Why Aren’t People Going to Local and Regional In-Person Events Anymore?
Steve Jones recently posted an update about SQL Saturday’s status, and it includes some news we need to talk about:
However, this year the number may stagnate or even decline slightly. Running events has become challenging for many communities. Organizers are busy, space is hard to find, and costs are rising…. The biggest challenge in running events is finding space at a reasonable cost. Many Microsoft offices are closing, which were strong supporters of events in the past.
Steve gives a couple of possible reasons for the decline, and I’d like to throw out a few more. I don’t know which ones are larger or smaller than the others, but they’re just all reasons I’ve heard from folks over the last few years.
Obviously, COVID was a factor. We spent a couple of years not getting together with others in person. A lot of people switched to working remotely, and we told employers that we could do just as good of a job (or better) remotely than in-person. Well, that backfired on training budgets: companies responded by saying, “Okay, then you can attend training events remotely instead, too.” I’ve heard from many clients that their travel budgets turned off during COVID, and never turned back on because of this.
COVID made it harder to get in-person speakers. In-person events tried using remote speakers, but the experience was simply awful. As a speaker, I’ll never again present remotely for an in-person group, and I’m just not traveling as much as I used to. I used to hit as many SQL Saturdays as my schedule could allow, but now because almost all of my client work is remote, I can’t justify the expense and time of traveling to an in-person local/regional event.
I don’t think the problem is that people switched to organized live online events with the same enthusiasm and frequency that they used to attend in-person events. People learned to get by with online sessions instead, but then Zoom fatigue burned us out on voluntary online get-togethers. We’re forced to attend so many virtual meetings at work – that the last thing we wanna do is sign up for yet more. Some online events have popped up, and they’re good – but it’s nowhere near the diversity and frequency that we used to get local & regional events. So this might be part of it – but it’s not the whole story.
But some people switched how they’re learning. Some folks switched to recorded videos, individual live streamers, written blogs, or self-guided on-demand learning through AI tools like ChatGPT. (Yes, I’m being generous and assuming people are using it for learning here, not just saying “do my work for me,” but that does relate to the next point.)
Some people stopped learning and/or networking. Some people got off that hamster wheel during COVID and chose not to get back on, instead deciding to coast based on what they know, or just coast until retirement. I’ve actually talked to folks who decided, “I’ve only got a few years left – I’ll just keep doing what I’m doing, the same way, at the same company, until they let me go or until I decide to quit.” LLMs like ChatGPT made it easier to get by without actually knowing what you’re doing – at least in the short term – and that’s all these kinds of people care about. (I don’t say that with any negative feelings – I want you to work as little as possible, and retire as early as you practically can.)
Some technologies slowed down. We used to attend user groups and regional events because there was a frantic pace of change in SQL Server: 2014, 2016, 2017, 2019 – that was a rocket ship of versions, four versions in five years! But after the pandemic, the release schedules slowed dramatically to once every 3 years, and the new features weren’t really groundbreaking, not requiring deep education to keep up. The cloud evolution slowed as well – I keep looking at my Running SQL Server in AWS & Azure class, recorded in 2022, and I just don’t see anything in there that merits an update in 2025.
Some new tech (outside of relational databases) sped up. Microsoft’s analytics folks continue to throw stuff against the wall to see what sticks, and Fabric is evolving like crazy. However, because Fabric is new, there are few active local or regional events dedicated to it – just online and national ones. (Before you leave comments yelling about how many Fabric user groups you see, drill a little deeper to check whether they actually have meetings upcoming & past, and whether the topics are actually Fabric, and whether they’re online or in-person.
Global politics have made travel harder and more expensive. Wars, economics, and immigration policies are all putting a dent in voluntary travel. As a Las Vegas resident, I can tell you firsthand that tourism numbers are way down, and my friends in hospitality & retail report some pretty horrific numbers. A friend of mine who works in a high-end Vegas retail store reports that their foot traffic is down 25% from last year, revenue is down 40%, and their Asian and Central American repeat customers are holding off on any US visits for now. I think that impacts national/international conferences more than it does local/regional ones, though, but I feel like I just gotta mention it here because someone’s going to bring it up.
We had a new generation of people enter the workforce. Some people got hired into the data industry during COVID, and they simply never saw the benefit of attending in-person or regional events. The veterans might tell them, “You need to network in-person to get ahead,” but this new generation doesn’t see it that way as they were able to get their existing jobs online, and network online as well. Do I think they would be well-served by attending in-person local and/or regional events? Well, maybe – but now we’re faced with a chicken-and-egg problem. I can’t tell someone to attend events that don’t exist.
We’ve never done a great job marketing the hallway track. I think the biggest value, and the reason I personally get really excited to attend local and regional events, is the ability to have casual, non-rushed discussions outside of the session rooms. Former coworkers, other speakers, people who know something about a topic I’m curious about – those are the lucky chance interactions that I don’t get as easily online. It’s hard to explain the value of that to someone who hasn’t experienced it, and because people don’t know the value, they’re not tempted to go to an event to experience it for the first time.
Jeez, when I look at the entire list above, it’s like a perfect storm! What other reasons can you think of for the decline of local & regional in-person database events – or if you’re not attending ’em anymore, why not?
Update: there are also comments on HackerNews, like another reason: Twitter used to create a fear-of-missing-out (FOMO) feeling amongst those who weren’t there, plus make it easier for attendees to coordinate meetups with each other, but that’s greatly diminished now.
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For me, it is strictly a COVID issue. I have a medical condition that makes COVID potentially fatal and take medications that have immune-suppression as side effects. My company would gladly pay to send me to Summit every year, but I haven’t even gone to my local SQL Saturday (which I used to help run) since 2019. I accept that I am an outlier, but the lack of masking at events forces me to exclude myself.
Sorry to hear that, sir!
Great list!
I agree that COVID has “stopped the flywheel.” It has made people rethink, change, and do things differently than in the past, and re-evaluate.
