When last weekend rolled around and the first SQL Saturday in Madison was finally ready to open the doors, I sat back for a minute and watched as attendees arrived and registration flowed.  While taking that moment, something came to my mind.  The best way I can translate that thought to words would be:

SQL Saturday events start as an act of kindness to pool skills and knowledge into one destination so it may transfer, transform and recycle.  This idea, SQL Saturday, has and is the potential to spread across the world to create and build knowledge of a mind or the world.

SQL Saturday events have some distinct qualities.

1. Potential to build professional careers
2. Unselfish sharing of knowledge
3. Motivation and ambition to make another’s skills greater
4. Show of passion in every aspect

Those qualities do not simply sit on organizer’s or volunteer’s lap.  Each quality comes in the door with every attendee as well.  Each one of the minds that are in the building, session rooms and common areas, meets and expresses them in their own way.

Madison delivers

I am extremely proud to have been part of the first SQL Saturday in Madison.  It was a great success and it will be the first of many events in this great state.  I won’t go through the day, where I was sitting at 11:05 AM, or any type of organizer’s tips that I may have gained from this event.  We have some excellent articles out there already for that.  What I did want to say, and say it truly loud enough for everyone to hear, SQL Saturday is an idea that we should be careful with.  This event in Madison worked off the heritage of what a SQL Saturday was born to be.  Exactly what that is was the thought that embedded into my mind the morning of the event.

Madison was a success.  The organizers, volunteers, sponsors, speakers and most of all, attendees made it a success.  Let’s keep SQL Saturday going the way we always have.  We have other events and styles which we can work with but, this is SQL Saturday and we already know how to do it right.