TSQLTuesday #188 – The Recap of Growing the Younger Data Community and Speakers

 

Earlier this month, we hosted T-SQL Tuesday and chose the topic of Growing the Younger Data Community and Speakers.  Today, I bring you a summary recap of everyone who shared their thoughts on this subject with links to their full content.

First, if you are not familiar with T-SQL Tuesday, it is a monthly blog party created by Adam Machanic in 2009. Now managed by Steve Jones.

 

T-SQL Tuesday Recap

Joe Fleming shares his ideas on how we can watch for those wallflowers, make them feel welcome, and help them create the next generation of in-groups.

Rob Farley shares his thoughts on mentoring various people, and some of that involves presenting. Still, more of it is about establishing them as experts, helping them learn what they want to know, and encouraging them to take steps to achieve their goals. If someone feels comfortable in their own skin as an expert, knowing that they are genuinely good at what they do, then they will often start to realize that they belong on the other side of the room.

Andy Yun flips the script and asks the readers to get involved. You do not have to be an expert to help. You can help by encouraging someone to share their ideas and become more involved in the data community.

Steve Jones shares his story of helping by finding people who inspire and educate their local community.

Andy Levy shared his experience meeting Courtney Woolum at the SQLPASS Summit in 2023 with Steve Clement. They blogged about their experience and the importance of the hallway track (walking around and meeting people) at conferences.

Mala Mahadevan shares what has worked over the past two decades and what has changed. I think she is spot on in finding what already exists and participating in whatever way you can. Real growth comes from real human connection.

Robert Douglas shares his thoughts on building a legacy and how that involves presenting to the targeted audience of people at the start of their story.

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TSQLTuesday #188 – Growing the Younger Data Community and Speakers

TSQLTuesday #188 - Growing the Younger SQL Community and Speakers

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.
  • 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!

 

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Austin Texas SQL Saturday was a Success!

Austin Texas SQL Saturday
Austin Texas SQL Saturday was a Success!

Austin Texas SQL Saturday was a success! Procure SQL would not exist if it wasn’t for #SQLFamily and the SQL Community. Therefore, we always want to help connect, share and learn with our local data community.

In 2010 I hosted my first SQL Saturday #36 in Wheeling, WV. One thing in common with my first SQL Saturday and last week is that I honestly had no idea how many people would show up. My first event had 70 attendees and I wasn’t sure if this one would surpass it when we decided to commit and make it happen in November 2022.

We were not 100% sure if the Austin Data community would welcome in-person events. We figured doing this event would help us decide if we should try going back to in-person events.

Austin Texas SQL Saturday – The Final Numbers

Our final numbers are as following.

  • 140 people signed up in Eventbrite to attend our SQL Saturday.
  • 78 Sessions Submitted by 34 different individuals.
    • 64 additional people on the waitlist.
    • 40 People attending Bob Ward’s All-Day SQL 2022 Workshop
    • 82 total in-person attendees.
    • 18 Sessions by 18 Speakers
    • 6 Microsoft Employees as Speakers
    • 6 Volunteers running the event. Couldn’t have done this without the following (Jay Falck, Dora Klutz, Shawn Wiestfield, LaShanna Sterrett, Conor Cunningham, Allen Kinsel and myself. )
    • 4 Concurrent tracks
    • 1 Pre-Con aka All-Day Friday presenter.

Things that worked.