I think one item being missed is not about the attendees but the organizers, the runners of the flywheel. Do we want to do this again? Do we still want to do it? Many of those who built this community are also close to that point of retirement or on to the next thing. Will the next generation take up the wheel?
As a Community Organizer, User group Leader, Speaker, and hamster on the wheel. I have been trying to restart the flywheel in my community. Holding events again, reaching out, and trying new things to return people to the local and regional events I love. Even though I had vastly more knowledge when I started, it seems 10 times harder for many of the reasons you stated and Steve has stated. So it makes me ask the question, is it time to stop that effort and focus elsewhere?
Pat – yeah, I think that’s an important point that I keep forgetting, and I keep getting reminded of it when I talk to UG organizers.
Many of them have moved on to other technologies or locations, just as is common for senior folks. Combine that with the lack of new talent to be mentored in, and that doomed some local events.
Even if the organizer is in the same technology & location, I’ve heard from a lot of ’em that the work is just too hard now. It’s too hard to find a venue, too hard to get sponsors, too hard to get out-of-town speakers in.
Pat, You have known me for years even before the .Net and SQL Server groups formed.
The biggest problem I have seen is that the leadership of the various groups aren’t really interested in what the community wants to learn. There is no list. There are no call for speakers on those topics. The last “Great Topic” that I saw presented was done by Aaron back when Big Mountain Data was up at the ‘U’. Many of the topics presented are substandard.
The call for speakers is put out too late as when the call for speakers is out is when we should be advertising what is being presented. Those topics should have enough in the announcements to wet the appetites getting people wanting to attend. I see too many presentations that they really aren’t giving those attending something serious to take home with them. You get a little source code and a few 3rd rate PowerPoint slides.
For years you have heard me say that we should have a “MASSIVE” prize for the best presentation because the better presentations that are presented the more people will attend. Also 1 hour sessions you don’t get much. There have been over the years a few multipart sessions but those are the rare exception. If we got Brent Ozar to drive up from Vegas, I wouldn’t want to attend just a one hour session with Brent but would be attending multiple sessions. There are several topics that I can name that I would gladly sit for a couple of hours and I think they could be presented on multiple days like a Friday and a Saturday like we used to do years ago.
I would love to present but you personally know that I have lost the ability to speak for a couple of years now and would love to get somebody to do a “Penn and Teller” like presentation and do the speaking for me. I think what I am doing with SqlParser and Roslyn could keep even the GREAT Pat Wright entertained for a couple of hours if not more.
That’s fair, but I would say it’s going to be really hard to find a lot of volunteers willing to travel for free to present multi-part sessions. I give away 15-60 minute sessions, but for longer than that, I ask to be paid for my time.
It takes serious work to build a good (emphasis good) multi-hour session, and it’s not realistic to expect community volunteers to do that on a regular basis.
Brent. COVID in 2023 caused a growth on my vocal cords and I lost the ability to speak but I would love to present and I have a couple of topics that I could do right now but physically I can’t present. Trying to find somebody to speak with me and do a “Penn and Teller” kind of presentation but I have yet to be able to find somebody to co-present with me.
What I am doing with Roslyn and SqlParser would even have you impressed. The only issue if you were to watch my presentation, is you would be giving me so many ideas that would take my presentation that could easily go 2 or 3 hours into something that could go on for a few days.
Have you written about it anywhere?
I have been attending these user groups and events like SQL Saturday for decades and I have sat and watched the same presentation presented by the same individuals multiple times with little change in their presentation. Maybe one or two small things added but basically the same presentation. I look at the schedules and people are submitting topics and topics are accepted based on the popularity of the person and not the subject matter. Before I lost the ability to speak (mute), I tried to present but have ignored multiple times. I have heard the same things said about conferences like PASS from people who I enjoy attending their presentations locally.
It should take hours to prepare a 40 minute presentation. Figure a few minutes for the intro and a good 15 minutes for Q&A and the end of the presentation. Hard to cover such a topic in that time frame with any detailed coverage so multi-sessions are what many would love to see. Let me give you an example:
I do plenty with query tuning and I have seen some VERY SENIOR developers write garbage code that I would fail if they were in a college class. Kind of bad when you get thrown into a problem of not only terrible TSQL but even worse of a database design. I can always go over what makes SQL queries perform poorly but often the problem isn’t one query but an entire set of queries as developers tend to repeat bad habits in spades. I can tell you how to fix a query but today we need to not fix a single query but sometimes hundreds. How do find a poorly performing Entity Framework query when C# developers aren’t writing the TSQL but it’s being autogenerated by the application? How to you find and remove terrible things in legacy code like “WITH (NOLOCK)” or “SELECT *”? How about all those C# classes that include everything when you are only working with half the columns in a table?
I have an app that can go through a C# solution with dozens of projects all having Entity Framework and tell you what databases and tables are being used and where. Every CRUD statement being generated and where? Each column is being used. Even can create HTML documentation. How do you explain that in 40 minutes? The Roslyn material is something most DBAs could never understand. SqlParser is also very detailed as there are more C# classes than you can count but it’s dealing with C pointers something even modern C# developers don’t understand and can’t grasp. We aren’t even talking about advanced execution plan stuff that I learned from you like problems when estimated and actual rows differ and that I can detect that in ways that no app out there that I know can do?
Some of the fun stuff I can demo is like I can rapidly convert every keyword in every stored proc in a database to UPPER, lower, Proper casing but for fun I created a routine that can do crazy case (SelECt, iNSerT, upDATe and DEletE) With SqlParser I have even created a TSQL minimizer as DBAs tend to hate more descriptive aliases but for developers single character aliases are a pain to debug.
Remember that most DBA can’t code and the closest any come to coding is writing a PowerShell script. Something that requires multiple sessions. I attended one session at one conference on SignalR that could have been 3 or 4 sessions but and would have loved to see a follow-up session the next year but nothing ever happened. That’s because those that run the events never reach out to people to get them to present or create more content advanced level content that people might be interested in.
