office Hours for October. My apologies for missing September.

No agenda, but happy to talk about events and any other issues.

The details are listed below:

...

 

Adding Slides and Code to your Event

Posted on 15 September 2022 by Steve Jones

One of the requests from users is that we include slides and code downloads for events. While we can host files on the SQL Saturday site, and we can take...

 

Links to Past Events

Posted on 14 September 2022 by Steve Jones

One of the things that any organizers and events are proud of is their history. We’ve had a number of commemorative events that hit their 10th event. This past year,...

 

Short Codes for Events

Posted on 13 September 2022 by Steve Jones

When we formed the SQL Saturday corporation and had the first event in Los Angeles in 2021, the organizers requested a short code for their event. They thought these URLS...

 

Looking Back at SQL Saturday Los Angeles 2022

Posted on 17 August 2022 by Steve Jones

This past weekend I was lucky enough to attend SQL Saturday Los Angeles 2022. This was the third SQL Saturday I’d been to in LA, and it was once...

 

Looking for Web Design Help

Posted on 19 July 2022 by Steve Jones

The SQL Saturday site is based on work that I helped the DataSaturdays project with when the PASS organization folded. Rob Sewell did a lot of the work,...

 

Updating Tags

Posted on 14 July 2022 by Steve Jones

The history of SQL Saturday events is contained on our past events page, where I’ve recovered the history as best I can. Some data was lost in an earlier...

 

Adding a CoC Agreement to your Call for Speakers

Posted on 08 July 2022 by Steve Jones

We have few rules for SQL Saturday, but one of these is that everyone needs to agree to a Code of Conduct and the event needs to enforce it.

This...

 

Finding PreCon Speakers

Posted on 05 July 2022 by Steve Jones

One of the challenges I’ve seen with a few events in 2022 is finding a precon speaker for an event. All the data from PASS was lost, and many of...

 

July Office Hours

Posted on 01 July 2022 by Steve Jones

I have set up Office Hours for July. My apologies for missing June.

No agenda, but happy to talk about events and any other issues.

The details are listed below:

...

 

Redgate Software offers a free ticket to the 2022 PASS Data Community Summit for each in-person SQL Saturday

Posted on 28 April 2022 by Steve Jones

The SQL Saturday non-profit has reached an agreement with Redgate Software to offer a free ticket to the 2022 Data Community Summit this November in Seattle. Each event...

 

Requiring Adherence to the Code of Conduct

Posted on 01 April 2022 by Steve Jones

Note: This is NOT an April Fools post.

Many events have adopted Code of Conduct policies over the last few years, which I feel is a good trend. The only...

 

Reporting Code of Conduct Issues

Posted on 29 March 2022 by Steve Jones

There has been an ongoing discussion in our community about Code of Conduct and how to handle issues moving forward. I will have more to write about this in the...

 

Additional Trademark Filings

Posted on 06 January 2022 by Steve Jones

We have additional trademark filings for the SQL Saturday brand. I received the Australian filing.

This means we have the US, EU, and Australia trademarks.

Unfortunately, because of Brexit...

 

SQL Saturday is a Registered 501.c.3 Corporation

Posted on 18 November 2021 by Steve Jones

I applied for non-profit status for the SQL Saturday corporation over the summer. I submitted an IRS Form 1023-EZ to classify our organization as a 501(c)(3) corporation. This is...

 

SQL Saturday at the PASS Data Community Summit

Posted on 08 November 2021 by Steve Jones

This week is the PASS Data Community Summit, and lots of us are attending in the #SQLFamily. I miss attending in person, and hopefully that will change next year.

...

 

Congrats to Rob Volk for 100 Events

Posted on 01 November 2021 by Steve Jones

I got back from the first 2021 in-person SQL Saturday in Orlando yesterday. It was a great event, and I’ll have some notes and thoughts coming, but I wanted to...