  • Using Microsoft’s Office as venue – While starting the budget all over from scratch for the Austin Texas SQL Saturday. It helped to have a great free venue. In the past, we would use a bigger venue like a conference center or college. With an unknown number of attendees, it made a lot of sense to use a smaller venue. I have presented and attended Azure Bootcamps in the Microsoft Office so I knew this would be a good fit.
  • Volunteers were amazing – Jay Falck, Dora Klutz, Shawn Wiestfield, LaShanna Sterrett, Conor Cunningham, and Allen Kinsel were amazing.
  • Recorded Sessions – We were able to leverage Shawn’s UserGroup.TV setup to allow us to have a place for everyone to see the sessions once they are published. Publishing the sessions is still in progress. Hopefully, we will get these up soon.
  • Sessionize for Event App – All of the things we would typically print except the attendee badges and vendor raffle QR cards could be fully replaced with Sessionize. Next year we will reduce a lot of the printing and just have attendees use the individual app you can create in Sessionize.
  • Speakers were amazing – We had an amazing amount of speaker interest. We did release our call of speakers at the PASS Data Summit intentionally. We think this did help us get a lot of amazing speakers.
  • Food was good – We did a volunteer/speaker’s dinner where you got to taste several different great pizzas. It was Brazilian’s Steakhouse meets Pizza. We reserved a big separate room in the restaurant so people could space out if that was their preference. With Covid still being a concern, we also opted to go with box lunches for both Friday and Saturday.
  • Thank You, Sponsors – Thank you so much for being patient and understanding of us. Thank you, AzureAustin, Microsoft, SolarWinds, DBeaver, Quest, and SIOS.
  • Eventbrite Collections – This made it easier for there to be a landing page for both the SQL Saturday and All-Day Training on Friday. We noticed this was helpful for people who found us on eventbrite.

Things that did not work or needs improvement.

  • More Concurrent Sessions – One of my biggest disappointments this year was having to say, “NO!” to speakers who I greatly respect. Writing this now I still fill bad about not having enough sessions to let more people present at the Austin SQL Saturday. I know I never like getting rejected when I submit so it’s even more painful giving that news to someone else. Hopefully, next year we will have at least two more tracks. I greatly apologize to everyone who submitted but didn’t get an opportunity to present.
  • Paying for attendees’ lunch – Traditionally, attendees pay for their lunches. It’s a nominal fee around $15 to $20 dollars to offset the cost of bringing in lunch and drinks. Due to our success with sponsorship, we were able to pay for everyone’s lunches. You might be wondering why would this need improving? It took away that cost of ownership attendees have for committing to attend the Austin Texas SQL Saturday. I had multiple people share the feedback that charging for lunch would help reduce no-shows.
  • We need a bigger venue – While we could hold some more people at the Microsoft’s office it limited us from going all out on trying to maximize our attendees. This provides additional value to our sponsors and the speakers. I think next year we will consider doing Friday’s training session at Microsoft while using another venue near for the SQL Saturday event.
  • Speaker Evaluations – We skipped evaluations this year and need to find a good way to bring this back for next year.
  • Raffle QR Codes – Before the pandemic SQL Saturday organizers had a great tool for generating QR codes for the vendor raffles and producing an electronic list of attendees who chose to participate in the raffle. Unfortunately, it didn’t survive the pandemic and organizers had to come up with an alternative. Jeff Taylor has a great blog documenting a process to generate QR codes for vCard’s. I would like to make this easier for sponsors and find an affordable way to allow them to obtain a list of all QR codes scanned.

Results

The Austin Data Community is ready for in-person events again. We will be starting up in-person events. To start, we will go every other month and grow it from there.

View our Eventbrite Collection of user group meetings. All future in-person meetings will go there. Our first In-Person event is March 21st, 2023, with Cory Brown presenting Azure Synapse Link.

We are also planning to implement our lessons learned by doing another SQL Saturday in February 2024!

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SQL Saturday Jacksonville Sponsors

Procure SQL is proud to be speaking and sponsoring SQL Saturday Jacksonville this weekend. Join us and several other amazing community speakers as we all share our knowledge with the community. The event will be on Saturday, May 14th, 2022, at University of North Florida. You can sign up for free here. We look forward to seeing you there!

Sign Up for Free!
SQL Saturday Jacksonville 2022
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Getting Started with SQL Server Performance Tuning

Getting Started with Performance Tuning
Watch! Getting Started with Performance Tuning

Have slow queries and want to get down to the basics of learning some fundamentals for performance tuning? If so, John Sterrett is giving an talk at the Nashville User Group (Online) tomorrow. Feel free to join us. If you are local to Nashville make sure you sign up for their future meetings.

