How to Participate in the SQL Community – Draft #1

Posted on by SQLAndy

I mentioned last year about my plans to write this, and to make it a semi-collaborative effort by incorporating comments back into the finished product (if I like them that is!). I thought I’d start by outlining what I have in mind, and then I’m going to try to post more on this project about once a week.

For each of these I want to add detail, maybe it’s a paragraph, maybe several pages, that I can to someone at any point in their career and have it be a map on where to go next as far as community involvement

How to Participate in the SQL Community

  1. What is the SQL Server community?
  2. Reading and attending is participating
  3. Commenting and asking questions is participating more
  4. Answering questions in forums/etc
  5. Posting a question
  6. Writing an article and answering comments…is participating more
  7. Blogging
  8. Twitter
  9. Attending user group meetings
  10. Volunteering at user group meetings
  11. Speaking at user group meetings
  12. Attending community events
  13. Volunteering at community events
  14. Speaking at community events
  15. PASS Summit
  16. Writing a magazine article
  17. Tech editing article/book
  18. Writing a book
  19. PASS
  20. LinkedIn
  21. List of web sites, newsletters, resources

Thought it might also be interesting to profile a few people that are prominent now, and to see if the topics cover how they made it to prominence.

Post your thoughts, and then I’ll see about doing some work!

One thought on “How to Participate in the SQL Community – Draft #1”

  1. As I read your excellent list, it seems to be very well organized in terms of starting with little involvement and progressing through more time/effort/ROI for involvement. Except, 19 (PASS) and 20 (LinkedIn) seem out of place.

    PASS should be #7 in my opinion, once you’ve started asking questions and realize that there is a community and the value of it, one should join PASS. Twitter should maybe come before blogging, since it’s less effort.

    LinkedIn is bigger than just the SQL community, and touches more on the professionalism aspect in general, so not sure where that goes, toward the end may be appropriate as it might be more of a reference.

    Other than those comments, this is an excellent list of milestones that I for one will be using to gauge my professional development. Thank you!

    Jon

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