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T-SQL Tuesday – Captains Mentor and Teach

Mike Walsh — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 01:56:41 +0000

This month’s T-SQL Tuesday is being hosted by Robert Davis (@SQLSoldier on twitter) and he asked us about learning and teaching. More on the Captain Quote at the bottom.

How Do you Learn? How Do you Teach? YES

Robert asked those two questions (along with some others) to help inspire ideas for the topic. If you combine the question as one, I think yes is the perfect answer. There is a, sort of, continuum of education. First you learn. Then you do. Then you teach. And each one of those steps is still a learning exercise. I think if you ask anyone at any level who blogs about SQL Server or presents about SQL Server (yes, even a Paul, Kimberly or Kalen) you’ll find that they are constantly learning a ton through teaching.

Get Your Teach On

I mean it. After this run on sentence, stop reading for a few moments and really think about what you know – wherever your current skill set is – contemplate the knowledge you have and what you’ve learned in however long your career has been……. Ok, back? Great. So perhaps you just had a Janice Lee moment and realized you’ve been further than you thought you have. Maybe you haven’t but either way, you know something about SQL Server (or whatever skillset you are involved in, this is a SQL blog post primarily, work with me here!). Can you think of anyone who maybe doesn’t know it? Well there you go. Get your teach on. Find a medium (Blogging – I wrote a series with an interview with Brent Ozar and tips for starting a blog -, speaking, answering forum questions with an eye to help teach or just instructing someone on your team) and prepare to teach.

How Is That Learning?

If you are like most people, you are going to want to know angles about whatever lesson it is you are preparing that you aren’t familiar with. You are going to want to be prepared for some questions (you can’t prepare for them all but if you answer honestly with an “I’m not sure, let me get back to you” you just gave yourself a learning homework assignment) and you will soon know more about your topic. Then, when you are writing out that blog post or giving that presentation you’ll be further cementing your knowledge. You’ll be showing other people how to do it, you’ll see the questions they come up with and think about the topic in ways you haven’t before.

If I ever go on a cruise – I want this captain.

Teaching not only helps you learn but it is a leadership trait. It means you are swallowing pride and desiring to bring others up to your level. You can look at that in two ways -

If I share the knowledge and bring them up to speed, then I won’t be the know it all in that area. They’ll get to take some of the glory and do parts of my job, oh no!
Hey, cool. This person wants to learn about the role. I can mentor them and develop their technical skills while developing my mentoring skills. We’ll grow better as a team and I won’t have to worry when I’m on vacation, cool!

Raise your hands if you’ve ever had an inkling of position number 1 – I won’t look. Alright, I didn’t look but if you didn’t raise your hand you are either lying or you started out better than I did Once I started growing a bit in my early career my first inkling was to take road number 1. It was working with an HR person as part of an interview team that the scales were mostly removed. She talked about a tendency for folks to not go after A players because of pride, a fear of being shown up, etc. It was a good talk and her point was – Surround yourself with A players and you will always be learning, working well as a team and growing. If you are striving to grow, “getting it” and improving there will always be people further ahead of you and behind you. So what. Worry about you and hire the A player. The same goes with teaching someone else to get to where you are.

I blogged about the great learning experience I got from Andy Kelly, an early manager. I truly believe that if it weren’t for his desire to learn through teaching, I wouldn’t have the passion for SQL Server that I have today. Andy learned through teaching me and he was able to help me grow in the process. I never threatened his standing at the company. Instead, they recognized what a great leader and mentor he was. Traits that made him valuable to the company.

Back to the captain and the quote -

Being a geek, I enjoy gadgets and I stumbled across a link to wired magazine with some neat cockpit displays while deciding on a blog topic. The linked image caught my eye. What I really liked, though, was the quote from the skipper. Check it out yourself – he is talking about where the “steering” joysticks are. They aren’t on his seat but on the seats of other officers. His thoughts on this?

The port and starboard command chairs have built-in joysticks for controlling the ship,” Wright says. But those are typically operated by other officers. “Captains should be mentoring and teaching.”

It’s worth repeating – Captains should be mentoring and teaching. That’s good stuff.