Join us virtually on Thursday, April 14, 2022 from 10:45 AM to 12:00 PM CDT

Watch Now!
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September 2018 Training Opportunities

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The Procure SQL team is out and about in September, sharing their knowledge for free at SQL Saturdays as well as online webinars!  We are very proud of our team and their efforts to share knowledge and experiences.  Be sure to say hello and ask questions when you see them!

GroupBy September 7, 2018

We are proud to announce that Martin Perez, close friend of Procure SQL, will be joining John Sterrett in presenting for GroupBy.Org!  GroupBy is FREE online SQL Server training by the community, for the community!  This month’s training  is scheduled for September 7, 2018 beginning at 8:00 AM Eastern, with the last session starting at 2:15 PM!

Registration is free! GroupBy

Martin Perez (11:45 AM Est)

Martin will be presenting “T-SQL Tools: Simplicity for Synchronizing Changes” at 11:45 AM Eastern.
Any DBA or developer that has ever faced the problem of moving data changes across databases will surely benefit from this session.  One of the most common problems a DBA or database developer may face is finding an syncing data changes efficiently between multiple systems.  He will explore different methods focusing on effective use of TSQL, and how these methods can be mixed and matched in your ETL workflows:

  • Brute Force
  • Log Shipping/Read Only Standby
  • Rowversion datatype
  • Change Tracking
  • Change Data Capture
  • Temporal Tables

Martin hopes to assist the DBA or Developer free up time and energy by understanding all the available options.  Come find out why brute force is not the only path forward!

John Sterrett (1:00 PM Est)

Directly following Martin, John Sterrett will be presenting “Make Your Own SQL Server Queries Go Faster” at 1:00 PM Eastern.
Have you ever developed slowly running queries and wondered how to make your own SQL Server queries go faster?  It is how John stumbled into his career in performance tuning.  In this session, you will learn some T-SQL performance tuning tips that can be used in the office immediately. You will learn how to identify top offender queries and be able to benchmark queries. Finally, he will cover some coding patterns that are developer friendly (but are not SQL Server database engine friendly) and show you how to rewrite them so they can run faster.

SQL Saturday #774 – Denver, CO September 15, 2018

If you are in the Denver, Colorado area, be sure to register for SQL Saturday #774!  The free training event will be held on Saturday, September 15, 2018 at the University of Denver in Sturm Hall.  Registration is free!

Two of our team members will be presenting!  Both John Sterrett and Angela Tidwell will be presenting at 9:00 AM.  

John Sterrett

John will be presenting “Automate the Pain Away with Adaptive Query Processing and Automatic Tuning“
In this Intermediate level session, John will explore how tuning SQL Server workloads is changing. In the past, you would rely on dynamic management views, execution plan cache, and server-side traces or extend events. In SQL Server 2012 Columnstore indexes were introduced; In SQL 2014 the cardinality estimator got a huge overhaul. With SQL Server 2016 we were given query store to allow us to get more insight into our performance pains and execution plan changes. SQL Server 2017 gave us Automatic Tuning and Adaptive Query Processing to help automate performance improvements. In this session, he will harness ways to improve performance into the new so you can automate the pain away and spend more time identifying and tuning pain points that cannot be automated.

Angela Tidwell

Angela will be presenting “Become the Most Valuable Player: Soft Skills for the Hard Market“
This session is for beginners and seasoned pros alike.  Whether you are just starting a career, advancing into senior leadership, or trying to woo a potential client, soft skills can be your ticket to success. Often times we focus on showing how smart we are instead of showing what a good team member we can be.  In this session, Angela will discuss the role and types of soft skills needed to showcase your X-factor.  Need to hone your skills?  She will explore innovative and fun ways in which to do just that!  Get ready, Angela likes to wake you up and make you think: she likes to have fun in this session!

SQL Saturday #802 – San Diego, CA September 22, 2018

Planning to be in San Diego on September 22, 2018? If so, you can catch Jay Falck speaking at SQL Saturday #802!
SQL Saturday San Diego will be held at UCSD Extension – University City Center and Registration is free!

