New Faces

Last year I made a decision to try to do at least one SQL Saturday outside my “normal” geographic region; which basically encompasses down to Washington DC and out to Rochester NY and Boston. I’ve spoken at a number of SQL Saturdays in this area. I’ve enjoyed all of them. And generally I’ve drawn a decent audience, with a few exceptions.

But, one of the problems of doing that is you keep seeing the same speakers over and over. And while we’ve got a great crowd of speakers, I wanted to hear from speakers I might not normally hear from. Also, unless you’re constantly creating new content (which you should for a multitude of reasons), after awhile your possible audience has heard everything you have to say.

So last year, I put a bid in for SQL Saturday Chicago and was very pleased to be accepted. I had a great time staying with some friends in the area and also a great time at the Speakers Dinner and After Party as well as at the event itself. I met a number of speakers I had not met before and heard a few speaker that I had not previously heard. And, I had a fresh new audience who seemed to really enjoy my topic on “Tips that have saved my Bacon.”

Colorado Springs

So this year, I had a choice of places to put in bids for. I selected Colorado Springs and was pleasantly surprised to find they’d accepted me.  Since I’ve got a friend in the area, that cut down on costs considerably.  It was a win win.

I had a great time at the Speakers Dinner on Friday night and met more speakers that I had not previous met. A quick shout out to @toddkleinhans and Cyndi Johnson and @DBAKevlar among others. It was great. We talked a bit about using VR to navigate a query, about reprogramming our brains and more.

I was excited for the next day. Sure, it was last session of the day, but I showed up early so I could hang out in the Speakers’ Lounge, see some of the other sessions, and hang with my friends, the MidnightDBAs, Sean and Jenn McCown.

Then it happened

As a speaker you have a lot of fears; the slide deck crashing, your computer applying updates in the middle of your talk (it happens!) and more. But I think the one that perhaps you don’t necessarily dread the most, but you’re most disappointed by, is when…. no one shows up! Catherine Wilhelmsen has a great blog post about this and I have to agree with pretty much everything she says.

All I can say is… “it happens”. I know it’s happened to other speakers, many who I have a great deal of respect for and think are a tier above me in terms of their talks.

Sometimes it’s just luck of the draw. Sometimes, as I suspect played a role here, it’s the end of the day, a number of folks have gone home already and ALL the sessions have lower numbers than ones earlier in the day. It could be the organizers misjudged the topics the audience wanted. It could be my title or description just didn’t entice folks (I suspect this is part of the issue with a different talk I gave, where I got too cutesy with the title. I’ve changed the title and updated the description and I’m scheduled to present it again at another SQL Saturday. So at least the organizers there think it’ll draw folks.)

But overall, yeah, it’s frustrating, but a single talk doesn’t make or break me as a speaker. It happens and we move on.

Conclusion

It was still worth coming out to SQL Saturday Colorado Springs and I don’t regret it. I’m grateful to the organizers that gave me the opportunity.  So thanks.

Oh and one more thing I noticed while going back through notes for this blog entry: SQL Saturday Chicago 2017 was event 600, Colorado Springs 2018 was 700. That’s 100 in a year, almost 2 a week. And I was asked to speak at (including Chicago) 6 of them I believe. That’s a pretty good percentage.

I’m content.

That said come see me next month at SQL Saturday Philadelphia! I’m not sure what time I’m scheduled for yet, but I’ll be speaking on “So you want to Present: Tips and Tricks of the Trade”. And yes, I will talk about when people don’t show up. That’s assuming I have an audience 🙂