{"id":5239,"date":"2022-11-26T16:57:42","date_gmt":"2022-11-27T00:57:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sqlskills.com\/blogs\/paul\/?p=5239"},"modified":"2022-11-26T16:57:42","modified_gmt":"2022-11-27T00:57:42","slug":"the-curious-case-of-community","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sqlskills.com\/blogs\/paul\/the-curious-case-of-community\/","title":{"rendered":"The Curious Case of… community"},"content":{"rendered":"

(The Curious Case of\u2026<\/em>\u00a0used to be part of our bi-weekly\u00a0newsletter<\/a>\u00a0but we decided to make it a\u00a0regular blog post instead so it can sometimes be more frequent. It covers something interesting one of us encountered when working with a client, doing some testing, or were asked in a random question from the community.)<\/p>\n

(This one’s from both Kimberly and I…)<\/p>\n

I think SQL Family is one of the best tech communities out there. It’s inclusive, it’s diverse, it’s tolerant, it’s vibrant, it spans the globe. It’s open to anyone. And you’re part of it if you choose to be.<\/p>\n

But is it as welcoming as we like to think? Not to everyone.<\/p>\n

With Kimberly\u2019s PASS Community Keynote Survey (some of you completed this from the last newsletter), her subsequent keynote at PASS, and now \u2013 additional emails and DMs we\u2019ve both received, we have heard from a few that do not feel as warm and welcomed to our SQL community. I received an interesting email from someone after PASS saying that he felt he was on the outside of SQL Family looking in, and after posting some thoughts on Twitter yesterday evening, I heard from others with similar sentiments.<\/p>\n

I suspect there’s a feeling among some people that SQL Family is kind of a cool kids club; a bit of a clique made up of well-known people like us and others and that there’s a high bar to enter and be recognized. I can imagine how that feeling happens. A lot of us well-known speakers know each other well, so we tend to hang out with each other at events and conferences. But we’re only well-known because we teach, speak, blog, tweet a lot. Big deal. We’re just normal people like everyone else, we just happen to be a bit well-known in our tech community. We all put our pants on the same way. We all started with zero knowledge of SQL Server.<\/p>\n

But I understand that it can be intimidating walking up to someone well-known to just say hi, or thanks, or ask a question. Especially if there’s a group of us standing or sitting together. And a lot of people in IT are shy, or introverted, or uncomfortable in social situations. I’m a *colossal* introvert, I’m just good at playing an extrovert for a while. Week-long conferences like PASS leave me physically drained.<\/p>\n

There’s no entry requirement to being part of SQL Family. If you want to be part of it, you’re part of it. If you feel like that’s not the case, participate. Engage on Twitter. Post a question on #sqlhelp. Write a blog post and publicize it using #sqlserver. Write a comment on someone’s blog post. Go to a user group meeting; more importantly, go regularly! Heck, send me a tweet or an email – I’ll reply. Next time you’re at an event prepare a few ice-breaking questions that you can ask to someone well-known or just say something simple like ‘I just want to say thanks for X’.<\/p>\n

It really pains me when I hear that someone was too scared to come up and say hi. I’m very approachable, as are all the other speakers I know, and I make a point to never ignore someone and I always chat to random people at whatever lunch table I sit at. I know others do the same.<\/p>\n

Having said that, some of the survey comments are hard to directly<\/em> address. But, we suspect it\u2019s similar. Possibly introverts that don\u2019t have the desire to interrupt or join a conversation but really want to participate. Here are a few of the comments from the survey along with some direct responses from both of us:<\/p>\n