In fact, Captain Wright could probably write a book about leadership and call it, “Captains Should Be Mentoring and Teaching.”. He isn’t worried about a mutiny if those junior officers grow. He knows there are a lot of ships in the sea (some may even hold celebrities like Brent Ozar or Tim Ford) and they need excellent Captains. He knows that comes through experience and training.

So – What are you going to do?

Are you going to start teaching more? Great. Do you currently blog? I’d love to read your thoughts on your blog, pretty easy to start doing it. All you have to do to teach is remember what you know, find opportunities to bring someone up to that point and improve your own knowledge in the periphery of the topic while teaching. That’s it. You can’t go wrong because you and your student are growing, even if you stink at it.

(ps. Apparently Dead Poet’s society was brought out by my memory banks from typing captain so many times. I hadn’t read Walt Whitman’s poem before the movie and I am happy that I was able to type the entire post, the few “Captains” and all without saying “O Captain my Captain!” But I felt daring, so I had to work it in here someplace. I also changed the title of this blog post because I really like Captain Wright’s simple quote.

Captains should be mentoring and teaching…

Some Related Posts

Planning To Fail (part 2) –> Helping others learn from their mistakes is a way to teach.
Made to Stick –> A great book I read that gives some usable tips for making your lessons last.
Everyone Grows or Everyone Fails –> My contribution to the professional development week at SQL University, reminder to share knowledge (AKA – Teach)
One Man’s Trash… –> I learned a lesson at the dump. It helps to have the right attitude when trying to teach something lasting.

Made To Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die – A Review

Mike Walsh — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 12:58:00 +0000

Having trouble getting your ideas accepted? I read a book that can help you. You can read the review or just go out and get the book, I recommend it. “Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die.” There is a link ‘below the fold.’

Yes, some readers got what they needed from the tweet about this post or the line above. Following one of the examples in the book, I made sure to not bury the lead. The authors at one point paint a picture related to journalism. They talk about how the good journalists give you everything you need right up front in the “lead”. If you want to read more, you can and add flesh but you don’t have to if you are busy. Sure, they may not have as many people reading to the end but everyone who reads to the end of the lead has the main point, great illustration.

Made To Stick – A Review

How did I find the book?

A friend of mine, Jon DiPietro who blogs at Domesticating IT, suggested I read this book. He runs a software business, is active as a leader in industry groups and spends a lot of time helping folks with social networking/media needs. He suggested it to help with presentations or blog content and as a fun read.

Who is the audience?

A wide audience can benefit from reading this book. A few examples could be instructors wanting to reach students; marketers wanting to entice, not annoy; presenters hoping to trigger an action; pastors wanting to leave a flock with the key thought; or non-profits wanting to convert interest into volunteers or donations. Those audiences share some goals:

They need to reach people.
(with the right message)
They need to convey a main point. (something I’ve blogged about prior to finishing this book)
They don’t want to annoy their audience away from the action item.
They want something good to come from their idea.

This is not a, “what will it take you to get into this car?!” kind of book. It borrows from urban legends, cognitive science, and teaching experience to show genuine people how to better accomplish the goals within their ideas.

What did I like best?

Stories

Each major point had real world stories of the principle in action; great examples of the concept in action in varied settings. For example, did you know how the Dr. who discovered that Ulcers were caused by H. Pylori bacteria finally got people to believe him? You will and it is fascinating (and disgusting!)

Case Studies

There were case studies asking you to compare messages for different goals. By looking at these in each chapter you clearly see the major theme of that chapter in the real world. You can actually see that you are learning as the lesson echoes in your head while you investigate the task.

Mnemonic

I’m a sucker for a good mnemonic, one that is simple, relevant, and memorable enough to use later. That friend Jon who suggested this book created a great example when he suggested internet marketers get bare - BARE (Be Authentic, Relentless and Everywhere.) In the book the Authors touch on their mnemonic in every chapter (in fact the chapter layout is arranged in this order). The device follows its starting letter with its simplicity – SUCCESs or Simple, Unexpected, Concrete, Credible, Emotional, Stories)

The Bad

This is a book that I have a hard time finding the bad in. Perhaps the fact that isn’t geared towards technical presenters/bloggers could be a turn off to some, though I believe the points are just as applicable. I suppose the only other complaint I can find is that I should re-read and better apply the lessons. Not the authors’ fault, they follow the SUCCESs pattern and hooked me, I just want to (need to?) go further with it.