I can only tell you that for me, to create a good 40-minute presentation that has demos is typically a day of work, sometimes even two or three.
Key words being “good” and “demos” – if you just do slides without proof, excitement, or a plot, you can cut that number dramatically. But you were repeatedly referring to high quality sessions, and those are a lot harder.
If you can create good presentations faster, by all means! The community would love to see your work. I understand that you can’t present vocally, but that’s what blog posts are for.
When you say you were ignored, I hear you, but that’s what YouTube has always been great for. There have been plenty of topics that I couldn’t get into user groups or conferences, and I recorded them as videos instead because I was passionate about it.
I hope I’m not coming off as dismissive, because I do value your input, and I know you. I just feel like you’re completely negatively biased here, and there are no facts that are going to convince you otherwise, and that’s a shame. The world would be better off with your passion put to work, and right now, the best way to do that given your circumstances is to blog. What’s holding you back?
Topics are really hard. For every person that thinks an event is great, with the content they want, there is another one that bemoans that their thing isn’t covered. Want to learn Power BI and Fabric, great at lots of events, but then a number of DBA/devs complain there isn’t enough other stuff (xEvents, CDC, replication, Always On, etc).
do too much DBA stuff, I hear people saying “why not the new stuff?”
I have been into SQL Tuning for years as I have been thrown into crappy SQL code for decades. Most of these presentations are basic and cover SQL 101. Most of the DBA complain about bad SQL but don’t really understand performance. Like getting shot with a shotgun and the ER surgeon takes out just one of those buckshot pellets and leaving the rest to fester. Most of the DBAs complain the most but have the worst software development habits. This stuff is never covered.
As a developer, I need to do more DBA stuff because we have DBAs that can’t do squat. They end up designing tables that are crap. Don’t understand what the users need so as a developer, more DBA stuff is needed because many IT staffs may not have a DBA or have DBAs that are some of the worst of the worse because the best DBAs are working at the larger firms.
I would love to learn PowerBI but there isn’t a person version so I can learn the tool on my own time. What is the use of going to some presentation when I am not going to be able to play with the tool at home or work.
I’m not telling you to learn Power BI or anything else. Your comment was on content, and I have you some thoughts on that. Creating and publishing a schedule is hard. Doing one that attracts lots of people is harder. There are always choices. Plenty of people won’t come to “just a DBA” event, just like you might not come to a “Power BI/Fabric” event.
The other thing you might consider is that you know more than most people. That makes it hard for you to justify events. That’s not the case for most people, but it colors your view.
There’s a combination of all of those. Lack of time, lack of money, lack of events. I’ve also got a family so time at an event is time away from the family. With only so many days before the kids leave for good, there’s a balance between an in-person event and spending time with them. I’m blessed to be near a pretty active user group, but even then there are trade-offs with other activities and getting to those UG meetings. I will make a point of getting to their SQL/Data Saturday events and scheduling those far in advance, but the regular meetups are a bit harder to schedule. 🙁
I will agree that the “hallway track” was something I learned about too late in my career. Once I really understood I could get the session recordings but spend time face to face with others, it was toward the end of me getting to attend in-person events. I’ll definitely take advantage of that when I get to an in-person event, but that’s not quite as common these days.
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Great list and valid points…I don’t think people have ‘stopped learning and networking’. At least am not one of them. I am in my second masters after Covid. I will never stop learning. I have changed how I network – yes, significantly. Covid showed me who my friends are and who aren’t. And some were not even worth maintaining contact with. Plus, how you get referred to jobs has changed. There are 100s of applications nowadays for jobs that used to have a handful. A referral still helps, but unless your referrer is very influential and you stand out a mile, its not going to help like it used to. I still network, but am rather choosy on whom to add to my list these days. And that’s been worth it. I think the community is fragmented now. SQL Server is not as hot a skill as it used to be. Jobs need a lot of other skills. People know who their friends are and move in smaller circles. Events are fewer. All of that.
About “stopped learning and networking” – like the other issues in the list, none of them apply to everyone, but all of ’em apply to someone. I have absolutely talked to client employees who used to be active in the community, and have simply decided to stop doing that and coast into their retirement instead.
One 50-something year old DBA told me, “I have a good, comfortable job working from home, and 3 years left until I can retire with benefits. I’m not leaving the house anymore for work unless I’m getting paid for it, period.” He used to be an active presence at his local user group, encouraging local speakers, but he’s just done. I get it.
Oh several have stopped using community events as a way to learn. For sure. That’s totally valid.
You touched on this a bit, but I think that the various policies of the Trump Administration regarding immigration, Customs and Border Patrol and international trade policies are going to have a growing negative effect on tourism and business travel that will affect all in-person events in the United States.
Many people from other countries are literally afraid to travel to the United States because they might be detained or even be taken into custody as they go through Customs. Some folks may not be afraid, but they simply don’t want to travel to the United States right now (or perhaps ever). I can’t blame anyone for those feelings.
In the past it was fairly common for folks from other countries to travel to the U.S. for some large event and then spend a few weeks traveling around being a tourist and perhaps going to a smaller event or two, before and after the large event.
A number of folks that I know in the SQL Server community have said publicly that they won’t be doing that anymore. That is very unfortunate, but understandable.
I debated on including that.
I don’t think it has any effect on local events (by which I mean stuff like user groups.)
I do think it has a small effect on regional events, though. I know from my retail friends that Canadian and Mexican tourist visits to the US have just about ground to a halt, and we did used to get some cross-border traffic at some regional US events.
I don’t think it’s a *large* effect by any means – but then most of the stuff in this list are things that are small effects that end up to a big overall effect.
