Our third SQL Saturday in Ljubljana is over. Two weeks seems to be enough time to sleep over and see things a bit from a distance. Without any further delays, I can declare that it is clear that the event was a pure success
Let me start with the numbers, comparing total number of people, including speakers, sponsors, attendees, and organizers, with previous two SQL Saturdays in Ljubljana:
- 2013: 135 people from 12 countries
- 2014: 215 people from 16 countries
- 2015: 253 people from 20 countries
You can clearly see the growth. Even the keynote was full, like the following picture shows.
We again experienced very small drop rate; more than 90% or registered attendees showed up. That’s very nice, showing respect to the speakers and sponsors. So thank you, attendees, for being fair and respectful again!
We had more sponsors than previous years. This was extremely important, because this time we did not get the venue for free, and therefore we needed more money than for the previous two events. Thank you, sponsors, for enabling the event!
Probably the most important part of these SQL Saturday events are the speakers. We got 125 sessions submitted by 51 speakers from 20 countries! We were really surprised. We take this a sign of our good work in the past. 30 great sessions with two state of the art precon seminars is more than we expected, yet still not enough to accommodate all speakers that sent the submissions. Thank you all speakers, those who were selected and those who were not! I hope we see you again in Slovenia next year. You can see some of the most beautiful speakers and volunteers in the following picture (decide by yourself if there is somebody spoiling the picture).
Next positive surprise were the volunteers. With these number of speakers and attendees, we would not be able to handle the event without them. We realized that we have a great community, consisting of some really helpful people, that we can always count on. Thank you all!
I think I can say for all three organizers, Mladen Prajdić, Matija Lah, and me, that we were more tired than any year before. However, hosting a satisfied crowd is the best payback you can imagine And the satisfaction level was high even among the youngest visitors, as you can see from the following picture.
Of course, we experienced also some negative things. However, just a day before the New Year evening, I am not going to deal with them now. Let me finish this post in a positive way