I suggest that anyone who succeeds or fails based on effective communication check out the book. Be it day to day communication trying to get a point out to your team or management or if you are trying to make sure people leave a technical presentation with some important concepts understood this book should help. You can get “Made To Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die” on Amazon for about $17 new at the time of this post’s writing. The authors (Chip and Dan Heath) also blog at HeathBrothers.Com

Update

I want to thank Jeremiah Peschka and Brent Ozar for some recent blog posts on writing. This post was written a couple months ago and scheduled. After re-reading some of the concepts in this book and the above linked posts from Jeremiah and Brent, a lot of words were trimmed from this post and the heading was trimmed. Thanks, gentlemen! Great timing also with their posts and the PASS call for speakers opening soon. This book will help me prepare my abstract and, if selected, sessions.

Blogging Tips Interview With Brent Ozar

Mike Walsh — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 16:15:00 +0000

Welcome to the final post in my series on metablogging topics. We started with a post on my site called “Why Should I Blog?“, which went live the same time as the first part of the below video interview with Brent Ozar. That first video interview went live on Brent Ozar’s Blog.The text series finished up here with the second post, “How Should I Blog?” on my site.

Today – there isn’t much reading to do, just some watching and listening (well maybe you should just listen). This video is about 16 minutes long and it discusses some tips and tricks around blogging and Brent’s experiences with blogging. Some links related to what we discussed are below the video.

[See post to watch Flash video]

Here are some of the links we referenced or discussed in the interview:

The first post in Brent’s Blog Better Week tips

Brent’s tips for syndicated bloggers

SQLServerPedia - Syndicated blogs & SQL Server Articles

Wendy_Dance on twitter had the tweet on the back of that t-shirt Brent was wearing (aren’t you glad he kept it on??)

Brent mentioned google alerts

Problogger book about blogging your way to a six figure income

Problogger’s blog series on 31 days to improve your blog

K. Brian Kelley‘s guest post about conciseness on my blog

Some of the easy to setup (but with drawbacks around lack of control) blogs: Blogger|WordPress.com

WordPress of the variety used here (and by Brent)

Hostgator - the hosting company I use. I get no money for endorsement but I have been satisfied for the past few months of working with them. Very satisfied.

That WordPress database backup plugin

Speaking of backups. Jeff atwood has been beat up a lot and learned some good lessons, so I mean no harm but Jon Dipietro blogged about the backup lessons learned from watching the horror.

WP-Super-Cache – make your WordPress blog a bit faster – free plugin

That’s a Wrap

So that ends the series this week. Go back through and read the other posts if you want motivation on why to blog or some tips and tricks on how to blog. The links are up top. I’ll have that couple post series on how I setup my WordPress blog and hosting in early January. Subscribe to my RSS feed to stay updated there, if you want. If you have a burning question before then, ask away. Ask down in the comments or I’m Mike_Walsh on twitter. If I don’t have the answer someone will.

How Should I Blog?

Mike Walsh — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 15:15:00 +0000

Welcome to Part 2 of our walk through some “metablogging” topics. In the first part (Why Should I Blog?, we covered some of the basics from my experience with a year of blogging done. The main goal was to encourage you to share in a blog if it’s something you have been considering. Part 0 was the first of a two-part interview with Brent Ozar about these topics. The second part of the video is available here.

Today we’ll talk about some tips and tricks I’ve picked up from others or experienced with this technical blog. Maybe they’ll help you. I’ll also talk about my experiences with Squarespace and WordPress for blogging.

Why Bother With Technical or SEO Tips?

As I discussed in Part 1, my primary motivation in blogging is to help share knowledge. Whether it be a SQL Server tip, some professional development advice or pet peeves that I encounter, the purpose is always to be helpful.

To that end, I want folks to find the content – I want there to be an audience. Not for some narcissistic or financial reason. I just want to engage others and learn with them. So, I like to know how to make sure I am reaching a wide range of people.

A thought occurs to me as I write the above – Content is key. Search engine optimization, link sharing, etc. won’t do you a world of good if you don’t have content. I have posts that bombed, some good initial hits and then nothing. The initial hits were because of feed readers, tweets, trackbacks, etc. Content reigns supreme, though. Take the tips below as something to add on top of content. Don’t take them as expert advice either, just some reflections of lessons I have learned this first year blogging.

