If you've read my blog over the past year and a half you know that I've been heavily involved in trying to build a 'franchise' around SQLSaturday, with the guiding principle being that the event has to be locally owned. We've had some decent success, but we've also seen that in many cases groups are reluctant to try hosting one, usually due to one of the following:

• Fear - Won't be able to find speakers
• Fear - Won't be able to find a free venue
• Fear - Won't be able to raise funds to pay for the event (or just totally uncomfortable with any type of sales)
• Fear - It will be too much work

Those are perfectly valid concerns!

We're working on ways to mitigate all of those fears, and in fact we had already offered some funding in the form of loans that didn't require repayment - but even that presented some level of stress. As I thought about it more, it seemed like one way to solve the problem was to find a bigger pool of money so that we could insure an event would have at least the minimum funding needed for a basic event. The challenge was how to do it in a way that didn't remove control from the group running the event.

Backing up a little, last October we had SQLSaturday #8 in Orlando. My friend and business partner Steve Jones came to Orlando to speak and to see the event - in essence to experience first hand some of what I'd been sharing over the phone. As you probably know Steve also works for Red Gate as the editor of SQLServerCentral, so he ended up bringing Rachel Hawley from their marketing team to the event with him. We had an extended chat prior to the event, discussing among other things 'why' a DBA would spend a Saturday at a training event instead of something non work related. Then on Saturday they got to experience the full force of the event, 275 people milling around and talking all things SQL. My perception was that it intrigued both, the next step was for them to decide if they wanted to spend marketing dollars on these types of events, expectations, etc. At one point Rachel asked what she could to help build the franchise - off the cuff my reply was "donate ten thousand dollars" and I believe she was somewhat taken aback! Obviously she didn't whip out the checkbook, though Steve did pay for lunch.

Then in November at the PASS Summit in Seattle I had dinner with Simon Galbraith, Co-CEO of Red Gate. Simon and I have been friends for years, and we make it a habit to schedule dinner if we're in town at the same time to just talk shop. When we met I was shared some of the challenges I was facing with SQLSaturday, and Simon was definitely interested - both in offering some ideas and in thinking about how and when Red Gate should participate in these types of events (as a follow up to Rachel's visit). Good conversation, no agenda, no plans to do anything on anything.

Moving forward to December Rachel and Richard emailed to ask about starting a deeper conversation around their support of the events. We went back and forth through December to try to find a way to do something that stuck to the principles, but offered an option for funding. Here's an abbreviated version of what we've agreed to:

• First time SQLSaturday events are eligible for up to $1000 in assistance from Red Gate, based on $10/person at 70% of registrants 2 weeks prior to the event
• If they accept the funding, the minimum target for the event is two tracks (so that attendees have an option at each session)
• Red Gate will be displayed as the most prominent sponsor and featured on the speaker polos, but the event can still have other sponsors
• Events are not required to accept this funding/sponsorship!
• The event is not required to provide a copy of the attendee list to Red Gate

In practice this means that if you set your goal as two tracks and 100 attendees, you can provide lunch, speaker shirts, and cover miscellaneous costs without finding a single sponsor. We're going to encourage groups to find a couple more sponsors to cover breakfast and maybe some nice to haves, with the real goal of building experience and relationships they will need when they (hopefully) repeat the event. The conditions for receiving the money are as light weight as we could make them, and the money is paid out of my business account - I'll bill back to Red Gate whatever amount the event earned. You're probably wondering how many events we can support? Red Gate has allocated $20,000 to be used by June 30, 2010. That's 20 good events! All I need now is 20 groups with a strong person willing to give it a try.

That's one step forward I hope, and in the next few weeks I'll post more about steps to try to reduce the other fears I mentioned above. If you're interested in hosting a SQLSaturday post a comment or email me. I'm curious to hear what you think - does the plan sound interesting?