I’m writing this because I was thinking about a member of the local PASS chapter on the way home last night, a friend who lost his spouse to illness after a long and happy marriage. I had known about her illness, but only knew that she died because he chose to write something on his blog. I saw the post and forwarded it on to some of the other members that knew him so that we could offer thoughts and support during a tough time.

That had me thinking, what if I had not seen the post? I read a few blogs, check in on Twitter when I can, but I could easily miss news like this, and that would bother me.

It has me wishing for a place where we can post SQLFamily news. Marriages, birth of children, deaths, maybe even birthdays and promotions and personal successes like passing an exam. It might also be a channel that we could use to gather support if someone we know needs help. No ads, no commercials, just stuff about us.

I’d like it to be low noise,something I can scan easily and can go scan backwards if I’ve fallen behind on reading. I’d like to be respectful of privacy – only publish things that people are ok with sharing,or maybe that they share directly via that channel. That means some amount of curating or moderating I think.

I don’t have a grand vision beyond that, or even a preference yet on how to do it. Maybe it’s something PASS could help with, maybe it’s something we should just do – if we in the SQLFamily think it’s a good idea. I hope you’ll comment on the idea, or blog about it, or discuss it on Twitter, is there something here that is worth doing and doable?