Have some more tips? Disagree? Let us know, I am sure folks would appreciate your advice in the comments or a post of your own that tracks back here so people can find your blog as well.

Some Tips I’ve Used This Year

Want folks to link to you? Link to them.

I don’t mean run some sort of extortion game but technical blogging to a community of users should emphasize community. Why are you blogging? If it’s to gain and share knowledge, who cares if a link drives folks to a different perspective or even a better source. Perhaps your reader wouldn’t have found the information without that link.

A new piece of advice I recently received makes sense. Make your links search engine friendly. In the past when sharing a link, I tried to get their twitter handle and blog out there. I would do it this way, “Mike Walsh (Blog|Twitter)” with each being a link. The problem?

Anchor Text – not a lot of contextual information in the link – Search engines have complex formulas to weigh links and a more descriptive link will help their engines see the relevance and add appropriate weight.

For example: That tip came from my friend, Jon DiPietro (JonDiPietro on twitter), who blogs about social networking tips at Domesticating IT. <– Those links are more meaningful to a search engine. Yes you may go there now to learn about Jon, but the search engines will treat those links differently (well they would if I was a much larger blog :-0 baby steps)

Don’t kick people off your site when they follow a link!

Sure what browser doesn’t support “open this link in a new tab” functionality right now. Most people take advantage of that but why risk it? When creating a link, most blogging tools out there allow you to configure the link with an option of “Open Link in New Window”. There is probably a balance and I can see a flip side of the argument – “I’m an adult, I will know to open in new tab or window if I want to”. So if you have a link early on and someone clicks links like I do in wikipedia, consider pointing to a new tab to keep your content up there. But again, grabbing attention with good content beats this.

Participate in Tag-Fest “meme” posts, Quizes and Blog Parties

One of my most widely hit posts was when I started a SQL Quiz asking folks to chime in on Things that they know now that they wish they did when they started. I tagged a few people and it took off from there. At last count there were at least 30 responses that I had collected here. All of the posts were great reading, the community learned from the posts and it helped get me a bit more onto people’s radar screens as I was just starting out. Just recently I wrote a post for Adam Machanic’s “blog party” about T-SQL Datetime tips or tricks. One more avenue to help someone and at the same time I get to learn about other blogs and folks learn about this one. Don’t do it for the links, do it for the community and your own growth but enjoy seeing the extra hits and page views you get. It’s okay.

Use the heading tags to reinforce the theme and message

Most blogging software allows you to classify text as normal, H2, H3, etc. When you start a new thought, categorize it with an official heading format. The heading tags are given different or more weight in search engines. Drive home a point in a heading tag or introduce a theme or concept with them. I use H2 to drive a major point and H3 to drive sub points like the “Use the heading tags…” above this normal text.

Use Trackbacks – Good for you, good for them.

If I am writing something relevant to someone else’s post, I should provide a trackback to their content. This allows their readers to come back here to see a continuation or alternative view. Accept trackbacks and don’t delete those trackback comments that pop up on a post. It helps your readers find relevant information. It doesn’t necessarily provide better linking out of the gate in a lot of platforms. Because of spam most trackback or ping links are tagged as nofollow or noindex by blogging platforms. There are plugins to undo this behavior. Not a bad idea to look into doing if you control spam tightly. Why not give someone writing good, related content the bonus from a link? (side thought: With a blogging technical community, that should be the motivation, I think – building the community as a whole. That way when someone bumps into an issue and does a search for help, they can find the right help and links to alternate points.)

Track your progress

Get a Google Analytics account setup. It’s easy to follow the instructions once you get your account going. You verify your site and then the Analytics engine tracks visitors to your site. You can see what content is popular, what search engine traffic is driving visitors and how you are doing over time. Why? You can see what is working and what isn’t. You can see what posts are loved and which ones aren’t. From there you can ask yourself the why question and learn from your missteps. Brent Ozar just recently blogged about finding buried treasure in Google Analytics.

Announce your blog posts to the audience.

Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and other such sites are popular gathering spots for people. If you are a part of your technical community of users on these sites, people want to hear about your posts. They may not hit all of them, but tell them about your posts and they’ll click the link if they need or want that info. Now don’t spam the community, be a part of it and participate in the conversation, the blog posts are a bonus. You can even post a second or third follow-up, lots of time zones involved but don’t flood and bore people with your blog posts. There are plugins for this in WordPress, like pingpress.