For the PG conferences, I’ve been working on this has been a big thing. Not only that, some don’t want to travel, but many visas are being declined. We have 4-5 speakers and sponsor personnel who were declined visas to come to the US for the event. I agree that the local events have less of an impact, but I think the feeling overall puts a damper on getting things going again.
but Pat… You know I still physically can’t speak but you never reached out after the last SQL Saturday to see if anybody had topics that they would like to present. I was at the last SQL Saturday as you know and a couple of topics that I attended really SUCKED! Before I lost the ability to speak I could have presented with a few days notice as I have a couple topics that could probably draw as many people as you or Ben Miller could draw.
The people running the local community groups which you know and know well are an exclusive clique and won’t let people present. SQL Server group hasn’t met in over a year and hasn’t had more than a couple meetings since the start of COVID. In the .Net group we have had only a couple of more recent presentations in the past year and when I could speak I requested the chance to present but NOTHING. One thing if you have a half of dozen people on the schedule for the next 6 months presenting but when you have no presenters then these groups should be open to new people presenting.
You live in a community full of Mormons so try asking somebody that has been in a bishopric or a stake presidency about fears they have about somebody scheduled to speak not showing up and them having backup topics to speak on or a backup speaker ready. What would you have lost? You announce that this is a “First Time” presenter or a backup speaker as a last minute replacement.
1. Some of the presenters have moved out of the country for various reasons.
2. Some wear many hats and have to decide which to attend. If you’ve been gifted a new hat, you may want to prioritize the conferences with the new hats.
3. Shops[1] are getting downright frugal. If you take a personal day off and provide your own transportation resources, you may not get anything expenses, so it’s out of your own pocket.
4. I got spoiled checking out remote presentations, they’ve been cut out for various reasons, one was to get locals to show up. Doesn’t do me a lot of good if an evening’s presentation is 1800 miles away…
[1] “Upper damagement, I am looking at you.
Honestly? I used to attend local user groups and SQL Saturday when I lived in Oregon. Now I live over in the Spokane WA area and these things don’t exist. The SQL user group stopped meeting in 2022 (according to their Facebook page) and I haven’t been able to find any events or groups in the entire valley (Spokane to Coeur d’Alene). And I’m not driving 8+ hours to attend a user group in Portland or Seattle. That’s why I’m not attending them anymore.
One reason that I have for no longer attending events like AWS Re:Invent is because they schedule data related sessions concurrently or a few minutes apart at opposite ends of the strip. I saw this a little too with PASS with sessions that interested me being scheduled concurrently, but not as bad as what AWS does. I ended up watching recordings of those events I was unable to attend in person and finally got to where I realized I could just watch all of the events and skip the TSA screenings, sitting between two plus sized individuals in coach, hotels with lumpy beds and leaky faucets. The only downside was as you mentioned, the “hallway” tract conversations, but as fewer and fewer of the people I used to interact with still showed up this became less and less of a checkmark in the pro’s to going column.
AWS Re:Invent is the polar opposite of a local or regional event. Fair?
I’ll just post one thing I noticed even before COVID: Microsoft closing it’s local offices to group meetings. I was president of a local users group and Microsoft was downright hostile to us using their space for our group meetings despite it being their products and their approved speakers!
Then COVID hit and my company scaled way back on the number of people it would send to conferences. Period.
I think the other issue I’ve run into is finding quality technical conferences that aren’t 90% advertising. I went to the Gartner conference a couple of years ago and there was a key session featuring an AI head-to-head between Microsoft, Oracle, and Tableau. Microsoft cheated outrageously in their demo using features that weren’t even in the preview version of the product while they just kept emphasizing “It’s coming” over and over. (Everyone else presented only production-ready features.) The user feedback was live for everyone to see and the audience (3000+ people) weren’t particularly complimentary toward MS as a result.
At the same conference, the classes that got the highest attendance – often beyond standing-room only – were those featuring demonstrations on how to actually _do_ something. The vendor booths were fine for info, but the demo sessions were what people came to see.
Blair – ooooh, that’s a really good point about the 90% advertising. I’ve definitely noticed increasingly marketing-heavy sessions that are exclusively demos for paid products, with no time spent on the conference’s overall technology, and that turned me off of a lot of vendor sessions.
I can tell you one really big reason why people are not attending User groups and conferences. It is because of workforce changes. Many of us are on our way out of the workforce. Almost all of the senior level people I’ve worked with and for over the years are already out. I used to love conferences, user groups and such. My company (and It’s a really big one) no longer supports attending any of these offsite -“boondoggles”? I have to use PTO if I want to attend anything in person – and pay for it myself. What used to have some form of comradery, now is basically non-existent in the USA. All my work associates are offshore. In fact, when I work my Daily shift basically, I am on my own. My Emails and Chats stop at appx 12:30 pm. It’s a changing world, and I’m apparently only marginally in it. I plan on retiring next year, If I last that long. It was a good ride, but basically, I’ve worked myself out of a job. I’ve trained my replacement(s) – basically, over a decade. This is all OK – I’m pretty tired and the new technologies we are embracing are not all that interesting to me. IT is a mess. I’m currently learning skills (thank you Brent, fpr the courses) that unfortunately, I will probably never use.
Soon I will be copping that eternal nod in the IT graveyard.
Dimbulbz – yes, that’s covered in the post.
I think this issue is not a SQL Server community issue, but an American community issue.
Covid was the start of what became a socially unfriendly environment in the US. Political polarization has driven social media to be a land of hating on others which has infected real in-person relationships and the willingness of people to engage each other in ANY conversation, lest it turn political. You can see it in how people behave on Airplanes.
Online participation is generally considered a safer space in which to engage. While it has become a bit of a hazard zone, disconnecting it is much easier psychologically than physically walking away from someone in person. It is the safest of places available. And virtual attendance means you don’t have to fly the unfriendly skies…
This will take years to correct (re-establish social trust and norms) after the fire gets put out (no end in sight there). Sorry to be the Debbie-downer, but I think the answer to Brent’s question is not specific to our community.
