This blog post is a continuation of the initial announcement almost a month ago about the session selection process that we decided to do for SQLSaturday Portugal Oporto 2014 Edition, that I have initially blogged about at SQLSaturday Porto edition 2014 Session Selection Process explained

A lot of work, SQLBits and even private life have occasionally interrupted my intentions to do that before, but increasing email traffic makes me publish the results today and so here we go:

We have had some AMAZING results of public participation, and I am extremely happy that we did that –

Out of the unique 101 registrations we have had 53 valid people voting. These are well over 50% of the registered people and I am truly overwhelmed with the results. I confess that I would be happy to see somewhere around 30%, and when after less than 30 hours we have reached that number I was begging for more.

It is incredible to analyse how people do cast their votes – some people choose a specific topic and vote on everything around it, some people pick up well-known speakers, some people go for their friends and colleagues only, some people vote mostly for themselves, some speakers avoid voting for their sessions at all (extra-respect), but I repeat:
EVERY SINGLE WAY is VALID. This is what voting is all about. Expressing your own opinion.

I am not just a attendee, I am not just a speaker who submitted a couple of sessions, I am mainly an organiser of one of the biggest and the most important community technical events in my country.

I do have my priorities and my tastes, I do respect some speakers more than the others, I do feel a need to respect our sponsors (You know, that should we loose money on our event – than it is ME who is opening the pocket),

and so:

– I did not ask a single person to vote for me, even though I am dying to present at the first SQLSaturday in the northern Portugal;

– I did not comment with anyone which session I would love to have chosen;

– My own choice shall remain a secret as everyone else’s – no matter if they were voting as attendees or as a organisers;

– Each of SQLSaturday Portugal team members voted according to their preferences, I have had ZERO influences on that (and Yeah, I wish I had, but I managed to leave it as it is);

– We (organisers) have seen the final result of the community vote and that might have influenced our choices. For the first attempt we have discussed this and made a conscious decision in order to be able to get a better control.

Here are the results of the community vote for the DEV/DBA & BI tracks: (we identified the tracks by ourselves, since there is no such option at SQLSaturday’s site at the moment)

Community Votes – DEV&DBA

Community Votes – BI

Here are the results of the voting of the selection committee:

Org Team Votes – DEV/DBA

Org Team Voting – BI

Check out the final result, bearing in mind that the 3rd track selection was done by NetPonto community.\

The final result can be found at SQLSaturday Portugal Schedule Page.

Now, I would love to hear your thoughts