What other tips have I discovered to help my blog?

First off. Learn From Successful People

Check out the related/referenced links at the bottom. Learn from those bloggers, learn from the links they provide.

Description meta tags

One flaw in the tool I use to blog with currently just switched from is it is impossible to change these for a blog post. As Brent said in his Blog Better week post on SEO, this is a big help to folks finding your content on the search engines. If you don’t provide a description tag, the particular search engine will generate a description for you from the content and it likely won’t sound that appealing since it doesn’t seem to follow a pattern of where it grabs the data. (This doesn’t increase your position or ranking – It helps explain your point in 1-2 sentences to the person searching for something)

Encourage people to subscribe to your RSS feed

I personally get most of my blogging content through feeds. I have an extensive subscription list in Google Reader and I check it at least once a day. I don’t have time to browse to every blog post out there in a web browser. That being said, when reading a new post I find from a link, I get busy and don’t always remember to click subscribe on a new blog that seems interesting. Every once in a while, a link to your feed in a post is a good reminder of the feed.

Make your blog titles to the point and to the user looking for info

I should read the book Brent suggests in one of his posts I linked above (“Strunk & White’s Guide to Style”). My writing style is informal and mostly a glimpse inside the ongoing monologue into my head. Not quite stream of consciousness but close. It works for me and it works for some posts.

It doesn’t work so well when picking titles, though. Titles show up in search engines. Titles show up in feed readers. The person reading the title scrolling through is making a very quick decision – do I read the first paragraph? Do I skim? Do I ignore it?

Shorter titles that get to the point are great. Also think of how people are searching for information, think about the point you are trying to make and match up a title. For this post, I started with “SQL Server Blogging Tips and Tricks (Part 2)” That didn’t follow these principles. The chosen title helps convey the message, is short and goes along with the first part, “Why Should I Blog?”

Simplification/Multi Parts

A post I was quite excited about didn’t get a ton of hits and I missed the point with title advice and trying to be concise. The post was my “Benchmarking, Who Needs It?” article. The major point I was excited about was using the Performance Analysis For Logs (PAL) tool. The second point was why Benchmarking is important. I should have done that in two posts. One on the tool as a how to and a second one on the benefits of benchmarking, linking to that how to.

Involve the readers more

Lately, I have been asking for input/questions/etc in comments or e-mails towards the end of my posts. I don’t want to be dictating things to folks here. I don’t want to be talking at you but I want this to be a form of a dialog where we can interact. I want to hear the readers opinions and experiences. It will help me learn and I am sure it will help the other readers. To that end, I am going to see how to involve my readers more in the content. I welcome any suggestions

Squarespace vs. WordPress

There are other blog providers out there but these are the two that I have experience with. I started this site on Squarespace as my first blog before I tried wordpress for some personal blogs. When I started writing this series it was on Squarespace still, I changed it the weekend before this went live.

Why I originally chose Squarespace

I selected Squarespace initially because the reviews looked good. It looked easy for a non “web guy” like myself and it seemed like I could get off the ground quick. No messing with hosting (it is a content management system and host all in one, with a simple pricing structure and tiers).

I liked the demo and liked the styles available then.

Why I like Squarespace

One price handles everything (content, hosting, etc.)

Great and fast support

Good uptime

It was really easy to get going to this non-web guy

Search engine traffic has been decent

They have their own really neat analytics overview that shows real time info on visitors. I hardly have to visit the Google Analytics site for this blog, I can quickly see new referrers/etc. (Though my hosting company uses awstats which looks also close now, come to think of it)

In Walks WordPress

I played with WordPress for a couple personal sites and I was instantly impressed with how simple it was. I used hostgator to host my blog on a linux server for about $8/month. From their site, I was able to use a wizard to build and configure a WordPress blog in about 20 minutes. I have gone through the process to switch over to this WordPress site and like it better for my needs (no hard feelings to the good folks at Squarespace! I think for a business site, forum, etc. their content management software is excellent. I think it is just a bit overkill for my needs). Why?

