Cultural Learnings of User Group (dis)Organiser for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of SQL Server

WOW!!!

I think that about sums it up; WOW!!!

Before I get all gushy, I just want a quick Oscar moment - I would firstly like to thank every person that came, without your support there would be no User Group.

Secondly, I’d like to thank @AdaTheDev (Adrian) and @atlantis_uk (Matt) for organising and sorting out the Feng shui.

And of course @ChristianBolton, for being our crowd pulling speaker. I’m sure the turnout would not have been so high without him.

Come to User Group, It's Nice!

Be careful what you wish for as it just might happen. I was expecting a few more people to turn up this time, but based on previous experience I was expecting 9 or 10. I was not expecting to more than double the turnout; 15! Every chair in the room (which was bigger than last time) was taken…

So my learnings are – You have no idea how many people will turn up until 7.10pm.

 

I ordered the food based on the number of people I was expecting. Since all the food was gone, even the biscuits,… I don’t think there was enough! I’ve been tweeting @GavinPayneUK about the pizza to persons ratio.

So my learnings are – order more!

We were trying out a new room, so Matt, Adrian and I spent a while working out the best room configuration before the geeks the punters arrived, which worked well. Once Christian had finished his talk and I’d got back with my inadequate supply of pizza, people eat, chatted.  But as Matt pointed out we should have put the chairs away to free up space in the room.

So my learnings are – work out the best use of space in advance.

 

For the first UG, I created some feedback forms which never got used as there were so few of us. Okay, I’ll put my hands up and say I didn’t create the feedback form; @ctesta_oneill did. I just changed the name of the UG at the top! But I did click print… (Don’t think I even convinced myself). We really could have done with them. Even if it was just a way of keeping track of who turned up.

So my learnings are – Don’t throw away feedback forms.

 

Now I’m eagerly checking twitterverse and blogosphere to see what people thought….  If you were there, you too can improve the cultural learnings of User Group (dis)organiser for make benefit glorious nation of SQL Server [Please tweet or blog your thoughts…  I promise not to get offended!!]

See you all in Feb!!!