DevOps Is About Communication

DevOps
I spend a lot of time showing how to use tools to automate database deployments in support of DevOps. However, the one message that I always try to deliver with DevOps is that it's fundamentally not about the tools. No, the single most important thing in DevOps is communication. Therefore, the single most important thing in DevOps is people. People Are Good Are there evil people in the world? Unfortunately, yes. Can even good and decent people do evil? Again, unfortunately, yes. However, most people, most of the time, are trying to do the right thing. I would say that you need to arrive at this position first in order to implement a DevOps solution effectively. You can't be all "Developers are EVIL" or "DBAs are mean" or "My SAN…
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Where Do We Go To Share?

Misc
No one reads blogs any more. Twitter is dying. Facebook is broken. LinkedIn? Please. G+. Is that even on any more? Where do we go to share? I'm seeing it here on this blog. Traffic is down. Not just day-to-day traffic, but the search hits. That could just be that I'm producing crap content or stuff that no one is interested in. However, Twitter isn't growing like it once was and there are many reports that it's shrinking. Facebook is running into problems. So... Where the heck are people going? How do we continue to share without a relatively common communication tool? I know there's some push for Yammer. However, lots of people hate it. Slack and slack channels get a little traction, but to a degree this is just another type of…
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Communication and the Board: #PASSVotes

PASS
The whole idea behind PASS is to build a community of people who can assist each other in their daily work lives. PASS succeeds at that wonderfully. Further, PASS, the organization, tries extremely hard to let you know what it's doing and how it's doing things. You can read the PASS Blog to get all sorts of good information. One of my recent favorites was this great summary of how the Summit speaker selection process was run. I think it's a positive thing that the organization is so open. I intend to take it one more step. If I get elected (huge "if"), I'm going to make a point of blogging about, well, the stuff I end up doing. No, I'm not going to be the official mouth-piece for the organization,…
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Getting the Word Out

Professional Development
A discussion that I've frequently had with organizers of SQL Saturday events, our own people here at Red Gate, authors, MVPs, pretty much anyone interested enough to listen for a few minutes, is summed up by "How do we get the word out about the opportunities that the SQL Server community offers?" The question always comes down to, how do we reach people? We tweet. There's a Facebook page. Discussions are hosted on LinkedIn. Emails are sent out to various distribution lists. Advertising is done on SQL Server Central (with over one million registrants, what else do you have to do?). And yet, at events, I'll ask, who has heard of PASS and will only get a 50% positive response. Heck, I'll never forget that at the Charlotte SQL in…
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