From SQL Saturday to Day of Data
- Jeff Taylor
- 2 hours ago
- 6 min read
We just wrapped up another year of our annual data event in Jacksonville, Florida. This was the first year of running the event as 'Day of Data'. We had been discussing a name change for some time to better reflect how SQL Saturday has evolved over the years. Last year, that change became official. You can read the announcement here: https://blog.sqlsaturday.com/2025-11-26-evolvingsqlsat
While this might look like just a rebrand, it reflects something that has already been happening for a long time.
SQL Saturday started as a SQL Server–focused community event nearly two decades ago, but over time, the content expanded well beyond a single platform.
The content evolved first—the branding is just catching up.
At the same time, SQL Saturday is a strong, recognized name. Changing that comes with tradeoffs:
Less immediate recognition
More effort in marketing
With 12 tracks and over 200 submitted sessions, the schedule covered a wide range of topics.
From traditional SQL Server sessions to newer topics around Fabric, APIs, AI, and modern data platforms, it really showed how broad the space has become.
👉 View the schedule from this year's event:
The Theme: Star Wars vs Star Trek
This year, we decided to have a Star Wars vs. Star Trek theme. At the registration table, we had stickers for attendees to 'choose a side'... Star Wars or Star Trek, and if they were not into either, a 'not a fan' option.
And the result: 👉 Star Wars won — it wasn’t even close. It came out ahead with over 200 votes!
While on Facebook, a week or so before the event, a video popped up that had Star Wars mocktails and how to make them. I had an instant idea! I reached out to our after-party venue manager and assistant manager at Buffalo Wild Wings, to ask whether they had ever created mocktails like this or would be interested in doing something similar for our party. The assistant manager took charge and reached out to the bartender who would be on shift during our event.
After a few emails back and forth, we had a plan, and the bartender was stoked to do it and even ordered a few things like sparkle dust that they didn't have in stock, so that made it all the better! We ended up having 3 mocktails for Star Wars and 3 for Star Trek. I quickly got to work and created a laminated flip menu that we could place on each table on the outside deck we use for our after-party with a picture, name, and description of each mocktail.
I think it was a hit... Here are a few pictures.
Volunteers
We had 49 volunteers who kept everything moving from Thursday evening through Saturday! I always say this, and I'll keep saying it, we cannot run this event without our volunteers! Thank you!!
Speakers
We had 48 speakers, though several were last-minute cancellations due to personal or family medical emergencies. We unfortunately had to change both of our originally scheduled precons. We are grateful that Belinda, Ginger, and Erik stepped in and saved the day!
We hope everyone is doing well and continuing to recover.
Even with those challenges, the remaining sessions and speakers stepped up and kept things running smoothly.
STEM2 Kids Code Camp
For the second year in a row, we worked with the local STEM2 team to put together a program and tried to host a STEM2 Kids Code Camp—but ended up with no sign-ups.
We’re not entirely sure why. Could it be cost, age range, or other competing weekend activities and sports? We'd love your feedback if you have children in the middle school age range.
Sponsorships
We love our sponsors! We cannot host this event without them! But we do wish there were more, and this has been a consistent ask from our attendees for the last three years.
Finding sponsors has remained one of the hardest parts of the event over the last three years.
Even with strong attendance and engagement, it’s still challenging to get consistent participation from sponsors who have even been staple sponsors in the past.
Ice Cream!
This year, we were able to have Kilwins join us again. Check out our amazing toppings table.
The 501st Legion and V for Victory – Bricks of Love
One of the highlights this year and every year, honestly, was having the 501st Legion join us again. The photo wall and the hallway were busy with photo opportunities. Below are a few of those from the day.
Instead of charging for appearances, they ask events to donate to a charity of our choice.
This year, we supported: V for Victory – Bricks of Love. This program provides LEGO sets to children undergoing cancer treatment—giving them something positive to look forward to after each visit.
This year, we set up a QR code for donations and then passed around a bucket during the closing ceremonies/raffle time, raising a total of $1,439.
To learn more: https://www.vforvictory.org/ourprograms
Behind the Scenes - Running the event
At times, running an event like this can be stressful. Speakers not being able to make it, swag being misprinted, shirts being promised yet sometimes barely making it, or being completely printed wrong or on the incorrect color shirt. Some years are easier to manage, and others are sometimes difficult. This year was one of the difficult ones. Here are a few of the highlights where things didn't go as planned.
The original precon speakers were unable to attend.
More than 14 Saturday speakers had plans changed either due to health or work.
Speaker shirts were delivered only hours before the speaker party
Two swag print runs were of poor quality or misaligned, and another had multiple quality issues with some items.
We received fewer items for the attendee bags than were listed on purchase orders.
We had a new parking area for our attendees, due to three events happening on the same day at our venue, UNF.
Coffee ran out earlier than expected. But thanks to Dunkin', it was quickly refilled.
Lunch delivery was more than 1 hour late.
A majority of lunch boxes were mislabeled, close to 50%.
One of the two registration stations had a print alignment issue, so we had only one line for the first hour of registration.
Another bug in our registration tool, due to a ticket type for the lunch sponsor session, caused the lunch selection to not print on the attendee ticket.
The scanning tool we use for sponsor scans and the raffle had a hiccup that wasn't discovered until the closing ceremony, when I started calling names for the raffle and began troubleshooting live. (See below for what the result of the issue was.)
Closing Ceremony/Raffle - Debugging Live!
If you were at our closing ceremony, you might remember I hit the red random raffle button, and it pulled up someone's name, then no one, then I switched sponsor, and it pulled up my name!
It turned out I had forgotten to leave one sponsor scanner item in the 'Registration' dropdown, and our team was only using the scanner for 'Swag Bag'. This caused all of those who attended not to be added to the 'Registration' sponsor, which is used for the raffle to determine who is present to win.
Once I started gathering data for the closing ceremony in the Power BI report, which we show at the end, I noticed the numbers weren't showing for those who had come to registration. I quickly added this to the sponsor scan dropdown and tested with two people. I was one of the volunteers at the registration booth at that time. Hence, it was only showing us two when I hit the red button.
The live fix I would have had to make would have been to add all who picked up a swag bag to the Registration scans.
The fix I've put in place now is that when you scan your Eventbrite QR code, we will automatically add the 'Registration' scan flag, so next year, we shouldn't have this issue!
Raffle Prize Winners!
Here are our raffle prize winners, and Bob Ward signing several of his books. Check out those Grand Prize LEGO sets!
Community Engagement
One of the most rewarding parts of the event is seeing attendees share photos during afterward and watching ideas take shape through hallway conversations and new connections.
Check out our event hashtag #dayofdatajax on these platforms LinkedIn and X/Twitter to see the excitement about our event!
Final Thoughts
This year felt like a transition year. Not because the event itself changed dramatically, SQL Saturday hasn’t been “just SQL” for a long time—and now the name is catching up.
We hope next year runs more smoothly and that the event continues to grow its reach within the community.
Here are the final numbers for this year's event.
534 total registrations
371 total attendees
31 Precon registrations
30 Precon attendees
341 Day of Data attendees
48 speakers
49 volunteers
200+ sessions submitted
12 tracks on Saturday
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