Jay Falck

Jay will be presenting “Introduction to Linux for SQL Server“
SQL Server is now available on Linux but you only know Windows, now what?  In this beginner level course, Jay will introduce the Linux version of Windows commands used on a daily basis for administering SQL Server.  He will explore updating Linux, updating SQL Server, moving files between Windows and Linux, and backing up and restoring databases from one system to another.  Also he will dive into default file locations for SQL Server and what can be moved and how to accomplish that.

SQL Saturday #770 – Pittsburgh, PA September 29, 2018

Pittsburgh Technical College will be hosting SQL Saturday #770 on September 29, 2018.  As always, registration for SQL Saturday is free!

John Sterrett

John will be presenting Automate the Pain Away with Adaptive Query Processing and Automatic Tuning at 10:00 AM Eastern.
The way you tune your SQL Server workloads are changing.  In the past, you would rely on dynamic management views, execution plan cache, and server-side traces or extend events. In his intermediate level session, John will explore the ways to improve performance into the new so you can automate the pain away and spend more time identifying and tuning pain points that cannot be automated.

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SQL Saturday Houston 2018

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SQLSatHou 2018

We are back this year!  Not only are we sponsoring SQL Saturday Houston, we are also speaking!  All three of us are presenting!  Go here to see the full schedule.

What is SQL Saturday?

SQL Saturday is a free training event for Microsoft Data Platform professionals and those wanting to learn about SQL Server, Business Intelligence, and Analytics.  SQL Saturday Houston will be held on June 23, 2018 at San Jacinto College – South Campus, 13735 Beamer Road, Houston, Texas  77089.  Check-in and breakfast starts at 7:30am.  The first sessions begin at 8:30 am.  There are sessions for beginners, intermediate, and advanced levels.  Topics covered at this SQL Saturday are:

  • Powershell
  • Application & Database Development
  • BI Platform Architecture, Development & Administration
  • Cloud Application Development & Deployment
  • Enterprise Database Administration & Deployment
  • Professional Development
  • Strategy & Architecture

Remember, this is a FREE event, but only a few spots remain!  Don’t wait, click here to register!

Where will we be?

We will each be at the Procure SQL booth with smiling faces, fun giveaways, and answers to your SQL Server questions!  Please stop by and say hello.  If not at the booth, you can find us attending a session or giving one of our own!

Angela will start out the day at 9:45 am in room 117.  She will be presenting her professional development session “Becoming the MVP: Soft Skills for the Hard Market.”  In this interactive, round-table discussion, Angela explores how soft skills are important at all levels of a person’s career.  The importance of soft skills in the job market, specific skills, and how to hone them will be top priority.  She has been known to give away prizes, so make sure to say hello!

Jay comes in next at 11:00 am in room 149.  Jay’s presentation is “Linux for SQL Server” and is a high-level overview of the differences and similarities between Linux and Windows for those who haven’t been exposed or may need a refresher.  Don’t be mistaken, even though this session is a high-level overview, it is fantastic for beginners!  Jay will introduce the Linux version of Windows commands used on a daily basis for administering SQL Server. Next, he will explore updating Linux, updating SQL Server, moving files between Windows and Linux, and backing up and restoring databases from one system to another. He will round out the session by taking a look at default file locations for SQL Server and what can be moved and how to accomplish that.

John is waking up the afternoon crowd at 1:30 in room 113.  He is presenting “Automate the Pain Away with Query Store and Automatic Tuning” which is an intermediate level presentation which explains how execution plans get invalidated and why data skew could be the root cause of seeing different execution plans for the same query. He will further explore options for forcing a query to use a particular execution plan. Finally, he will discuss how this complex problem can be identified and resolved simply using new features in SQL Server 2016 and SQL Server 2017 called Query Store and Automatic Tuning.  You won’t want to miss out on that!

What happens after the sessions are done?