Gerald – if I understand you right, you’re suggesting that in-person spaces are more toxic than online spaces?
I love the Internet, but… c’mon.
They are just as toxic… However exiting from online connections is easier to do psychologically than in person. When you (at least if you are not a sociopath) look someone in the eye in person it is different than that person on your screen. People like safer spaces when they have a choice, so virtual works better for those who struggle with saying no to people of authority. Natural human reaction…
It is easier to ghost an interviewee online than in person, isn’t it? Path of least resistance here, Brent.
I’m going to disagree again there: exiting from online connections can be just as difficult, for me at least, but it just sounds like we have different experiences. Best of luck on your journey.
Fair enough… My observation is that physical relationships are much more difficult to manage than virtual ones, especially when there is disagreement and an end is coming… Much easier to ghost someone online than to physically avoid them at work or conferences or anything else…
You may have fewer but more well-developed relationships that make it equally difficult, but I’m sure it is easy to end an online discussion or other causal relationship with the relative feeling of anonymity it possesses.
I encourage you to watch some of the things Simon Cowell has said at America’s Got Talent. You want to have an act that people are talking about and that will be remembered. Most of the presentations are easily forgotten. We need to give prizes to those that present the OUTSTANDING presentations. Microsoft MVP status isn’t that impressive. The sponsors need to start paying attention to those that are presenting and reward accordingly.
Wayne – the sad news is that sponsor money has gone *down* since COVID, not up, and shows no signs of returning.
Sponsors seem to realize that local and regional events aren’t cost-effective ways to promote their products – compared to national & international events, online events, and their own webcasts & mailing lists.
In addition, it’s actually counter-productive for sponsors to reward speakers directly. It’s in their best interest to have people in the vendor space, talking to them, NOT sitting in amazing sessions. If all the sessions are great, nobody will spend time in the vendor space. Odd, isn’t it?
I understand what you are saying but I find if frustrating going to a presentation only to be disappointed.
Decades back, Rush Limbaugh stated that the reason why he was so successful was that he was a great communicator. You can love him or hate him but Rush set the standard. Most of the people in the IT world, despite being some of the smartest people on the planet couldn’t present to save their lives. Look at Bill Gates or Elon Musk. Could you see either of them running for President? Communication is a must in our industry but as an industry the leadership teams aren’t technical greats.
One of the biggest problems I have seen that in the corporate world, teams don’t get together to do “Brown Bag” lunches to do internal team training. I got involved in the .Net and SQL Server communities decades ago because of internal training. That’s are best advertising.
I work for a fairly small company that is very conscious of the “bottom line”, so expenses are kept to an absolute minimum both before and after COVID. As our systems are hosted entirely in the cloud, we are a completely remote company with staff spread all across Canada and the US. Trying to justify the cost of attending events in-person was always difficult, and continues to be, especially if the event does offer remote access, regardless of the unquantifiable yet incredibly beneficial aspect of the hallway track.
As I recently transitioned from being the Database Architect for our company to being the Data Architect responsible for BI Analytics and Reporting as well as all things database related, I find events hosted by the providers of our BI technology stack to be tremendously helpful and would love to attend an event in-person but the cost is prohibitive.
Finally, being based in Canada, there is no way I’m travelling to the US right now whether for business or pleasure, and local events are few and far between, so if I can attend remotely, I will, otherwise I will watch whatever videos of the event are made available after the fact.
The new generation point is, to me, one of the biggest factors. I have been on the local SSUG’s board for a long time. Few people under 40 want to get involved. The current folks on the board are experts in new technology. The list of skills of the current members is buzzword bingo. I see this at work. Sending out a link about learning is kind of a waste. And, if they do attend an online session, they drop off after a few minutes.
There just doesn’t seem to be any interest in learning a technology to the depths that we did, and still do.
Are there statistics kept on attendance? What percentage are first-time attendees? Is the average age of attendees increasing? What keeps newcomers from returning?
Personally, it’s the value gained versus the costs for attending, including whatever I would be doing instead. 10 years ago my personal costs were lower and the value gained was higher. Ironically, I feel like I had a lot more to offer back to the tech-community back then too.
Yes, stats are kept by national conferences, but your local user groups and regional events are run by volunteers, and they don’t usually have the time or money to do that.
Brent… One of the biggest problems I have seen in SQL Saturdays and the local user group community is that they do nothing to attempt to find out what the community wants to see presented. Just the lazy effort to see who wants to present and then the leadership of those groups deciding who they want to present missing monthly meetings or leaving rooms empty because they don’t have the presenter they want to see presenting.
You have to look at SQL Saturday as if it was a football game. You don’t think the network and the sponsors are paying attention to the teams the viewing public wants to see playing? Week 16 of the NFL season maybe the two worst teams of the year playing might get viewed as the “Toilet Bowl” but during the year even last year’s Super Bowl winner might not be a broadcast game versus a team that sucks.
The other thing to do is to get MASSIVE PRIZES for the best presenter. Judging criteria based on presentation, slides, handouts, etc. Not just some door prize but get somebody to donate a QUALITY prize so there is competition for higher quality presentations. Have those judging sheets published on the website for all to see along with participant comments. When somebody presents the next year, people can see what material going to be presented so they know what sessions they MUST attend rather than a guess of what they want to attend once they arrive at the event.
Wayne – I hear you, and I’m going to give you a little tough love.
You’re not new here – neither to the technology, nor to the communities. I know you. You’re in the point of your career where you should be giving back – either in the form of presenting, blogging, online recordings, sharing open source, volunteering at local user groups, working to get those “massive prize” donations from vendors, etc.
If you’re looking around and pointing the finger, it’s time to hit the brakes and ask yourself, “Why aren’t I fixing this?”
Hope that’s fair.
Brent. In 2023, I caught COVID and I lost the ability to speak. With therapy I can make a few sounds but I cannot say even “Hi” or “Bye” although if you were to listen to me try, you can figure out what I am trying to say. I tried saying “Bye” a few days ago and it took me a few attempts to even make a sound. I know all the good “mute” jokes.
