Fellow DBA and community leader Peter Shore of the Columbus SQL PASS UG and SQLSat Columbus OH asked me via Twitter, "What is the best way for us to have a discussion about how you handle SQLSatBR? I am curious about the none data platform tracks, how you attract other disciplines and executives etc." My answer was the draft of a blog post... and a few email and Twitter exchanges later, here we are. Thanks for the blog inspiration, Peter!
This blog post is for SQLSaturday organizers, session selectors, and schedule-masters.
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| Professional development and IT leadership talks at past SQLSat Baton Rouge |
At SQLSaturday Baton Rouge we try to provide non-technical content for two major audiences: career-minded IT professionals, and also IT leadership.
So how do you get speakers for these two audiences/tracks?
Well, marketing budgets aren't exactly a thing. We remain mostly attended by word-of-mouth, we believe. We have a slick one-pager (feel free to copy), and we've put it in various break rooms, coffee houses, bulletin boards, etc. Reach out to local colleges and universities of course. But to get speakers during your Call for Speakers campaign, you need to reach other motivated professionals like yourself. Start with social media platforms of course, Slack, Twitter, LinkedIn, are good starts. But as a community event organizer and/or SQL Server user group leader, try to become aware or at least reach out to network with organizers of user groups for .NET, SharePoint, VMWare, game developers, Women in Technology, Agile development, IT Pro, etc.
- You can encourage your speakers to submit non-tech topics, most professionals do already have tips for being interviewed, career growth tips, lifehacks type of presentations. In general, you should always advertise a list of tracks/topics to fill during your Call for Speakers.
- We encourage these types of professional talks at our annual networking night, and provided some sample topics here.
- Reach out to leadership development and young leaders groups. Reach out to local versions of "Shark Tank", young entrepreneurs and similar groups, make sure they know there's a local conference with a track for their topics.
- For topics geared towards resumes, interviews, and job hunting, reach out to local HR departments or the Society for Human Resources Management (SHRM).
- Reach out to Toastmasters International. They're great for this sort of thing, and can likely provide either a sample Toastmasters meeting or communications-focused sessions.
- 2015: IT Management and Executive tracks: http://www.sqlsaturday.com/423/Sessions/Schedule.aspx
- 2016: IT Management and Executive tracks: http://www.sqlsaturday.com/515/Sessions/Schedule.aspx
- 2017: IT Management tracks: http://www.sqlsaturday.com/628/Sessions/Schedule.aspx
- Reach out to SHRM or other organizations for HR professionals.
- Reach out to IT consulting firms, especially ones that do Business Intelligence consulting.
- Reach out to anyone in your town who has ever presented a "CIO Executive Summit" or similar.
- Reach out during your call for speakers to local chapters of the AITP, ACM, itSMF, VMWare, IT Pro, and other technology chapters. Again, something I've encouraged for a long time - involve other community user groups in your SQLSaturday event, including but not limited to the .NET group.
- Reach out to anyone in your town who does "leadership consulting" or "executive coaching", they'd probably jump at the opportunity to present and work in a subtle pitch for their own services. Be sure they are familiar with the format and expectations of your event.
- Consider organizing your own Panel discussion of local IT leadership or thought leaders.
- Consider some Business Intelligence sessions for a CIO track, especially sessions involving executive dashboards, or BI sessions that are more strategic or design-oriented in nature.
Let me know if you have any questions, and best of luck organizing your next SQLSaturday event!
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| Careers in IT Panel discussion at SQLSatBR 2016 |
