Interview with Greg Low

I have known of Greg Low for about three years now. In fact, when I was training for the 2006 ING NYC Marathon I used to download some of his SQL Down Under podcasts and listen to them while jogging. When he ran for the board back in 2007 I was excited to see someone with his background looking to get involved with PASS at the Director level. He is a well respected community leader and brings to PASS some wonderful ideas on how to truly make PASS a global organization.

Greg was kind enough to agree to take part in the following interview. We exchanged emails for a few weeks, I believe, probably due to Greg’s brutal travel schedule and the fact that he lives upside down on the other side of the world. Enjoy.

SR: How long have you been working with SQL Server?

GL: I started with SQL Server 4.2. My first exam for SQL Server was the “trainer only” exam on Performance Tuning for SQL Server 4.2. It was so funny as it was a faulty exam and there was only one exam. You had to get 85% to pass (as it was a trainer exam – in those days trainers had to get higher results) and that was tough when it was broken. For example, two questions said “pick two of the following” and then gave you only a radio button, so it wasn’t possible to pick two, even though you needed to do so to get it right.

SR: How long have you been involved with PASS?

GL: I think my first involvement was probably around 2005. I know I was at the Euro summit that year.

SR: What is the biggest strength of PASS?

GL: The members, particularly those that are so keen to help each other.

SR: What could PASS be doing better?

GL: My big focus for PASS is on deliverables. PASS has always done a great job on the summit but not so good in other areas. I’m determined to see that change. A big part of it is delivering real value through the chapters program and also directly to members. I want to see a situation where a question like “why should I join PASS” would seem silly.

SR: Why should people join PASS?

GL: Because, piece by piece, we’re building the best SQL Server related community and they should be part of it.

SR: Why did you run for the board originally

GL: I wanted to make the chapters aspect of PASS much more significant and I also wanted to push a real “global” nature to PASS. I used to read its marketing as the “global organization for…” and to me the “global” was global as in “world series” in baseball, not in reality. I’m keen to change that and I think we’re already making good progress with it.

SR: I suppose we could have a World Cup of Baseball, like they do in Rugby and Soccer (sorry, Football), but we wouldn’t want to wait four years between championships. What has been the key for you in getting the word out to people that there are other lands beyond North America?

GL: There are so many amazing things going on in the world. I see part of my role as highlighting those as they happen. It’s easy for people in one country to assume that most things of interest are in their own country. I’m keen to find and highlight excellence wherever it occurs. My next biggest struggle is going to be to start to break the language barrier within PASS. Everything is pretty much English at present. That isn’t a long term plan for a global organization.

SR: Do you think PASS is positioning itself well to become truly global in nature?

GL: Yes but this will take time. Every time a decision is made, I’m trying to make sure we assess the wider impact and opportunities.

SR: How many miles of travel do you do in a typical year?

GL: I’ve never counted them but I do average around 130 flights a year at present. I probably do around ten or twelve trips out of the country per year. I got a surprise last year when I found out that electronic tickets on airlines only allow 18 flights on a single ticket. I can only imagine there’s some old mainframe at the back end that had rules like “paper tickets have 9 lines per page and people can have two pages so 18 is the maximum lines per ticket”. I’m sure there’s some historical context for odd things like that. That was my longest set of flights in a long time. We flew Melbourne->Auckland->Los Angeles->Seattle->Chicago->Houston->Dallas->Washington->London->Copenhagen->London->Madrid->Vienna->London->Dusseldorf->London->Tokyo->Cairns->Sydney->Melbourne. People that saw me at the PASS summit in Dusseldorf probably wondered why I looked so tired… I seriously enjoy meeting people from all around the world though. I think the world would be such a nicer place if people just got to understand other people and other cultures better.

SR: You are a certified master, what does that mean exactly? How does one become a SQL Server Master?

GL: It’s the new higher level certification from Microsoft for SQL Server. I’ve detailed info about my experiences here: http://sqlblog.com/blogs/greg_low/archive/2008/11/28/microsoft-certified-master-sql-server-2008.aspx

SR: Besides building user communities, what do you like to do in your spare time?

GL: Over the years, I’ve been quite involved in music (played bass in a rock band for a long time), soccer (played senior soccer for Brisbane City, refereed for many years and coached a women’s team) and baseball (played for a long time in my teens and early twenties, then played, coached and umpired seniors and juniors from my thirties onwards). I got further umpiring than playing. I umpired in the Pan-Pacific games some years back. When my daughter moved from baseball to softball, so did I and I also spent many years coaching and umpiring softball. I got right into it for a while and made it to a representative coaching level and trained as a specialist battery coach. Now I don’t seem to have much spare time. Helping build the local Solid Quality subsidiary and the SQL Down Under podcasts takes a bunch of time and I always have some other “pet” projects on the go. I’m also actively trying to learn Mandarin. So life is never boring.

For more information on PASS go to http://sqlpass.org. And you can register for the upcoming PASS Community Summit at http://summit2009.sqlpass.org, where you can meet Greg and all the other people that make PASS a wonderful community.