Stick around after the last sessions because at 5:00 we all gather together for final remarks and sponsor raffles!  We will be giving away a new Super Nintendo SNES GiveawayEntertainment System Classic Edition!  To enter, just drop your raffle ticket in the bucket at our booth. 

But wait, there’s more!

The fun doesn’t stop here.  We leave from the event to an after party which is being held at Main Event, 1125 Magnolia Ave., Webster, Texas 77598.  Party starts at 6!  The after parties are a great way to unwind, network,  and chat up the speakers and new SQL friends you made during the sessions!

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Four Tips for Entry-Level and Experienced IT Professionals

John Sterrett shares his thoughts on successfully transitioning to an entry-level IT job.

Recently, I worked with  AITP to share some tips that helped me successfully transition from a Computer Engineering student at the University of Oklahoma to an entry-level information technology professional. Once, I completed the interview I noticed that my advice was more of a secret sauce to being a successful informational technology professional than just a how-to guide to getting that first entry-level information technology job.   Therefore, I wanted to share with everyone.

To see the words of wisdom four tips to successfully enter the IT workforce or continue your successful IT career check out the following AITP article.  If you are not a member, I highly recommend joining AITP. AITP has been a game changer for my IT career.

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My SQL Saturday Firsts

In October 2011, after working with SQL Server since 1998, I discovered something called SQL Saturday and PASS. For those unaware, these are local events, setup and run by volunteers. Speakers come in from all parts of the country to share, for free, their knowledge of SQL Server and other topics of interest to data professionals. These events also draw sponsors of various types. Without this symbiosis, the events would not work.

My First SQL Saturday  

At this first event, held on the campus of the University of Texas at Austin, I got to meet and learn from some of the big names in the community, referred to as SQL Family. Thomas LaRock (t/b) kicked off the morning with a keynote. Afterwards, I found Tom is a HUGE bacon aficionado. This was my first realization these folks were approachable and not “full of themselves.” Very different from other professions I’ve been around. After the keynote, it was off to learn from the likes of Jim Murphy (t/b),  Wes Brown (t), Joe Celko, and many others.

I was hooked. I started traveling the country to attend these events as an attendee, usually at my own expense. Thanks to SQL Saturday, I’ve been to Portland ME, Atlanta, Louisville, Omaha, San Diego, Houston, Salt Lake City, and countless others.

One Road Leads to Many Paths

In October 2013, while at a CodeCamp in Austin, I met John Sterrett (t/b). He had decided it was time for Austin to host a SQL Saturday, the first since October 2011. It was a big hit and repeated in 2015. Unfortunately, we haven’t been able to find a suitable venue since; but hope to be able to bring SQL Saturday back in 2019. I tell this part of the story because John is responsible for the next part.

It used to be a standing joke that we saw each other more away from Austin than in Austin. One frequent topic of conversation was, “Hey Jay, you come to these events, why don’t you speak at them?” My answer was always, “I don’t know anything these people don’t already know.” He kept telling me the same thing I had heard other speakers say: At least one person doesn’t know what you know, or you have a different take on something others speak about.

Diving in to Become a Speaker

It took several years of prodding, but I did my first SQL User Group presentation to the Austin community in June 2017. It had been years since I was up in front of a non-work group, but it went well, except for the demos of course. Now I was hooked again, I went to work on my next presentation idea, which was delivered late in 2017. It went well enough I decided, OK, I was coerced into submitting to a couple of SQL Saturday events, Wheeling and Albuquerque. I was selected to speak at Wheeling but unfortunately had to withdraw from Albuquerque.

Fast forward, OK, not really fast, but I’m getting there. I tried very hard not to fall into the trap I heard all speakers talking about: don’t change your presentation last minute, have an extra laptop so you can deal with hardware failures, make sure you have plenty of cables, etc. I made it to Wheeling with extra laptop and redundant cables but found myself updating the presentation on Saturday Morning to include a new item I had seen earlier in the week.

Whew, I did it!

