Our most recent SQLSaturday went well, but there is always room for improvement. Here are my notes from this event:

• The only criticism noted on the event evals was about directions. We only had a couple signs up and that just wasn't enough given the location. Why only a couple? Last minute purchase and two was all they had at the store! Buy this junk early (also helps from a budget perspective to commit expenses on things you have to have).

• We printed the lunch tickets on the same sheet as the raffle tickets and many people just didn't notice the difference. Lunch tickets need to be printed separate and probably different size/color.

• Lunch tickets may turn out to be optional. We went to them because at some of the Code Camps they struggled with controlling the pizza, having people go back for more before everyone was fed, but with box lunches that's not as big a deal (it's easier to provision extra lunches - easier to see what you have anyway)

• Had some minor confusion on raffle tickets with some not knowing which end of the ticket to drop in the box. Easy to fix by just putting directions on the ticket.

• Scanning the tickets after the fact with a bar code reader has worked well, nice service for our sponsors.

• We got really busy in the morning and didn't get a chance to verify our speakers, so we missed that we had one no-show until someone from the session came to tell us the speaker was missing. Ooops.

• Looking at the time investment needed, we're recommending that the event leader be available all day Thurs/Fri before the event, and will need at least the part time help of one volunteer.

• Cancellations worked decently. We had right at 10% cancel - a good thing, because we're trying to figure out how much soda and stuff to buy the day before. In practice we still had to guess because not everyone follows up.

• Raffle boxes worked well

• We need to streamline more the registration process, and probably the easiest way is to just commit to stuffing the event bags on Fri night to get 100% of items in the bag.

• Making coffee on site works, especially with our two new Cambro coffee containers.

• We used a UHaul trailer, should have gone with a truck - more flexibility (and nice if big enough to use a forklift to load the pallet of supplies at Costco).

We learned a lot, but still, the measure of success is 250 people getting a days worth of free training and smiling while it happens.