What did we ever do before we had #sqlhelp on Twitter?
Why, we used to email each other questions, of course. Now, in my shop, we only had a handful of DBAs. And that meant we only had a handful of experiences, most of which were shared, not distinct. After my third PASS Summit I found that I had a much wider network. With one email I could reach 30 or so trusted individuals with a question and get back a response fairly quickly. There is no question that by attending the Summit, meeting people, and having this network saved my company thousands of dollars in research time for the issues we were facing on a weekly basis.
When I look back on the names in the list I see some folks that were already well known in the SQL Community, but many of them were not at the time. They are now, though, which makes me realize that every year when we go to the Summit and there are a few hundred people there for the first time and…well…those folks are the “future stars” of PASS.
Just think, this year, someone attending for the very first time, is likely to find themselves speaking at a future PASS Summit, or perhaps serving on the Board of Directors, or maybe starting their own local chapter. They will likely meet about a dozen folks and also likely to start up their own private newsgroup similar to what I had and probably what others had done before me.
I can’t wait to meet them.
