Welcome!

We appreciate you taking time to consider sponsoring SQLSaturday #120 and we’ve put together some information that will tell our about plans for the event and show you how your company will benefit from sponsoring our event.

Event Overview

Think of a SQLSaturday as a one day conference. We bring in a lot of volunteer speakers, we have lunch on site, and we have a dedicated area set up for our attendees meet with our sponsors. We work hard to make our event a great experience for everyone, especially our sponsors that enable us to cover the working costs of this event. We’re expecting 300+ attendees at SQLSaturday #120.

How Much Does It Cost To Be a Sponsor?

Sponsorship ranges from $500 to $1000 depending on the package you select, and we’re always willing to discuss custom solutions to meet your needs.

Sponsorship Levels
Benefits	Gold	Silver	Bronze
Prominent display of logo on attendee materials, website, and any branded items (i.e. speaker shirt, etc.)	X
One guaranteed vendor speaking session in the schedule (* Session will be identified as a Sponsor session)	X
One email message to all event attendees sent before or after event.	X
Email List of attendees who opted-in to receive messages from sponsors.	X
Sponsor's table in exhibition area, including two chairs & power.	X	X
Include sponsor-provided DVD and/or brochure in attendee packet.	X	X	X
Event raffle box for capture of raffle tickets (* includes name and email address)	X	X	X
Logo & URL shown in printed event guide.	X	X	X

Cost
Raffle Prize to be awarded at the end of the day with a value of at least $100	X	X	X
Prepaid Sponsorship	$ 1,000	$ 750	$ 500

Where does the money go?

Even though the event is free to attendees there are still very real costs involved. Printing, advertising, breakfast, lunch, signs, and more! We are open to discussion on custom packages to meet your needs but we are unable to totally substitute software or other trade items for the base cash value listed.

All fees must be paid in advance. To sponsor our event visit the sponsor page HERE and fill out the short form about your company. We’ll follow up by phone or email to review everything, and then we’ll provide a secure link so that you can pay using credit card. Payment can also be arranged via check.

Event History

The first SQLSaturday was conducted in Orlando in November 2007, and subsequent events were held in Tampa, Jacksonville, Olympia, WA, Boston, MA and Greenville, SC. Although this is a new event to Southern California, we’re supported by the original SQL Saturday founders, and we’re building on the success of other similar events (for example, the Microsoft Code Camps are now on their 5^th year). We are also planning on hosting more SQL Saturday events in the future not only in Orange County, but in San Diego and Los Angeles as well. Our first SQL Saturday was held on April 24th, 2010 and we had over 180 people at the event.

Our Goals

Provide a first class training experience for our attendees. Even though it will be near free, we are confident this will be as good as or better than a similar commercial event.

Host over 300 database professionals, and continue to build a community for SQL Server users in the Southern California area.
Provide a great networking experience for SQL Server professionals, vendors, and employers.
Build our speaker pool. We’ve worked hard to get high quality speakers for the event and are trying to recruit new ones all the time.
Build relationships with sponsors. The Southern California User Groups and SQLSaturday is funded entirely through donations and we hope that you’ll see this event as a good venue for highlighting your products, services, or just as a good place to look for SQL talent.

Sponsorship Logistics

Advertising & Marketing

Our biggest effort and the one we expect to be most productive will be advertising to the combined mailing list of the Southern California SQL Server Users Group members and those that registered for any of the SQLSaturday events, a combined total of more than 1,500 people. We’ll be emailing them biweekly to update them on the progress of the event, sessions submitted, and other details, as well as remind them to register and to forward information about the event to their friends and peers.

We do have other avenues for advertising that we plan to use:

Meetings and mailings to the members of all the SQL Server Users Groups within driving distance. These include the Los Angeles, CA (www.sql.la), Orange County, CA (www.sqloc.com) , and the San Diego, CA (www.sdsqlug.org) User Group
We will also reach out to the Southwest Developer Community as well to help promote the event.
Updates posted on the Southern California SQL User Group Sites
An active social media campaign leveraging Twitter, FaceBook and bloggers.
Announcements via the SQLServerCentral and PASS newsletters.
We also expect to reach more new people via our sponsors – don’t miss out on the opportunity to alert your contact list to let them know about your participation!

The Raffle – Your Key to Success!

The biggest challenge with community events is capturing contact information for follow ups. Few attendees will have business cards, and having them hand write their info often leads to a 30% or higher loss due to inability to read what they wrote! We provide attendees with a set of pre-printed raffle tickets (see below) that will contain their name and email address; they are then able to put these tickets into the raffle box at each sponsor table to try to win a prize. This gives you 100% readability and 0% loss! It is also more effective than any other technique we’ve seen for trying to capture contact information and that includes scanning their name badge.

Raffle Ticket

Because we want you to be successful all of our sponsorship levels include the requirement that you provide a prize of at least $100 in value, and that you provide a full color 8-1/2 x 11 flyers that highlights the prize(s) you are providing for the raffle.

We provide the raffle box. We will have one table for all absentee vendors placed in the same areas with our onsite vendors. Raffle ticket collection will proceed through the end of the day. If someone from your team is present we’ll ask them to draw the winning ticket, otherwise we’ll draw the ticket. Attendees must be present to win. If there is a physical prize we’ll give it to them, otherwise we’ll forward you their contact information for you to follow up with (for license keys, etc).

After the event we will mail you all the raffle tickets from your box. There may be duplicates; depending on how exciting your prize is attendees may contribute more than one ticket to your box – but that’s a good thing, they are willing to provide you their contact information in return for the chance to win.

Event Logistics

We’ll open the doors to sponsors at 7:30 am. Sponsors will be provided with table and two chairs, and limited access to 110v power (please let us know what you need in advance). Tables will be located in the same area as registration and breakfast to make it easy for attendees to stop by your table. We encourage sponsors to remain on site through at least lunch and if possible to have a representative present at the end of the day to present your prize at the end of day raffle.

Lunch will be provided to sponsors that have registered. Please have everyone from your team that will be attending register at www.sqlsaturday.com so that we can have enough food available.

Contact Us

We hope you’ll support this event! Please contact us at sqlsaturday120@sqlsaturday.com if you have any questions.

PLEASE NOTE THE FOLLOWING DISCLAIMER: This is an independently operated local event. The SQLSaturday logo and the website for the event have been provided to the event leader at no cost by the Professional Association for SQL Server (PASS) as a service to the SQL Server community. Local event leaders are not authorized by PASS to negotiate contracts, make commitments, or act on behalf of PASS in any capacity. PASS assumes no liability for issues or problems that may arise from the event at any point in time.