Each year I try to capture a little more on how to set things up here in Orlando. Right now its all in one spreadsheet with a bunch of tabs. Low tech, but good enough for now. Here’s what I’ve done so far:

• Mar 1. Reserved our date for this year, Oct 6th. As always, this is Columbus Day Weekend (our out of town speakers can stay an each day if they want!).
• May 24. Filled out the event form. Reminder that you need a list of the email addresses for admins handy and you should have the rates for gold/silver/bronze sponsorship levels ready (though we plan to tailor it some more as soon as the site is available).
• May 27th. Just sent back the signed form. I opted for the one with the anti harassment policy, no reason not to use it. Hopefully I’ll hear back Tues that all is set and we can have the site go live at 11am on Fri June 1.
• May 27th. Checked the members of our mailing group (no change so far), then added calendar events (made a SQLSat calendar for this year) and invited the team. Our rhythm is one meeting a month on Wed from 8:30 – 9pm, with an extra one in September.
• May 27th. Created the SQLSaturday 2018 folder on my Google drive and copied over the spreadsheet, updated the task list

It’s the little things like being able to see what the list of dates for the planning meetings were last year that makes this stuff go faster.

I also have to look ahead to the next batch of work, what I label as pre-live:

• Decide on number and date of pre-cons (we skipped them last year)
• When to close the call for speakers
• A ready-to-go sponsor plan so that there is no confusion as the sponsors rush to sign up!
• I don’t have a list of things to check/change on the site config, hoping to capture that this year.

Look for another update early next week.