My first contact with SQLSaturday event occurred in 2014 on the SQLSaturday#341 Porto 2014 edition as simple and curious attendant. A full day of learning, sharing and meeting people sounds to good to be true especially if it´s free. At the end of the day I was amazed, and asked myself why organize and event like this? The answer is quite simple: sharing.

The same principle lead me to join Porto.Data community. It was here that I met Ivan Campos  the community leader, who invited me to make part of the SQLSaturday#341 Porto 2015 organization. Of course I accepted his challenge with great pleasure and apprehension, after all I was just a “rookie”.

The organizing team was mainly composed by Ivan Campos (@WizardDBA), I (@EdPiairo), Paulo Correia (@paulofmc) and Filipe Coelho (@DataPlumbR). But we were not alone, a group of volunteers helped us materializing the event, and we also count with the guidance from the members with more experience like Niko Neugebauer (@NikoNeugebauer), Pedro Simões (@pedro_mg_simoes ), and others. I’m proud to say that the event was a great success and I want to thank all who contributed to this success.

This success was the result of the work carried out over months before the event. As important as the final result of the event were the lessons learned.  The importance of having a plan was well understood by the team. It’s very important that each member know what, when and where to do.  It´s also important to exist the role “plan master”, who is responsible for ensuring that the plan is being implemented. The plan and the plan master gain more relevance when the team has junior members (as me).  Here’s a tip: you should have a survival guide to help the team in the organization process allowing better deal with stress/adrenaline.

In the end of the day I presented two types of feelings. As a team, we share the “mission accomplished” feeling, we were then a team. As an individual, a feeling of “profit”, I had the opportunity to know and hang out with the speakers, the opportunity to meet new people, the opportunity to learn and share knowledge.

For all the reasons presented above I leave you this advice: you definitively should try!

Ultimately, I want thank Ivan for his invite, wich has provided me a great experience, and congratulate him for the success as leader of the event organization.