 

Data Removal Requests

Posted on 21 September 2021 by Steve Jones

I have gotten a couple of data removal requests sent to the SQL Saturday webmaster, and decided to write up how I handle these. This may change in the future,...

 

EU Trademark Registration

Posted on 17 September 2021 by Steve Jones

I got a confirmation today that the EU trademark reassignment confirmation had been received by the EU IPO. This notes that the SQL Saturday corporation now owns the trademark...

 

US Trademark Registration

Posted on 14 September 2021 by Steve Jones

I got a confirmation today that the US trademark reassignment confirmation had been received by the USPTO. This notes that the SQL Saturday corporation now owns the trademark for...

 

Trademark Registration

Posted on 10 September 2021 by Steve Jones

I got a confirmation today that the [US trademark reassignment confirmation(/assets/pdf/USPTONotice.pdf) had been received by the USPTO. This notes that the SQL Saturday corporation now owns the trademark for SQL...

 

A Hybrid Experiment in Denver

Posted on 08 September 2021 by Steve Jones

Last month I spoke at a hybrid meeting for the Denver SQL Server User Group. This was an experiment, and I’m putting together some notes here on the event...

 

Trademark Transfer

Posted on 20 August 2021 by Steve Jones

This past week I received the signed trademark transfer document from Redgate. I countersigned and sent them to our lawyer to file in the various jurisdictions where the SQL Saturday...

 

9 August 2021 Town Halls

Posted on 09 August 2021 by Steve Jones

Today I held the first open town hall meetings for anyone to attend. I sent the invites out to speakers and organizers, but the meeting was public. This was at...

 

August 2021 Update

Posted on 02 August 2021 by Steve Jones

Note: This was sent to our mailing list and is repeated here. You can sign up for email updates.

We have a live SQL Saturday scheduled for 2021!

SQL...

 

Back on Twitter

Posted on 28 July 2021 by Steve Jones

The SQL Saturday corporation and franchise is back on Twitter at @sqlsatofficial.

While there are a few other unofficial “SQL Saturday accounts”, they are controlled by members of the...

 

Establishing a Bank Account

Posted on 09 July 2021 by Steve Jones

One of the functions that I’ve been worried slightly about it the establishment of banking services that can be used by a virtual non profit entity. While we hope to...

 

Scheduling and time zones

Posted on 11 June 2021 by Steve Jones

tl;dr Time zones are challenging and I learned something.

The SQL Saturday website was built by me, with inspiration from Rob Sewell and his work at DataSaturday.com.

...

 

Filing for Non Profit Status

Posted on 10 June 2021 by Steve Jones

Today, after some research with a lawyer and accountant, I filed the US IRS Form 1023-EX form today with the US IRS. This was to establish this corporation as...

 

New Events in 2021

Posted on 28 May 2021 by Steve Jones

This past week I had conversations with a few organizers in the US that are looking to set up new events in 2021. This was a nice surprise for me,...

 

Fundraising for SQL Saturday

Posted on 25 May 2021 by Steve Jones

One of the things I am working on at this time is the raising of some capital to fund the organization for the next few years. While we want to...

 

SQL Saturday Mailing List

Posted on 15 May 2021 by Steve Jones

I have set up a mailing list at Mailchimp for people to sign up and get information about the SQL Saturday corporation.

You can sign up here: http://eepurl.com/hwVBKn.

Feel...

 

SQL Saturday Incorporated

Posted on 13 May 2021 by Steve Jones

The corporation was formed and filed officially in Texas today. The following officers were listed:

  • Steve Jones
  • Stacia Varga
  • Andy Warren

We have secured an EIN and are...

 

Everyone Run a SQL Saturday in 2021

Posted on 12 April 2021 by Steve Jones

Cross posted and edited from voiceofthedba.com

With SQL Saturdays being rebooted, and the SQLSaturday.com website live, it’s time for events. I am reaching out to some people that have...

 

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