Seriously, what’s going on in Minnesota?  Our government is shut down and… we are hosting a SQL Saturday on a Friday (again).  We are shaking up our event a little bit over last year though… instead of a casino, we’re moving the event to a local church.

Sessions

If you are interested in presenting or would like to see a specific topic presented at our SQL Saturday, please let us know.  When it comes to presenting everyone has something to talk about – the work you do that someone pays you to perform has value and sharing that with the community is a great thing.

For this years event, we are tentatively planning a couple DBA tracks, a SQL Developer track, a couple Business Intelligence tracks, and a Professional Development track.  We want to provide a wide breadth of information as well as providing some tools for people to expand their soft-skillsets.

The submission window will be open until September 1, 2011.  That should plenty of time to submit and get the schedule up for the event.  Along with providing presenters time to get their materials together.

Please consider submitting a session to our event.

Sponsors

This event can’t happen without sponsors.  Everything from the venue to food to the t-shirts will run us a bit of money.  The only way to get this done is through the support of outside organizations.  If you are looking for a way to increase the visibility of your organization in our community, this is the local SQL Server event that will accomplish that.

There will be attendees looking for tools to improve their ability to do work on a daily basis.  Attendees looking for firms that can come out and provide solutions to problems that they can’t solve internally.  Also, attendees looking for new opportunities.  We expect around 350 attendees with a wide array of needs – all of them interested in taking a day off to learn more about SQL Server.

If you’d like to sponsor our event, you can select from sponsorships anywhere from $5 to $2000.  You can begin sponsoring our group by filling out this sponsorship form.

Volunteers

Where sponsors provide the funds to make the event possible, volunteers provide the necessary people-power.  There are a lot of tasks that go into putting on a SQL Saturday event and we already have a number of volunteers for the event.  We will need more to make certain that the event is a success.  If you’d like to volunteer, please leave a comment on this post or indicate so when you register.

Right now we have the following volunteers for our SQL Saturday event:

• Jason Strate: Event Chairperson
• Dan English (Blog | @DEnglishBI): Sponsor coordination
• Andy Lohn (Blog | @SQLQuill): Sponsor coordination
• Tim Plas (web): Presentation schedule
• Steve Hughes (Blog | @dataonwheels): Site coordination
• Bill Preachuk (Blog): Speaker dinner
• Sarah Strate (Blog | @DanceM0m): After party

Attendees

Last, but not least, we are looking for attendees.  Or rather the registration for the event is now open.  Be certain that you are aware that when we have a SQL Saturday, we mean Friday in Minnesota.

Get yourself registered early if you want to be guaranteed a spot at the event.  Last year we had room for 250 and that filled up a month before the event.  We can’t guarantee that people on the wait list will be able to attend.

There is one change in registration between this year and last.  While the event itself is free, we are asking attendees to pay $10 towards their lunch.  This covers a good portion of the lunch costs and offsets a lot of what we need to raise from sponsors to put on the event.

If you have any questions about this SQL Saturday event, please let me know.  I’ll be happy to answer them.

Related posts:

1. SQL Saturday 58 – It’s A Wrap! #sqlsat58
2. SQL Saturday on a Friday?!?
3. SQL Saturday 58 This Week #sqlsat58