Back From TechEd

What a crazy first week of work I had last week. My new company had me fly down to New Orleans to be with them for TechEd 2010 and on Tuesday we officially announced my new position for Confio Software. I spent a lot of time in and around our booth in the Exhibition Hall but managed to attend two sessions during the week as well. I got to see my book on display, walk Bourbon Street, and get a beignet from Cafe du Monde. I was also able to grab some face time with more than a handful of top SQL professionals as well. Without a doubt it was the best first week of employment I have ever had. Ever.

I have been getting a lot of questions about my new role so I thought I would post a few of the most common ones here for everyone to reference. In a lot of ways much of what I was doing in my spare time is now my full time job. So, I went from two jobs down to one, which is nice. This past weekend I had so much free time I didn’t know what to do with it all. (I see more video games in my future.)

What will you be doing?

Great question. I’m not 100% certain, either. I have had a chance to review my role and it breaks down into a handful of areas. One of those areas was called “Outside Tom”, a name I loved and will just refer to it as OT from now on because everyone loves to say OT. Anyway, OT is essentially the person I am right now; writer, presenter, PASS Board member, SQL MVP, author, blogger, and occasional user of Twitter. Essentially, all of the external facing things I have been doing for the past few years. The other part of my job will involve getting to know our product better in order to help with technical support as well as discussing the product with prospects in a pre-sales role. In other words, I’ll be a triple threat.

Have you sold out?

Sure, I will work for a specific software vendor, but I am committed to serving the SQL Community first and foremost. That means if you come to me with questions I am going to help you find an answer that serves your interests first. Will you have to hear me mention our company from time to time? Absolutely. But I remain dedicated to providing an independent voice, and Confio supports that completely. That means I am the same person now that I was two weeks ago, I just happen to cash a paycheck from a company that is proud to tell people I work for them.

How much travel?

Well, right now I am at 67% travel, having only been with Confio for one week and spending four of those days in New Orleans. And next week I am heading out to Colorado to spend time in the main office with everyone. After that I think the travel will be quiet for a while. I expect to make it out to a few SQL Saturdays, there is an upcoming PASS Board meeting, and I will probably have a few day trips in the Northeast as well. All told I am expecting my travel to be no more than 25%, and even that percentage is a little high, especially for the summer with the kids home from school so much. But this is all very new to me, so I really don’t know what to expect other than I will travel whenever it is the right thing to do.

When I am not on the road I will be working from home. I have never worked from home before, so I will need to develop my own routine for what works best for me. Hopefully I can iron out the kinks over the next 2-3 months and get some good work habits formed.

Will you be learning Oracle?

Not to the level I know MS SQL as a production DBA, but I will need to learn it enough to perform some basic performance tuning or at least answer some general questions. I will also need to do the same for DB2 and for SAP Sybase. I am hoping that in time I will be able to help people easily translate between systems when it comes to such things as table scans, fragmentation, etc. I am finding that more and more shops tend to have a mixture of applications that run with different database systems. So, a few years ago you were all Oracle and now you have some MS SQL, or vice-versa, and you need to do some basic performance troubleshooting. (By the way, there’s an app for that).

Will you come speak at my [blank]?

I think I have had about two dozens requests for me to come and speak in person at an event or user group meeting. As much as I would enjoy being able to help everyone, it is simply not going to be possible. I am slowly piecing together my schedule for the next few months, making sure I have outlined my current obligations and then I can round out the schedule with other events. That doesn’t mean I mind you asking, just that you understand if I respectfully decline.

Everything is still evolving at this point, but as more comes into focus for me I will be sure to share them with you here.