Late posting this, has been a busy week!

Started the day at Top Pot, meeting up with Jack Corbett and some other friends. Good way to start the day.

Next stop is the SQLSaturday RoundTable meeting, the once a year chance to get most of the event leaders and key volunteers in a room to look back and look forward. I’m sitting at a table with leaders from Russia and the Ukraine! The look back, seeing if the overall goals are hit, is very valuable. As I look at the 2012 goals I wish we had done a better job of setting more measurable goals. Here’s an example; we had a goal of fixing signs at events, the number one complain from attendees is that they struggle to find the event. Did we do that? PASS bought signs, but between that and pushing events to do more signs, but did we fix it? Don’t quite know.

• Nashua NH event bought a cheap laser printer to print raffle tickets the event, then raffled the printer!
• One ask is for a SpeedPASS with raffle tickets that don’t have the name printed so events can copy and have attendees fill in on site (who didn’t print ahead of time)
• Orlando had the “scissors of shame” for people that didn’t print and cut out raffle tickets ahead of time.
• Speakers have option to say “I don’t want a shirt”
• Look for suggestions about how to use (or if) QR codes on name badges and raffle tickets
• Sending hand written thank you cards to speakers and sponsors, Orlando had post cards made
• Lots of interest in having speaker dinners at organizers house – informal, low cost
• One event is having Girl Scouts be the room monitors (and presumably selling cookies too!)
• Idea to work at teaching attendees what effective feedback looks like

Overall I thought it was an effective meeting,except we don’t know who will taking over the SQLSaturday portfolio on the Board. This would have been not just a good time to do that hand off,it’s a critical time – time to build relationships, share and set vision. Much much harder to do via email later on.