The SQL PASS summit is quickly approaching, and with the excitement of large conferences comes the worry of what to do during the week. How am I going to meet people, what am I going to do after hours or during the day when there is a session that I don’t want to attend?
This is a question that myself and two good friends Andy Warren (blog | @sqlandy) and Steve Jones (blog | @way0utwest) were kicking around last night (it’s amazing what you can do over email when everyone is in a different time zone) and we’ve come up with a solution that will hopefully work for everyone, and the best part is that using it is free. If you’d like to go somewhere for dinner, post it up on eventbrite.com as a free event for people to attend with a limited number of attendees (if your event is free, then Event Bright doesn’t charge). Then to get yourself a little free publicity post the info up on the passsummitevents.info website. Once the event is approved (which I’ll try and do as quickly as humanly possible) it’ll be up on the site and it’ll be blasted out to the world under the #sqlfun hash tag by the SQL_Fun twitter account. (At the moment the links aren’t working on mobile browsers, I’m working with the developer of the site to get that fixed before the summit.)
The Event Brite info is great because it gives you a way to easily limit the attendee list, because as Andy points out in his blog post (which is much more professionally written than this one) “It’s a lot easier to get a table for four than a restaurant for 150.”
There are lots of big events that happen at the PASS summit such as the Welcome Reception, GameWorks party, SQL Photo Walk, SQL Karaoke (most of these are posted up passummitevents.info already) and the various vendor parties (if you are lucky enough to get an invite to those). What we are talking about with this setup is more informal smaller get togethers. If you want to go down to Pikes Place Market for Breakfast on Tuesday (which I highly recommend you do at least once while you are in Seattle) this would be a great thing to get out. You’ll find some great people to talk to and have some company for breakfast.
Andy has started everyone off with Donuts & Coffee with SQLAndy/Tuesday Morning, so if you are interested go and check it out. And if not then think about throwing something up there and I’m pretty sure that you’ll find some people who are interested in joining you.
So go and put a dinner or a morning walk around town up on the site, and see who responds. Personally I would love it to see 100+ items up there before the summit starts next week.
Now if this is your first time at the PASS summit, or your first time in Seattle at all then be sure to check out the first timers video that I recorded a few weeks ago. In it I’ve got some ideas for things to do around town that don’t require driving, drinking, or thinking about SQL Server.
See you in Seattle,
Denny