Comments on: Getting Speakers for User Group Meetings

By: Brent Ozar

Brent Ozar — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 19:54:58 +0000

HAHAHA, the MCM jacket, right…. I heard that story. That’s epic win right there.

By: Peter Shire

Peter Shire — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 15:32:42 +0000

I must elaborate on this topic. Kevin Kline (hereafter referred to locally as “Amazing Kevin Kline”) not only visited the Carolinas he presented at five SQL users group in five days. …and I’m pretty sure he walked the entire route plus carried a huge box of books for giveaways. Sure it was extra work for me to coordinate with the other groups but it was worth it to ensure Kevin and Quest got good value out of this trip. We would invite you Brent but we now only accept Microsoft Certified Masters for these trips. Kevin is one, he’s got the jacket.

So follow the tips above and work with neighboring PASS Chapters to ensure speakers and vendors easily see the value of traveling to meet your group.

By: Brent Ozar

Brent Ozar — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 14:21:51 +0000

NOOO! That’s awful to hear. Let me know who they were, because I want to make sure that doesn’t happen again.

You make a great point, though – if I was in your shoes, I’d ask to talk to the speaker ahead of time and walk me through the slides through LiveMeeting. Ask questions, and if you don’t get a warm and fuzzy feeling via LiveMeeting, then don’t let them speak.

By: K. Brian Kelley

K. Brian Kelley — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 14:17:01 +0000

With regards to working with the vendor’s available speakers, I’ve been burned by this, by Quest, in fact. They sent a very pleasant presenter, but the presenter obviously was there to go through the slides and read from a script. No real knowledge of the underlying system objects (SQL 2000) and DMVs (SQL 2005) and the speaker was talking about finding performance pain points. When asked to elaborate, all the speaker could say was, “It’s in the slides.” So unless I, or someone from the user group, knows a speaker personally or have a good foundation to believe in a decent reputation, we would rather stick with folks like you and Kevin. We expect those types of struggles with presentations from local speakers who are just getting started. Don’t want to see it from a vendor provided speaker. Especially if they have a product in tow (and this one did, too).

Thankfully, we were able to get Kevin. You’re avoiding Columbia, SC, like it was Cleveland or something. And we’re not as hot as Houston, TX, or as cold as Chicago, IL, so it can’t be the weather. We even got the legendary SQL Server guru and cage fighter, Brian Knight, and SQL mentor extraordinaire, Andy Leonard, to pay us a visit. But not Brent Ozar. SQL Community Volunteer of the Century Kevin Kline graced our humble user group, but not Brent Ozar. I detect a trend here.