Before I lost my voice I have tried to present but the local community group managers won’t let me speak. The local .Net user group has done a few meetings over the past couple of years so it isn’t like the group has scheduled speakers. The SQL Server group has met a couple times last year but no more than that since COVID. I have asked to present but have been declined. Big Mountain Data in Salt Lake had several speakers cancel and if I could have been able to speak I had a presentation ready but wouldn’t have been permitted.
One thing I am working on right now is I have an app and working on slides to be able to take a C# solution and find every Entity Framework query and being able to tell you what C# file in what project as even break that down telling you not only what tables and columns are being used in what clause in the SQL statements but I can tell you execution plans so if you have a “query_id” from Query Store I can tell you and display/highlight the exact C# code. I can catch some of the bad C# coding practices that slow SQL Server. I am doing things with SQL Server that would amaze even you.
I will relearn how to speak again. I can only make a couple of sounds. I am not giving up. At least I am not having to drink my meals and I am not coughing blood every time I try to make a sound.
Wow! That’s wild to hear – I’m so sorry to hear about your challenges! That’s rough.
My four biggest reasons for not attending in-person events anymore are:
1- travel to/from the event location (time involved, public transportation hassles, etc.).
2- getting approval from my current employer (if the event is during my work hours/day).
3- haggling with my current employer over the costs involved (especially if it involves air travel and a hotel room).
4- time away from home and family (kids, dog, spouse all “need me around”).
In the past 5 years, I have gotten used to watching recorded courses and YouTube videos online (thanks Brent!). I think I learn best that way now. That’s just my opinion, I could be wrong.
Christopher – did those concerns not exist before COVID?
I think those concerns have always existed, but before COVID, remote work and access wasn’t as common or prevalent. For some, sure, but for many, it wasn’t.
COVID broke the hamster wheel in many ways, but one of those was that the inertia of putting up with long hours and long commutes stopped. Many people struggle to get away from their routine at home, so reasons 1 and 4 are hard to overcome.
The other thing I see from people is they’ve forgotten a bit about how much in person events are amazing. Not sure conferences or meetings, but concerts, sports, etc. I do a lot and I still meet people who so rarely come out and they’re always thrilled that they did so. Or they remember how good it is to be in the room with people.
However, it’s not enough when they spend too many hours next week away from people. They lose that memory and don’t have enough impetus to overcome the hassle of moving.
2,3, those issues will always exist. I think if you provide a lot of Roi to your employer, these are easy to overcome. If not, then you have a different problem. If you do and can’t get approval, you likely don’t have a good job.
I just went to a regional developer conference that had over 1k attendees. I am not saying I disagree with Brent’s points but there still are some regional events out there drawling a good attendance.
How is that event’s attendance compared to prior years, say 2018-2019?
This is a good list of things, and I agree with them. However, it’s a complex issue, and not just a “this is the problem.”
I do think there is a little something to younger people, many of whom don’t necessarily see the value of in-person things over online. To be fair, a lot of them have spent their formative years like that. Some not even going that often to school in person
The same is true for paid training courses. I used to train 20-30 students (0-15% remote after 9/11)
Then COVID made them 100% remote. After a year the numbers dropped to 8-15 students.
Slowly we went back to hybrids with 80-100% remote.
Then DOGE struck now I am lucky to get 4-8 students remote and haven’t been back in a classroom this year.
Topics have shifted. I used to teach SQL Server or BI Stack (SSRS, SSIS, rarely SSAS) courses.
As SQLServer slowed down; Power BI and Excel picked up. Rarely do I teach SQL Server anything. People just don’t see to take SQL Server or SSIS. Yes Azure is up. And Yes, Microsoft mucked up the SQL Server curriculm.
I think you are right about AI or learning from YouTube type content or videos but don’t forget
learn.microsoft.com is free why pay for a class when you can take it online for free?
Or lose a Saturday when you can watch a recording on your own time?
I am also in that camp of winding down my career. I teach/coaching(25%) and consult(75%). I also thought as my career wound down the teaching would go up and the consulting down. But this trend is preventing that. I have never been good at picking an hour topic. I miss the 4-5 day courses and I still couldn’t cover everything I wanted too.
Yeah, I totally agree about *live* paid training courses. The recorded ones are doing just as well as they ever did – well, mine are at least. But my live sales went off a cliff.
My gut tells me that SQL Server is becoming less popular and that might be a big influence. I’ve got no data to back this up, so I’m probably wrong. But, Microsoft has moved on from PASS and is now hawking MS Fabric. IDK.
On a similar note, I do participate in a weekly board game group that meets at a pub. The youngest members we have are late 20’s and early 30’s. Still, most of us are over 40. I don’t recall who said it here, but the younger generation just doesn’t leave the house for such activities. TikTok has got them!
About SQL Server becoming less popular – my blog stats, training course sales, db-engines ranking at https://db-engines.com/en/ranking , etc don’t seem to back up a *major* drop like what we’re seeing at local and regional events though.
Microsoft is hawking Fabric because they always hawk their newest fad that they think will catch on and bring in new revenue. Before this, it was Cosmos DB.
> Some people got off that hamster wheel during COVID and chose not to get back on
That’s me! (ish)
Plus the familiar avenues have changed (blogging, stack overflow, #sql_help on twitter) and it takes effort to find and learn how to get onto the next hamster wheel (tik tok tips, pg stuff, etc)
After retirement, I hope I will still be able to look back and say I’ve given back something. Like maybe a 7 on a scale from 1 to 10, 1 being giving back nothing, 10 being Steve Jones.
You’re already at 7! You blogged a ton during your career, more than 99.9% of folks out there!
As we can see there is no single reason why in-person conference attendance has dropped—it seems a mix of many factors. But here’s one that I didn’t see mentioned: the retirement wave of baby boomers.
