This is a reminder that the Kansas City SQL Server User Group will begin meeting again April 29, 2010. Since our last group function, we’ve had discussions with many of the members about our existing meeting structure, and have been presented with several possible solutions we’d like to experiment with:

Daytime meetings –
We’ve had several members request daytime meetings due to family or other evening obligations, while we realize that a 2:30 – 5:00pm schedule may not be feasible with some work schedules we would like to try this schedule and amend it if necessary to benefit as many as possible.

Quarterly Meetings –
One of the other changes you’ll notice from the site is that we’ve reduced the meeting frequency from monthly to quarterly. Prior user group presidents that I’ve spoken with have expressed the difficulty involved in finding bodies that are willing to present on a topic. My primary intention for having quarterly meetings is that I know of at least four people (myself included) that would be willing to present a featured topic at some time during the year, as soon as topics have been chosen, these will be updated on the website well in advance of the meeting. I also intend to make a signup sheet available on the user group website. This signup sheet will essentially be looking for people that are willing and able to present on a given topic and their availability. If we have enough interest, I would certainly like to take another look at resuming monthly or semi-monthly meetings.

Tips & Tricks presentation –
In the vein of finding more speakers we’re also going to try to make speaking to the group more accessible and hopefully a little less intimidating. The first 30 minutes of the meeting I’d like to fill with one or two speakers presenting on some tidbit of information they’ve recently come across in their day-to-day work. Ideally this topic would have produced sort of an ah-ha moment. I figure if you didn’t have a solution off the bat, there are probably a dozen other people in the room that your solution could benefit and would love to hear about it.

Meeting Location –
Yet another change is regarding the meeting location. The folks at Microsoft have graciously offered to host these daytime meetings at their Overland park location as posted on the website. We’ve met at the Microsoft office in the past for evening meetings, but due to building security, this has required someone to wait in the downstairs lobby and let people in as they got to the building, this is obviously less than ideal. Daytime meetings are not affected by their security protocol. Also, it seems to be much easier finding a sizable room at Microsoft for a daytime meeting than finding large classrooms at JCCC while the daytime students are still on campus.

We also intend to distribute surveys to group members in order to get feedback on these changes and to get ideas on how to improve the group going forward. We have a great group of people that are all interested in helping this group to grow and succeed. I want to thank everyone for your contributions to the user group and look forward to working with you all throughout the year.

Meeting Details: http://kansascity.sqlpass.org/