T-SQL Tuesday 96 - Folks Who Have Made a Difference

 Posted on November 14, 2017  |  621 words

This month’s topic: Folks Who Have Made a Difference

T-SQL Tuesday

T-SQL Tuesday is a monthly blog party for the SQL Server community (or Microsoft Data Platform community. Although it’s called T-SQL Tuesday, it’s not limited to SQL Server database engine only). It is the brainchild of Adam Machanic (blog | twitter).

This month’s T-SQL Tuesday is being hosted by Ewald Cress (blog | twitter). From his blog post:

This month’s topic: Who inspires you in the data community? Give them a should out!?

I can certainly think of many candidates for my submission, and the hardest part may be narrowing down the options to a manageable set. You may opt to write about a single incident, let rip with a mini-biography, or anything in between. And if you want to contextualise it with juicy technical detail, be my guest!

Who inspires me in the data community?

This sounds like such a simple topic, and it really is. The problem lies in the length of the list. So rather than making this an “Oscar Worthy” list of people all piled into a blog post, I’m just going to pick my first and most recent inspirations.

Mark Vaillancourt

The first person I can think of that had a profound impact on my involvement with the community was Mark Vaillancourt (blog | twitter). Just a little back story here. When I went to PASS Summit in 2013 I had no idea what to expect. I was fairly new to the PASS organization and SQL family was a foreign term to me. It was later in the week, and my brain was pretty full with technical stuff, so I decided to go to a non technical session. It was Mark Vaillancourt’s session about how to get started presenting. Some of the session was about building slide decks and technical stuff like that, but Mark also offered some great advice on how to overcome some of the fears that come with public speaking. The deeper message I took away was that everyone has something to share, you just have to be brave enough to take that first step. When I returned from Summit that year I joined my local Toastmasters and began my journey. I’ve now spoken at a number of SQL Saturday’s and plan to do many more. Speaking has moved from something I dreaded to something I’ve come to enjoy, and I have to thank Mark for giving me that nudge.

Chrissy LeMaire and the dbatools team

As a PowerShell tools guy myself I’d be crazy if I didn’t mention Chrissy LeMaire (blog | twitter). Thank you for opening dbatools up for all the world to see. The initial offering was all your own work, and I can imagine taking that first step was a big one. Thank you for starting the dbatools movement. Wow! What a movement it has become! Thank you to the entire dbatools team. 393! Hold crap! That’s the number of cmdlets in the module as of version 0.9.95. I think we started around 80. That’s a lot of work being done by volunteers looking to grow and hone their skills. Lets also not forget the people who focus on testing, documentation and all of the automated tooling. Thank you for inviting me and making me feel a part of this awesome project!

SQLFamily

If you’re a part of the SQL Family you have had an impact on me. I follow y’all on Twitter and on Slack. I love the banter as much as I love the technical discussions. The SQL family is the main reason I am so insistent on sticking with the Microsoft Data Platform. $people -gt $technology all day long. Thank you for welcoming me into the family.

SQL Server 

See also