For those in the final stretch of their careers (myself included), the incentives for travel and training just aren’t there anymore. Employers are understandably hesitant to fund trips or conferences for someone who won’t be around much longer.
That doesn’t mean we are necessarily stopping learning in our final days but it’s highly focused: research that will help my employer transition into a more supportable future. What I can’t justify, though, is attending a multi-day conference a few months before I step away. And on top of that it’s so much easier to learn now with AI and free online Microsoft labs.
It’s a subtle but important factor. As boomers exit, you are not only losing decades of our experience, but also a large audience that once filled those conference halls. Not attending conferences will be something I miss most about being in IT. The comradery that comes from in-person contact and the willingness to help each other be better at our jobs was special. I hope we aren’t seeing the end to that culture.
Gary – yep, that’s the section called “Some people stopped learning and/or networking.”
But as boomers exit, as you say, it’s not all bad. We’re also losing a generation that refused to read the article. 😉
That’s because the pictures were better.
This is me exactly sad to say:
, “I’ve only got a few years left – I’ll just keep doing what I’m doing, the same way, at the same company, until they let me go or until I decide to quit.”
When I first started in the database industry back in 1997, the senior DBAs I worked with told me to attend the local user group conference, RMOUG Training Days in Denver. At the time, I was the only multi-platform DBA on my team, so I also joined the SQL Server user group and, a few years later, spoke at my first Denver SQL Saturday.
Back at that starting time of my career, there wasn’t much online, and social media didn’t exist. If you wanted to learn and build connections, there was either books or you went to events like ones put on by RMOUG. I was really lucky being in Denver, as it was the largest in the US and brought some of the best people in the industry, and that is where you really grew your skills.
Today, after COVID, many of the regional Oracle events in the US are gone or have been absorbed by larger Oracle or cloud conferences. The rise of AI events is exciting, but I worry it may be the final push that ends what those smaller, community-driven gatherings offered us.
I still make time for SQL Saturdays, DevOps meetups, and open-source events. They let me share what I know, learn from others, and stay connected. Even though I did get the opportunity to keynote at a few Oracle events this year, they are few and far between what used to be available. I greatly appreciate everything the volunteers do to keep the heart of these events going and seriously- the community events are what keeps me grounded, has brought me a career worth of friendships, connections, education and reminds me why I love this industry.
Also: I’m not ashamed to say that I have attended some local meetups (Linux, WordPress, data-whatever, etc…) just to connect with new people and have some drinks. The topic was not the core, I just wanted to go out instead of staying at home doom scrolling.
When I say this to young people they look at me in a weird way. They would never do that.
They don’t go to pubs…
…help!!
“We had a new generation of people enter the workforce.”
To add onto this, in my experience, but my generation are generally starting their families later in life when their careers might be more established. Going to conferences when you’re in the trenches of newborn/toddler life is hard if your partner doesn’t have anyone else to support them at home. I’m definitely at the point in my career where I feel that I would like to attend events, but I now have a young family and travelling makes that tricky.
(That and there’s zero chance my organisation would pay for me to go).
I do sometimes wonder how things would have worked out without COVID (personally and professionally). For such a relatively short amount of time, it had a big impact.
But it’s interesting, there’s so many things happening or have happened to change the workforce and I’m sure it’s only going to keep evolving! Maybe it’ll go full circle and events will be the hip happening places again. 🙂
[…] Why Aren’t People Going to Local and Regional In-Person Events Anymore? (Brent Ozar) […]
Coming from a place of knowing how valuable networking in person is, and having the privilege to work at a company that does still have a budget for in person conferences, I am definitely taking the time to teach my team the value of networking in person by taking them with me to these events. I think we need to teach the next generation by showing them, but of course, as Brent said, it is the chicken and egg scenario, if there aren’t events to take people to, then its hard to teach people how to network. Hopefully this is just a season, and the in person events will start coming back again.
Another aspect of COVID, everyone moved away. Before COVID, I was 30 minutes away from the typical SQL Saturday meetup locations in Phoenix. During COVID, I moved out of the city. Now, I’m looking at nearly a 2 hour drive because I live in a rural town away from anything that would host any sort of conference. My entire team is the same way.
That’s a really great point. I know several companies where a lot of the data & development teams gradually dispersed to live closer to families, live in lower-cost areas, be more isolated, etc.
Another aspect of COVID, everyone moved away.
Before COVID, I was 30 minutes away from the typical SQL Saturday and usergroup locations in Phoenix. During COVID, I moved out of the city. Now, I’m looking at nearly a 2 hour drive because I live in a rural town away from anything that would host any sort of conference, let alone a SQL Saturday. My entire team is the same way.
The costs, the topics, the travel.
I love, absolutely love, virtual conferences. The .Net Conf is such a well organized and accessible conference. It covers topics that are of interest to actual developers and not simply geared for C-Suite or non-techies (looking at you Beerfest that used to be geared for devs and now is just a frat party for the people with the purse strings).
I have never worked at an employer that would sponsor employees attending conferences. They only sponsor the big wigs. The rest of us are on our own for footing the cost, using vacation time, etc.
Also, not comfortable being a minority at large conferences. It’s unnerving.
Small, local organizations are doing a much better job at one-off, informative, accessible events that are driven by the people working in the tech and focused ON the people doing the tech. I’ll invest my time and money into those instead. Much more relevant to me.
I thought of another reason that could be a contributing factor for some people: more companies are expecting their IT staff to do their daily jobs in addition to attending the event. Being expected to check and respond to your group chat messages or emails during breaks and lunch hour while attending a day-long event on a work day is exhausting and counter-productive to learning. If it’s a remote travel event, being expected to get to your regular job duties/functions done from the hotel room “in your spare time” is stressful. It hardly outweighs the benefits of learning in-person (if any actual learning is being done under those conditions). Many people choose to do remote learning because it’s easier to get your regular job done at the same time.
