The notes!
- Attendance was the speaker dinner was great! Always nice to have a lot of people there.
- During the day logistics all went well, though it’s still a struggle for first time attendees to find the rooms that in are in the other building
- Lunchtime sponsor announcements didn’t work very well – if you do this, you have to test your sound system
- Putting sponsor and speaker info up on the huge video wall works great
- End of day raffle ran long. Easy for this to happen, but I’m always mindful that people are tired and ready to call it done.
- Was cold and windy for the after party where we were on an outdoor patio (not the first time weather has been less than great) and the food was super delayed due to a communications issue on an evening where hot food would have been helpful. Can’t always control what happens, but I make it a habit to reconfirm the arrangements on Friday and to send someone over early on Saturday to try to prevent it.
- Overall things went great
On Friday I taught a pre-con on performance tuning at the very beginner level. First time in a long time teaching all day, a fun change of pace. I taught the day without slides, which is more work for the instructor compared to the traditional show/demo/lab rhythm and perhaps less effective too. I’m still thinking on it, though I think the class itself went well. I had 11 students, Paul Turley next door had 14 or so for PowerBI. Pretty good considered both were announced about 30 days out.
I also was on a panel for attendees getting started in IT. I think every event should do this, with one caution – managing a panel is harder than it looks. We had a lot of fun, students got to hear some diverse answers, time well spent. I’m thinking for Orlando that it would be nice to follow that up with some open time so students could connect with a panelist for follow ups.