Tons of great widgets

I can change the meta description tags with a widget like the All in one SEO widget

Easier for commenters to add comments

Lots more themes to choose from and easy to switch them to see how they look

More control over content, like ability to stream my own video or podcasts easier than I can here.

You name the need there is a plugin for it. Not so with Squarespace.

Want to watch me switch to WordPress?

I will be posting a series of posts soon showing how I set up my WordPress site and how I migrated to it. This will probably go live at some point in January and I’ll add some links here when it happens. The Outline will look something like this:

Starting a Blog From Scratch

Picking a Host and getting setup

Installing/Configuring WordPress

Getting some of the basic plugins that “everyone should have” from what folks I trust seem to say

Getting some posts out, scheduling and tweaking things.

Other misc WordPress tips I’ve found as a n00b.

Migrating from an existing Blog to WordPress

Archiving/Exporting (using my squarespace example)

Importing

Setting up Redirects for permalinks

Tags/Categories

Patience

Referenced & Related Posts

Brent Ozar – Started a series on his “Blog Better Week” tips. Check out the first post on How to build your blogging momentum and then have fun reading the follow-on posts linked together.

Problogger – Subtitled about helping you make money blogging, this site still offers a lot of great tips to someone thinking about blogging.

Problogger – One of their post series was on 31 days of tips to improve your blog. Good tips.

Jon Dipietro at Domesticating IT – Jon has given me some great tips about blogging personally. He’s helped organizations better harness social networking and blogging. He blogs about a wide range of topics but touches on social networking and blogging a lot.

Andy Leonard – Proving that timing is everything, another great post from Andy just went up at his blog on sqlblog.com. This post, Blog (Durnit!), Getting Started, has some great tips also.

You – If you are thinking about starting a blog and are going for it, I really want to hear from you. I will subscribe to your blog so you’ll automatically show up on my blogroll, I will also post a follow up to this in January with the folks who recently started blogging or are checking out tips from any of the blogs referenced this week.

Tag you’re it!

Do you blog? Are you reading this series? Consider yourself tagged. I’d love to hear your thoughts on the why and how about your experiences. I am sure folks would like to hear your thoughts to someone considering starting.

Why Should I Blog?

Mike Walsh — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 16:14:00 +0000

Why do I blog? What do I get out of blogging? What have I learned along the way and why should you blog? As the year wraps up and my first full year of blogging ends, I wanted to share some of the lessons I’ve learned, some pointers to advice I’ve gotten and really just encourage you to start blogging.

This is part 1 of a 4 part series.

Part 0 The first part of a video chat with Brent Ozar - Hosted over at Brent’s place. Brent blogs at BrentOzar.com, edits SQLServerPedia and is quite the active twitterer as @BrentO. His blog helped inspire me to get blogging and we’ll talk about his experience with blogging and extract some advice and lessons. Might even throw in some humor (other than you looking at us, which really is funny by itself, no?) Much of which he and I talk about about comes from posts of his in his blogging category.

Part 1 – “Why Should I blog?” – You are here, so read along and you’ll see the point.

Part 2 - “How do I blog?” – Some tips and tricks that I have learned as I started and continue this journey, perhaps it might help you.

Part 3 – “Interview with Brent Ozar – Part 2″ – The second part of the video chat with Brent, hosted on my blog this time.

Subscribe to my feedburner feed in your favorite RSS reader to get notified of the pending posts and the second half of the video interview. You will also catch a couple posts I am working on for the end of December or beginning of January that will detail the steps I am going through as I move this blog to a WordPress platform including some of the steps I first took.

Why Did I Start Blogging?

I was toying with the idea of blogging for a couple of years before I started. I enjoy sharing knowledge, learning through teaching and thought I could at least give it a shot… BUT… Each time I thought of it I backed down. Perhaps I was afraid of not being an expert among experts, perhaps afraid of falling flat on my face and wasting time (mine or yours). Finally at the end of 2008, I convinced myself those weren’t good excuses and started on the assumption, “what do I have to lose?”

Those were my primary motivations, teaching, sharing and learning. Add to them the fact that I enjoy writing (still working on being more concise) and enjoy “teachable opportunities” when they come up. In my day job, I like sharing knowledge and watching someone else grow. When answering the occasional newsgroup, forum or coworker question, I like to try and answer some of the question beneath the asked question. What better extension to this than blogging?

Why Do I Still Blog?