Hmm, that’s not really a new thing. That’s been true for most people I know going back to the first events I attended in the 2000s.
I mean. I AM doing video training (yours, lol) but also, I’m asthmatic and the one time I had COVID I was garbage for two months. DO NOT WANT. Also yeah, I have a side hustle (writing books!) that I plan to do full-time in retirement… which is getting closer. So, uh, sorry SQL Saturday? I used to love SQL Saturday but now I just want to sit at home and write.
Agree with Katherine here. Completely lost the desire to go out of my way to do extra, unpaid work on the weekends that potentially might be a complete waste of time.
Having said that, I’ll be at the precon for SQL Saturday Boston, but probably won’t be attending the Saturday event itself.
[…] Why Aren’t People Going to Local and Regional In-Person Events Anymore? (Brent Ozar) […]
I disagree with travel is harder. I travel internationally for leisure frequently. Almost everywhere I go, the process is now electronic. I just completed a trip to Australia to watch my daughter run the Sydney Marathon. I purposely few Cathay Pacific so I could get an LAX – HKG – SYD routing with a 16 hour layover in Hong Kong. With an early morning arrival that allowed my wife and I to go out and see the city and get back with plenty of time for a shower and dinner in the Cathay Pacific Pier lounge. Immigration at Hong Kong to exit the airport did require showing my passport to an immigration official but it took less than 10 minutes for the wait in line and to be cleared. To re-enter, no personal contact was required. Everything was automated. Scan my boarding pass to get the first gate opened, scan my passport and get my picture taken, to open the second gate, put my backpack on the belt for X-ray, body scanner => done. 5 minutes tops. While in Australia I flew from Sydney up to Cairns so I could take a trip out to the Great Barrier Reef. At SYD, scan my passport to get boarding pass and tags for our checked bags. Drop bags on the belt. Scan boarding pass to open first gate, picture to get second gate open, drop backpack on X-ray belt, body scanner => Done, 5 minutes tops. Except for pleasantries, never had to talk to anybody. Same process for flight SYD – HKG – LAX. While I do fly in the premium cabin, I never had to use any type of priority line to check a bag or get through security. Arriving LAX, Global Entry line – 5 kiosks, one in use. Step up to kiosk, picture taken => Done, less than 1 minute to clear immigration entering the US. The only place I have experienced any type of delays was leaving Hungary a couple of years ago. British Airways doesn’t open their check-in desk until 2 hours before the first flight. That creates a wait and backlog at their check-in desk and Hungary doesn’t have the most efficient passport control for exiting the Schengen Region so that too was a delay of maybe 20 minutes. Leaving Germany, Greece, Spain and the other places I have been to since Covid, all easy. Quick security and quick passport control. Some have long walks – if you connect at LHR, expect a long walk between arrival terminal and departure terminal and security at LHR is always a pain in the ass because that’s the one group on a bigger power trip than TSA in the U.S.
So do you think most conference attendees have Global Entry and do not require visas?
U.S. citizens do not require a visa to visit any of the of the 29 Schengen countries. Starting in 2026, there will be a requirement to register to enter the Schengen region; however, this will be an online registration and most approvals will be granted during the registration process. It is not a visa requirement. The same no visa required policy to enter the Schengen region applies to 61 other countries. The other nice thing about the Schengen region is there’s no passport control when transiting Schengen borders. As a result, you can pick a Schengen country like Spain or Germany that have an efficient entry process and then proceed on to any other Schengen country and never have to deal with immigration/passport control during that visit.
Not having Global Entry is a personal choice. It’s $120 and it’s good for 5 years. We aren’t discussing McDonald’s workers. We are discussing tech workers who should be able to afford $120 every 5 years if they want to make their return to the US easier. Yes, I have GE but as a US citizen you don’t need GE to simplify the US immigration process on return. You can use the Mobile Passport Control app which will streamline your return. You basically make your declaration in the app when you land, take a picture of everybody in your group, and then get in the right line. The MPC line is usually just as short as the GE line if not shorter.
Sure, some countries, like Australia, require a visa but it’s a simple process you do on line, pay your fee, and your visa is granted in short order. Like I said, I just visited Australia. I used their visa app and had my visa in less than 30 minutes. There are countries that require a full blown visa and those do take effort to get. I would think organizations organizing these events would be smart enough to avoid those countries. Additionally, a lot of those countries are not somewhere you would want to visit because it’s just not safe. Some are places you would want to visit like China also require a visa. Some are hard to get, I admit. But most of the places holding these events are not hard travel to unless you are coming from a problem country.
For non US citizens, there are 40 countries that are part of the Visa Waiver Program that allows their citizens to enter the US for up to 90 days without a visa. They just have to apply for and receive an ETSA before traveling. This is basically the same process the US citizens use to gain access to Australia and will be using to enter the Schengen region. It’s an online process and most will receive their ETSA in only a matter of minutes. Those who have something questionable on their application may take up to 72 hours but even that is not a long time.
So yeah, most conference attendees do not require a visa and gaining entry into the country where the event is being held is not difficult even if it’s the US and they don’t have GE.
ewm2 – I’m trying to be gentle here, but the world is a little bigger than white people.
Believe it or not, there are actually smart folks who live in countries like India and China. My spouse, for example, is a Chinese citizen with US permanent residency.
I’m going to put you in time out for a while for comments.
A lot of the problem is that user groups never came back after covid, largely because facilities that used to host meetings shut them off or started charging very high fees. For example I only see one active group in the DFW area, and although Microsoft has a pretty big office in Coppell I haven’t seen any invites to events there in the last two years. (Microsoft used to host two user groups, plus some sort of event every quarter or so.)
Look for NTSSUG on Meetup.com – the DFW SQL user group has been monthly now for a year or so at that MS campus in Las Colinas/Irving. They had a Data Saturday event last year as well, with a pre-con. They’re having an event their on Tuesday the 16th as well.
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