It’s Official! SQL Saturday #72 Honolulu, Hawaii is On The Map!

April 1^st will be the first ever Hawaiian SQL Saturday in beautiful Honolulu.  Not only is the first SQL Saturday for the islands there, but it is also the first SQL Saturday in history to be held outside of the mainland (notice I didn’t add USA to that, as there is an event happening in Vancouver on Feb 26^th).  Special thanks to Jeff Bloom, one of the krewe of the .NET Users Group there in Hawaii for locking down the venue, Honolulu Community College, which has so generously offered the venue for FREE for our event, SWEET!

Now I know by now you are already looking at the calendar and saying, “What, a SQL Saturday on a Friday?”  Yes, we had to concede to a Friday event primarily for two reasons.  The HCC only has security until 2:00 on Saturdays, and the bigger reason, they turn off the air conditioning in the buildings at noon.  (Plus there is the argument that who would want to give up a Saturday in Hawaii!).  If you know your SQL Sat history, then you know this won’t be the first SQL Saturday held on a Friday.  SQL Saturday #58 was held on a Friday in Minnesota and had a turnout of over 200, so we are confident that a Friday event will do well.  And besides, what better reason to ask for the day off from work…free training that benefits their companies, what employer would say no to that.  With what sounds like to be the most expensive place to live, free training should be welcomed by these employers there.

Now you are also probably realizing that there are two other SQL Saturdays happening that weekend, Boston and Dallas.  We really did try to avoid this weekend, not because we felt there would be conflict for attendees, but for those who had already expressed interest in speaking at Hawaii’s event.  But unfortunately we had to go with what we could get, so we realize we will lose some great speakers to these other two events as those locations will of course be more cost effective for them.  Luckily this date did work out for Buck Woody (blog|twitter), as he is presenting a full day pre-con for us the day before the event. 

For those still interested in presenting in Honolulu, note, there will only be 3 tracks.  Two devoted to SQL and one devoted to Developers.  For those traveling over, we will do our best to give you at least two timeslots, so if you do register to speak, please post up more than one abstract.  For speakers being sent by a sponsor of the event, we will guarantee you at least two timeslots.  We of course are very interested in local speakers.  If you are local to Hawaii and are interested in speaking, please register on the website, but also DM me on twitter (@karlakay22).  Sponsors, we will have the sponsorship details posted over the weekend.  We plan to make it very affordable for our sponsors, as we hope that you will consider actually coming over or sending someone to represent your company.

Time to get cranking on the website!  Hope to see some of you there!

Mahalo!