I dove in last December and started this blog because of the above. Why did I continue? Why do I continue, and plan on continuing? A few reasons:

It’s fun -> I enjoy it. I enjoy looking at “lowlights” at work with the lens of, “hey! that would make an interesting blog topic!”

I haven’t been told to stop -> I am no Brent Ozar, Paul Randal, Steve Jones, etc. who all blog regularly. Even still, I haven’t been told to stop. In fact I’ve been surprised that some posts were picked up in the various newsletters or in weekly link roundups from other, more established, bloggers among some really awesome posts that taught me a lot.

I’ve helped people -> From some comments, contacts on the contact us page or in person “hey thanks!” kind of situations I’ve realized that I am helping folks. I see search engine traffic that seems to indicate relevant posts were found in web searches from people having problems. It feels good to know that someone might not go through the same pain I did trying to figure a problem out.

I’ve learned -> We’ll talk about that in a minute but through wanting to be accurate in my posts, I’ve learned – always increasing my own knowledge while sharing.

It feels good to give back -> For 10 years now I’ve gained a lot of knowledge from other bloggers, presenters and authors. I’ve grown my own career to a solid core (always growing and always realizing I know less than I thought I di.) I can hold my own and feel comfortable going in as a subject matter expert to a firm having serious trouble with SQL Server. This is in large part because of the free learning and tips/tricks provided to me by the SQL Community. My original fear of not being helpful was looking at the wrong perspective: I was afraid of trying to write to the Paul Randal, Kalen Delaney, Adam Machanic, Andy Kelly, etc audience. What a mistake! They are in the minority, that’s why we turn to them. There are far more folks like me (10 years, finally at the stage of admitting how little you know) and a lot more folks just starting out in the field. That is the audience I am giving to. Sure, some posts may apply to the hyperexperts in the field and that would be humbling if it ever happens, but there is a wide audience out there.

Learning Through Teaching

It has been my experience that the people who say you learn through teaching are not dead accurate. If you were to draw a lifecycle of learning I think it would look something like learning –> understanding –> using –> “really understanding” –> Teaching –> understanding even more and then it goes back to Learning as you go the next level or skill.

Every time I teach something to someone, be it training a new hire, teaching a custom course to a client, mentoring development or administration staff or writing a blog post, I learn even more. Why?

I don’t want to present inaccurate information. I want to have answers to some of the potential questions that could get asked and I want to go a bit deeper with the “how and why” behind the initial “how and why” (I’ve talked about that in some of my other posts. I have a hard time just knowing something is because it is, I like going to the next level and reducing things to their quarks, leptons and strings – or beyond… That’s why a simple wikipedia trip ends up with 30 browser tabs open)

Talk about a huge motivator for blogging. Every time I write a post (be it a technical how to or a professional development minded lesson from life), I learn something new. Sometimes I learn about a nuance of SQL Server. Sometimes I learn a new way to apply a better professional or personal trait to life or my job.

Problems Become Opportunities

I could be sitting through a crisis with no end in sight looking for motivation. Now before I blogged, the motivation was “solving the problem” and that is a great motivation. It still motivates me, I love being a part of a winning team and love the feeling when you kick a problem into last week. Now, I have one more motivation in a bad situation – “Oooh! I can blog about this!” Maybe it’s a technical challenge that will help someone. Maybe it’s something stupid I did. Maybe it’s a really bad example of how to run a project or “plan” for something. I have a running e-mail conversation with myself in my e-mail account called “Blog Fodder”. When I think of something I shoot myself an e-mail so I don’t forget about it and get it out there if I think it will give value to someone, somewhere.

IF ‘me’ THEN ‘you’ ELSE ‘no one’

If you haven’t caught on to the theme above, it’s simple: I want to encourage you to blog also. The primary audience on my blog is SQL Server knowledge but this applies to you no matter what technical knowledge you have. If you have experience doing something, have used your skill set in some manner to solve some problem then you may have information that someone else needs. I am updating this post today because I was reading a great Andy Leonard post, “Blog Durnit!” Andy blogs over at SQLBlog.com and one of his pearls if wisdom in that post applies here, “Come on. Seriously? If you think, you can blog.”

