T-SQL Tuesday #36 SQL Community / What Does the Community Mean To You?

What? Tuesday already? Is it me or is time really flying by?

Well, I’m fortunate enough this month to host Adam Machanic’s (B|T) concept of T-SQLTuesday #36. I’ve found the previous T-SQLTuesday hosts topics to be very interesting and I hope that I can do it some justice.

Over the course of the last few weeks I’ve gone through some health concerns, a World Series has taken place, Sandy has occurred up North of me, Nascar is ending it’s season, College football is ending, spoke to a group of DBA’s last weekend, attended various webex sessions, etc. One common thread that kept coming to my mind is Community, team work, team effort.

Ironically enough, this week is the PASS Summit 2012. It’s killing me not to be in attendance but I am thankful for PASSTV and for co-workers of mine who are getting to attend for the first time (5 total).

Merriam-Webster defines Community as “a unified body of individuals”. For me the SQL Community is something that has helped me in my career; whether it is questions that I’ve had along the way where I was stuck, helping other DBA’s with issues they were having, networking with other DBA’s or making contacts for the future. The SQL Community is just that; we are a team. All on the same team; if one falls we pick each other up. I’ve never been part of a group of people who want to help each other more so than the SQL Community.

One of the best conferences I’ve been to is the PASS Summit. I was fortunate enough to attend last year and this years will provide new attendees the same fortune and opportunities that I have had. Sitting and seeing some of the top DBA’s in the industry learning in sessions along with me…..yeah I was floored.

So my question today is a simple one; I had several topics to choose from technically but I’m curious as to what others think about our SQL Community. Not just some off the cuff answer but really what do you think about it and how has it helped you?

Below are some thoughts I had in creating this topic:

How has the community helped me in my career
How can I better the community
How can I preserve what we already have
How can I help other people in the community

With that said there will be some first timers and there are rules to follow:

Your blog post must be published between Tuesday, November 13th 2012 00:00:00 GMT and Wednesday, November 14th 2012 00:00:00 GMT
Include the T-SQL Tuesday logo (above) and hyperlink it back to this post.
If you don’t see your post in trackbacks, add the link to the comments below.
If you are on Twitter please tweet your blog using the #TSQL2sDay hashtag. I can be contacted there as @YatesSQL, in case you have questions or problems with comments/trackback

Many thanks again to Adam Machanic; if you’d like to host a TSQL Tuesday please give him a shout!