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That is right Dear Reader, I am making the jump, Starting
Monday February 6th I will be a Sr. Consultant with Pragmatic Works. Over the last year I've gotten to know quite
a few of the people that work with Pragmatic Works. As a company and as individuals they are
staples of the SQL Server Community. If
you've been to a SQL Saturday, SQL Rally, 24 Hours of PASS, SQL PASS Summit, or
countless other SQL related gatherings you have undoubtedly come across someone
from Pragmatic Works.
"So Balls," you say, "Sr.
Consultant does this mean you're no longer a DBA? Are you now jumping ship to become a Business
Intelligence guy?"
No worries Dear Reader, even though DBA isn't in my official
title I'll be up to my elbows in all kinds of DBA goodness! A big part of what I'll be doing is working
with other DBA's and clients with DBA issues.
Now let's jump right in.
START WITH WHY
Brian Knight(@BrianKnight|Blog) has
written about Why he started Pragmatic Works, read Community
Manifesto at Pragmatic Works, but the real question is Why would I join
Pragmatic.
I mentioned Simon Sinek (@Simonsinek |Website) yesterday. I was introduced to him by my now fellow
Co-worker Tom Brenneman (@TomBrenneman). If you haven't watched Simon's How Great
Leaders Inspire Action TED Talk, take a
break click
on the link here. I'll be here when
you get back. It's good stuff. Heck it's amazing. If you're like me when you watched it your
mind was exploding with ideas and possibilities afterwards. Take a deep breath, now back to your
regularly scheduled blogging.
"So Balls,"
you say "What's your Why?"
You are on your game today Dear Reader. I believe at our core we as people all have
something that we want to fundamentally believe in. Along the way of life I
picked up a simple oath, "To Believe in the Life of Love, To Walk in the Way
of Honor, To Serve In the Light of Truth.
This is the Life, the Way, and the Light". Simple words, but I found I believe in
them. I believe in Love, Truth, and
Honor. When we were kids there were
things that we wanted to do, not because of a paycheck, not to get ahead, but
the things WE believed in. We believed in those things so fiercely that
they shaped what we wanted to become.
I found that I really liked working with Computers, and so
that became my major in college (eventually),
and that was the field I went into (eventually). It's a little hard to draw a parallel there. At the best of times I like my computer, at
most I'm happy with it, I certainly don't love it.
What I found was I enjoyed
learning, and I was in the right field for it.
Heck I didn't just enjoy it, I found I loved it! Later I got to mentor and work with
others. When I saw them grow and learn
it filled me with a sense of pride, but never so much that I didn't hold dear
to the idea that I always have more to learn. Eventually I got to the point where I would
learn on a topic and I would get to educate others on it. That led me to begin presenting on topics
internally for the places where I worked and to the people I worked with. Then last year I started presenting to the
community, I started blogging, I started volunteering, and most importantly I
stated participating.
Doing so I started finding things that I really loved. I love speaking, I know I'm weird but I like
getting up in front of a room and talking about something technical. I love teaching. Jumping in to situations where I don't know a
lot about an environment and I'm learning on the fly to overcome a critical
system outage, almost as fun as white water rafting. There is a certain Truth to unabashedly
teaching, to not withholding information.
When I've worked for a place I've taken great efforts to make sure that
when I leave they know what I know, documentation, information, scripts, you
name it I want them to have it. If I
have to keep something from you in order to seem important, then what I'm doing
is wrong. In our business Ideas are important,
but recognizing that People have to think them, and that People are more
important is critical. And finally if
you act with Love and Truth towards others, there is no way that you cannot be perceived
as Honorable.
So Why am I going to work for Pragmatic Works? Because I see a company that believes in
empowering people through education and technology. I see a Company that uses the Pragmatic Works Foundation to train the
unemployed and helps Veterans transition to technology jobs after they leave
the service. And not only do they help
train people, but they hold recruiting fairs, they work actively to place
people. To top it all off they started
doing this during the HEIGHT of the Recession, when our economy was at its
worst. When profits were at an all time
low for others, Pragmatic was giving away two free seats in each of its training
sessions to an unemployed technology professional. I see a company that not only believes in the
SQL Community but actively encourages it's employees, and offers incentives,
for them to participate.
In short my Why is because I believe in Love, Truth, and
Honor. And I believe in what Pragmatic
Works is doing as a company, and I'm very excited to participate.
WHO BETTER TO LEARN
FROM
I attended the
Pre-con that Pragmatic Works did for SQL Rally. I have sat in their presentations, and I have
learned from them. They are SQL MVP's
they are Instructors for the SSAS Maestro Course that is as close to a Business
Intelligence MCM that Microsoft Currently has.
If you were going to learn about SSIS you would be hard pressed to find
people more qualified than Brian Knight, Mike Davis (@MikeDavisSQL|Blog), and Devin Knight (@Knight_Devin|Blog). From a DBA perspective there are top notch
SQL guys like MVP Jorge Segarra(@SQLChicken|Blog), Gareth Swanepoel(@GarethSwan|Blog), and Chad Churchwell(@ChadChurchwell|Blog).
If SSAS is your bag then I would point you no further than Mr. Adam
Jorgensen(@adam_jorgensen|Blog).
I cannot say enough good things about this team, and there
are many more amazing MVP's and MVP caliber people that I haven't listed. At Pragmatic I will learn How to be the
absolutely best technology specialist I can be throughout a wide range of
Microsoft technologies.
Throughout all that learning I'll be Consulting, Teaching,
Presenting, and Blogging. I'm very
excited to get started, and I hope you will come along as I explore this next
phase of my career. Until next time Dear
Reader.
Thanks Again,
Brad