I am not a SQL Server MVP. I don’t have my name on any books. I still manage to find a modest audience that I can share my experience and knowledge with. I know you can also so if you have been thinking about doing it, stop thinking about it and DO it.

Now don’t go into it for the wrong motives. Don’t go into it looking to make gobs of money (you won’t and why would I want to read your content if your primary motivation is making money?). Don’t go into it looking to spend 3-5 minutes copying and pasting something from Books Online. Go into it hoping to share some useful information with someone looking for that information. Do that and you’ll do just fine.

An Invitation (Guest Posting)

It’s easy. If you don’t want to go through the steps to setup a domain or even just get a blogging account on one of the free blog sites, you are welcome to try your hand here and add a guest post. If you setup your own blog someday, have a twitter handle, etc. we can get it linked back to your own blog and twitter profile. In fact, if you are an established blogger and ever want to do a guest post here or get some guest posters, leave a comment and let folks know how to reach you. Link to your blog and I’ll post a follow up linking back to you for people thinking of blogging. I’ll link that post here also.

A disclaimer: I am not the most widely read blog out there (In this first year of blogging I have had just over 20k unique views and just shy of 40k total page views). For people reading on feed readers, feedburner tells me I’ve averaged around 40 subscribers since starting the feed in February (the trend is around 60-70 lately) and on the Syndicated feed with SQLServerPedia, Feedburner tells me I’ve had 25k feed views (Compare that to the 5k views on the main feed.. Talk about increasing audience through SQLServerPedia syndication!). These are small potatoes compared to many of the SQL legends out there but you’ll get an audience of some sort and it’s a smaller, more intimate crowd for now

Now before you accept that invite to write a guest post here,go see how easy it is to get started for free. Go to WordPress (the .com variety for now) or Blogger and sign up for a free account. Think of a blog name and use a free blog to get started if you prefer. I don’t care how you get there, just get there soon.

I know there are folks who would review your post if you want. Brent and I discuss this in our interview also.

If you decide to start blogging, be sure to add a comment here with a link to your blog. I’d love to check it out!

Referenced & Related Posts

Andy Leonard (Andy Leonard on Twitter) – Offers more motivation on blogging.

Brent Ozar – Started a whole series on his “Blog Better Week” tips. Check out the first post on How to build your blogging momentum and then have fun reading the follow-on posts linked together.

Problogger – Subtitled about helping you make money blogging, this site still offers a lot of great tips to someone thinking about blogging.

Problogger – One of their post series was on 31 days of tips to improve your blog. They also sell a workbook called 31 days to improve your blog. I haven’t used the workbook but I have used the tips in the first link. Good stuff.

DomesticatingIT – A good blog with a wide range of IT and marketing topics but a consistent focus on Social Networking. A good post about Social Media Strategies Laid Bare can apply to our blogging, also.

This Blogs Feed – Using a feed reader is a great way to get updated of blog content. The next posts in this series will show up there as they are posted.

StraightPath Consulting's SQL Server Blog » metablogging

T-SQL Tuesday – Captains Mentor and Teach

How Do you Learn? How Do you Teach? YES

Get Your Teach On

Made To Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die – A Review

Made To Stick – A Review

How did I find the book?

Who is the audience?

What did I like best?

The Bad

Recommended

Update

Blogging Tips Interview With Brent Ozar

That’s a Wrap

How Should I Blog?

Why Bother With Technical or SEO Tips?

Some Tips I’ve Used This Year

Want folks to link to you? Link to them.

Don’t kick people off your site when they follow a link!

Participate in Tag-Fest “meme” posts, Quizes and Blog Parties

Use the heading tags to reinforce the theme and message

Use Trackbacks – Good for you, good for them.

Track your progress

Announce your blog posts to the audience.

What other tips have I discovered to help my blog?

First off. Learn From Successful People

Description meta tags

Encourage people to subscribe to your RSS feed

Make your blog titles to the point and to the user looking for info

Simplification/Multi Parts

Involve the readers more

Squarespace vs. WordPress

Want to watch me switch to WordPress?

Referenced & Related Posts

Tag you’re it!

Why Should I Blog?

Why Did I Start Blogging?

Why Do I Still Blog?

Learning Through Teaching

Problems Become Opportunities

IF ‘me’ THEN ‘you’ ELSE ‘no one’

An Invitation (Guest Posting)

Referenced & Related Posts