Even with last minute changes, everything went well with my first SQL Saturday presentation. Feedback was helpful even though it was limited. Based on the input, I’ve updated the presentation and been accepted to speak at SQL Saturday events in Los Angeles and Houston. I will also be co-presenting with John Sterrett at SQL Saturday Dallas. I admit to a bit of nervousness as I expect both to be bigger, but I think I’m up to the challenge.

I’m looking forward to preparing new presentations and being a speaker and volunteer at many of the locations I’ve just been attending to this point.

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The Importance of SQL Saturdays

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I had the distinct honor of helping John Sterrett (t/b) and Dolph Santorine (t) organize and run SQL Saturday #717 in Wheeling, West Virginia on April 28, 2018.  It was a chance meeting at the event that drove home to me why we invest so much of our personal time and effort into organizing/running/presenting at SQL Saturdays.  The short answer as to why we do it is: We do all of this to promote free education to all who choose to seek it.  That’s right…. FREE.  Education is the best gift that can be bestowed upon and received by anyone.  I met Kyle, this was his first SQL Saturday and his tweet sums it all up:

“Free” means FREE?

Each SQL Saturday is organized by individuals or teams of volunteers.  We do not get paid for our time.  The speakers do not get paid for their time.  Speakers are sometimes compensated by their employers when they present at SQL Saturdays, but most of the time these speakers pay the travel and lodging expenses out of their own pockets!  The events are funded by sponsors.  Thus we are able to give away free education from active industry professionals!

Sponsorship is key.

Like I mentioned, the events are funded solely by sponsorship.  The cool thing about sponsoring a SQL Saturday is that not only are you expanding your marketing campaign for a minimal amount of money, you too are giving back to a noble cause.  Marian Wright Edelman wrote, “Education is for improving the lives of others and for leaving your community and the world better than you found it.”  Being a sponsor allows you the awesome privilege of helping make a difference in someone’s life.

Why we do what we do.

During a chance meeting at SQL Saturday Wheeling, I met a USMC Veteran who is trying to find his way in the tech field.  He was referred to the event by a college professor.  Much to his surprise, not only did he walk away from the event armed with tons of information and a new-found excitement for learning SQL, he walked away with a lot of new SQL friends and mentors.  He was introduced to fellow Ex-Marine and Veteran, Jim Donahoe (t/b), who then put him in contact with others in the industry who can directly help make an impact on his career!  That is at the core of who we are as a community.  We left as we rise.

Friends and mentors.

In the SQL community, we pride ourselves in giving back and helping others.  On twitter we even have an open hashtag (#SQLHelp) where you can ask questions and get responses from experts in the SQL community.  If you participate, you will find a friend and mentor who will help provide information, keep your spirits up, and help you find your way through the weeds.  I personally have been blessed through the community, and my mission is to help bless others.

Thoughts on being an organizer.

Helping to organize and run a SQL Saturday is no small task.  There are many moving parts, many small details that can be overlooked or forgotten.  I was so very thankful to have friends who are also organizers who helped me along the way.  I certainly learned a lot about event planning!  More-so, I learned a lot about the value of kindness.  They provided guidance and tips, and I too will do the same for others who want the help.  Standing there Saturday morning before the doors opened I thought to myself “Here we are.  All these months and we are finally here.”  And honestly, I was afraid.  What if no one showed up?  What if the equipment failed?  What if I had forgotten something?  What if lunch doesn’t show?  

And you know what happened?  Attendees arrived, speakers arrived, everything worked, lunch arrived early, we had plenty of coffee, and everyone had a great time!  It was not a huge event. In fact, it was a very small event.  Something I noticed from being at both large and small events is that the quality of education is the same.  It is the same because the presenters are all there for the same thing I am….to share their unique vision and experience in hopes that someone in the audience will gain new perspective and it will grow their career.

Final thoughts on volunteering.

I personally feel a sense of pride and accomplishment when I can help someone else with no expectation of reward.  But there is a reward, there is always a reward!  My reward was smiles from speakers and attendees, but mostly, knowing that we all touched the lives of all those who attended.  

For more information on how to attend or volunteer for a SQL Saturday in your location, please visit the SQL Saturday website!

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