Sammy SQL

After attending the I-380 PASS #394 SQL Saturday event in Iowa City, I’ve been guided into the world of blogging and public speaking. I want to use this blog as a way to help me spread the knowledge I’ve been able to build up slowly over the last few years and to help me learn more about SQL Server – faster.

Public speaking and blogging has always been something that has terrified me, so bear with me as I approach… or rather jump head first, into all sorts of new adventures. Feel free to ask me questions, critique my work, or just plain call me out on anything I’ve noted wrong. I need it!

Three years ago I attended my first SQL Saturday as a Software Developer and was overwhelmed by how much I didn’t know about SQL Server. I understood the basics of what most developers know about forming a query and creating/modifying a database. Most of that conference was over my head at the time, but instead of letting it intimidate me, I let it motivate me. I left that conference telling myself (and everyone that would listen)- “That’s what I wanna do.. I want to be a DBA!”.  I knew at the time that there were issues in my code and environment as a whole. So the things I learned from that SQL Saturday helped me improve the performance within just my application. It also helped me get most of the front line reviews of performance issues with our software. Yes, this was added workload to my already capped queue, but I loved doing it). I had hopes of doing more research, taking time and getting more into specifics to expand these changes database wide. In the three years since then, I haven’t had much of a chance to do so within the work environment and workload. After having a child and missing one SQL Saturday, and completely missing the conference last year by just a few days, I have been very discouraged about the progress of my approach in becoming a DBA. Until now… 

After attending this last weekend’s event in Iowa City, I’ve not only learned so much more in just a short period of time, I’ve also met with some amazing people. And it wasn’t all over my head… still some of it, but quite a bit less this time around. In addition to the sessions, I also attended the blogging/public speaking clinic with Frank Gill as a mentor. I am very much thankful for the time he spent getting me acquainted with public speaking ideas and talked into starting a blog, and connecting with Twitter (which I found out that I do have an account with, but have not touched it since 2012, oops!). PASS is a community of people, including Frank, that will take time out of their own day, without any other benefit than to help someone else to learn more about what they are passionate about. This makes me excited to shift my focus in this direction and be a part of this community. I have never seen this before in a work related atmosphere.

I hope to apply as much as possible from what I have learned into improving our environment, more focused learning and sharing my knowledge when I do learn new things. So, stay tuned for reports of what I will call my “pet projects”, as I continue to advance my SQL skills toward becoming a DBA while continuing to be a software developer. Eventually, I am hoping to make the full switch.