This past weekend I was honored to be allowed to present at SQL Saturday in 49 held in Orlando. This is the fourth SQL Saturday that Orlando has held and you could tell right from the start that they had the experience in putting together a successful event.
I arrived at about 5PM and made it over to the hotel for about 6PM. The speaker dinner was hosted by Confio Software and was less than a five minute walk from our hotel. After dinner I found myself being invited back to Rodney and Karla Landrum’s place. I normally don’t just head over to a stranger’s house after being in town for three hours but I had Jorge Segarra (blog | twitter) as my wingman so I knew everything would be OK.
I made it back to the hotel and managed to get some sleep (which is a difficult thing for me when on the road) when I was rudely awaken by a fire alarm. I found myself doing exactly what anyone would do at 3:30AM when a fire alarm goes off: I tried to wave my hand near it thinking that I could get it to stop. When that didn’t work I tried to take the alarm off the wall in order to remove the battery. After a few minutes I started to understand that I really need to leave the hotel, so I put on my clothes and wandered into the hall.
I got onto the elevator and after the door shut I started to think to myself hey, you don’t take the elevator during a fire but it was too late. I eventually made it down to the lobby and outside to the curb where I met a handful of other SQL Saturday speakers that looked as tired as I was. I also managed to get some pictures of firemen which was an added bonus if you ask me.
The next morning I was up at 7AM and off to the event. I had a 9AM speaking time and I did my best to have some energy for my talk. Overall I thought my talk went well, just a little rushed. My talk is really a 75 minute talk but I got it done in an hour. It didn’t leave much time for questions though. I’m not sure how many people attended, maybe 25, but I got back 18 evaluations. Ten of those came back with ‘exceeded’ and ‘5’ as the scores and overall my score was a 4.78 out of 5. So I guess I did well, but I know I could have done better.
The rest of the day was a blur really. I spent time chatting with old friends and new, had a quick lunch, and then got ready for the sponsor session. I haven’t really done a full sponsor session before, so this was something new for me. I’m not sure how I did as I didn’t get feedback from the people that attended.
Soon after that it was back to the airport and before I knew it I was home again.
It was a great event and certainly something I will put on my list of events to return to in 2011.
Tom,
It was great meeting you and hanging out Friday night. A most excellent discussion of movies, serial killers and random sql stuff.
Hope to see you at another SQL Saturday.
Eric
Tom,
It was great having you and I’m glad you had a good time and would like to come back even having been woken up at 3:30am the night before.
The problem with the Meets vs Exceeds Expectations question is that I already had high expectations.
It was a great presentation, and I could tell you had fun doing it. My only possible complaint would be the time limit.
Greg,
Glad to hear you enjoyed the talk and thanks for taking the time to come and listen to me babble for an hour.