TSQLTuesday #188 – Growing the Younger SQL Community and Speakers

This month, I am hosting T-SQL Tuesday for the very first time. T-SQL Tuesday is a monthly blog party created by Adam Machanic in 2009. I want to give Steve Jones a shout-out for allowing me to host this month’s edition.

Each month, a new topic is chosen and published on the first Tuesday of the month, and contributors post their takes on the following Tuesday. Anyone can participate by sharing their thoughts on their preferred forum. Please publish your post by July 8th at midnight CDT. Please leave a comment on this blog post with the link to your response so that we can include your thoughts in the roundup. Doing so will provide everyone with a centralized location to find all the responses and let me know which ones to include in the recap.

Growing the Younger Data Community and Speakers

ProcureSQL wouldn’t exist today if it weren’t for being involved in the community. Straight out of college, Dolph Santorine dragged me along to the local AITP monthly meetings in Wheeling, WV.  This led me to start a SQL Server user group in Wheeling and host SQL Saturday events in both Wheeling and Austin. During SQL Saturday Austin in May, I had a great conversation with Steve about our thoughts on the state of the SQL community post-COVID. We both noticed that the average speaker age wasn’t getting any younger. This leads me to ask this month’s question.

What are you doing, or what can we do to encourage younger people to get involved in the SQL community while increasing the number of younger speakers?

Anything is fair game. For example, here were some things I was thinking:

• Involving the local colleges in event planning for SQL Saturdays
• Bringing interns and younger co-workers to user group meetings
• Hosting lightning talks, where speakers focus on a single topic for five to ten minutes.
• Mentoring a speaker through building and delivering their first presentation
• Allowing a new speaker to co-present with you
• Doing a one-on-one review, giving a critique on how they can improve their session
• Create a budget for your young speakers to speak at events.
• Hosting a track or event, only allowing new speakers the opportunity to present and share their knowledge
• Making sure new local speakers can speak at your event, if that means saying no to MVPs and Microsoft Employees.

You Never Will Know the Impact You Will Generate

As the host this month, I will go first. I want to share two brief stories about helping new speakers and the impact it had on them.

My first big presentation was at SQL Saturday DC, many years ago. If you are familiar with Amateur Night at the Apollo, I would have given myself the hook.

It might have been my last presentation if it weren’t for Allen White taking the time to sit with me one-on-one after my session and go through the things I did well and the areas where I could improve, ensuring my presentation was better the next time I gave it. ProcureSQL would most likely never have existed without Allen taking the time to help make me a better speaker.  It’s fantastic to look back at how fifteen minutes had such a significant impact on my career.  I would have never spoken at PASS Summit or become a Data Platform MVP. I definitely wouldn’t have been focused on helping new speakers as well.

Later on, I worked at RDX for Kon Melamud. One of the most intelligent people I’ve ever met. He had never given a community session before, even though he worked down the street from the Pittsburgh SQL User Group meeting location. One month, I was the speaker, and I talked him into going with me and standing next to me as I gave the presentation. I told him I would do the presentation. When I am done with a section, I will ask him to share his thoughts and experience working with over 100 different customers. He was extremely nervous, and this was the perfect way to introduce him to the community. Doing so got him started and, over time, encouraged him to establish a budget and allow others at RDX to speak at community events. Today, Kon is the CTO at ProcureSQL, but more importantly, my best friend. Our relationship wouldn’t have grown without our involvement in the community together.

Instructions

• Now that you have the topic, let’s recap the instructions:
  • Schedule your post to publish on Tuesday, July 8th.
  • Please include the T-SQL Tuesday image.

  

• Please post a link to your blog post in the comments of this post, so I have an easy way to find it and include it in the recap.
• Post it to social media if you can, and include the #tsqltuesday hashtag.
  • Feel free to tag me if you can:
    • Twitter
    • LinkedIn
• Link back to this blog post so that everyone can find a recap of all the blog posts on this topic.
• Watch for my wrap-up the following week!