Redgate started a new marketing thing and I like it. They’re asking for memories of attending the Summit in Seattle. I’ve been lucky enough to go to many of them, so I have a lot, but I wanted to take a moment and think about this one.
If you have a memory, share it with #SeattleSummitMoments.
PASS used to give a referral fee for getting people to register with the Summit. At SQL Server Central, we published the code and marketed to the community and usually we’d get a few hundred people to use our code. This meant we often had US$4-5k of income coming from the event.
We didn’t need it, and our plan every year was to throw an opening night party and spend all the money. We’d contract with a party company to run a casino and then I’d buy prizes with the extra money. The casino party cost around $2500-3000 or so and then we’d buy $2-3k in prizes.
Here’s a shot (courtesy of Pat Wright) of me setting up one year.
People had a great time, and we usually packed the room.
We’d have more people wanting to come than used our code, so we started charging admission. I’d have to guess how many people might come and then we’d purchase another few hundred dollars of prizes and hope we made the money back. Usually we didn’t lose too much money.
Amazing memories and I wish we were still doing something like this.
