Who would have thought that a rather plain email to a friend of mine in December of 2009 would result in such a huge project?
Being an active member in some user group communities, I decided to join a user group that would encompass the SQL Server as the main technology and hence I have emailed a friend of mine at Microsoft and asked me to point into the right direction. He connected me with Jọo Bilhim who was a Product Marketing Manager at Microsoft Portugal and who told me that there is none and if I wanted to found one Рthey would gladly support me. Additionally there was a PASS Director who would come in April 2020 over to Portugal to Microsoft Techdays with intent to help creation of this group.
Fast forward a couple of months and after calls with Douglas McDowell (PASS Director at that time) over the phone, I have started asking my friends and colleagues around – who would be crazy enough to join me in this adventure ? :)
Paulo Borges, Miguel Felix & Vitor Montlvão were the crazy people to get behind the project with me.
On this very blog I have announced a creation of the community & the respective site SQLPort, which has got publicly announced by Douglas McDowell on the 21st of April 2010 during the Microsoft TechDays 2010.
The first meeting which took place in May of 2010 was counting with Luis Canastreiro (Microsoft), Yennifer Santos (Microsoft) & me as the presenters. I remember well the topics, with Luis talking about SysPrep in SQL Server 2008 R2, Yennifer talking about Many To Many relationships in SSAS and me – well, I have had something for the database developers. Since then we have had a lot of different local & international speakers sharing their knowledge around SQL Server and lately around Azure and general Microsoft Data Platform.
Thank you
Here are some of the people to remember & to thank from the first decade of SQLPort’s existence
- Core team – without your help there would not be a 5% of what we have all achieved over the years. The most important of them all is Paulo Borges, hands down.
- People (who has presented, who ahs attended, who has shared & who has helped)
- Sponsors (Microsoft, Novabase, Rumos, Create It and many others who helped this project to go forward)
- PASS – because things would be so much differently without them.
Stats
Here are some numbers from the relevant statistics:
– 116 meetings with the base in Lisbon and some meetings in Oporto (for 2 years almost every month I would travel to make it happen), Aveiro and Coimbra (both cities never took off). On average we were doing almost 12 meetings per year.
– 9 SQLSaturdays took place and the very first international one outside of the Northern America – SQLSaturday #78
– 3 Tuga IT events, where we crossed the lines of Data Platform and together with other communities lead those events to successes
– At one point we have had over 1400 subscribers, but .. as I decided to make a serious reset under the umbrella of GDPR and created a new mailing list, thus making people who were not interested in this information anymore to fade away. We have now around 15% of the pre-GDPR number and that’s what I am happy about having as the audience those people who really matter.
РThe person who attended the most number of meetings is Pedro Sim̵es
Party
A thought or two might cross you mind, such as “What about a party?” or “How are you going to celebrate it? (in the times like this)”, and the answer is crystal clear – We shall not yet.
The decision about delaying the celebrations was taken already in January, on the base of my personal travel and professional requirements. I would not be able to organize anything in April 2020 and so my decision was to set the date onto September of 2020.
Given the current situation – I have no plans for a party currently.
There will be one, but there are no immediate plans.
And what about now ?
Onto the next 10 years! :)