I finally gave in to the peer pressure of social media and started tweeting and following fellow twiterers in the SQL/BI arena. The first set of questions that popped-up on my head when I made the decision to start my Twitter account were:
- What am I going to tweet about?
- Who will care about what I got to say?
- Will following too many people cause an information overload?
- Should I limit my tweets to SQL/BI only matters?
- Will I be lost with all the lingo and abbreviations as in SMS texting?
- Will I become addicted once again to something non-productive?
- If I have survived life so far without Twitter, why do I need it now?
- If I complain about not having enough time balancing work, family and professional development, how can I justify twittering?
Although, haven’t been able to answer all of these questions, I decided to bite the bullet and get on Twitter. The closing case to become part of the Twitter gang was made by Jorge Segarra @SQLChicken during a SQL Server R2 / Sharepoint 2010 presentation during the April 5th Tampa Bay SQL BI User Group meeting. Jorge’s statement about being a “legitimate business and professional tool for DBA’s” was heard by my boss as well, who I had invited to attend this particular meeting. Now I can justify my tweetering and blogging at work. Yey!
My next challenge was to justify my twittering at home. Of course, I wear the pants at home but…it is my wife who choses which ones should I wear, when and where. Her resistance was as expected and she just made me realize that I have become what I have always criticized her young sister about…a texting junkie! OK, so less twittering at home I concede. See what I talk about deciding when and where? She just knows how to keep the family harmony.
Eighty (80) tweets later within a week, tweeting as @sqljoe , I have learned a couple of things:
- Twitter feels much like those old IRC chats in which you can filter messages by sender and topic (#channels).
- Twitter is a great way to get in touch with respected SQL/BI experts such as seasoned DBAs, developers, authors and folks from Microsoft.
- Interesting to learn what other DBA’s are doing in their day to day tasks, challenges and their approach, as well as learning about the technologies they play with at their jobs.
- Twitterers and bloggers are an important part of technology marketing strategies to get the word out quickly about new products and features with minimum effort and cost, other than fine wine and limos (#sqlr2 Microsoft tweetup).
- There are SQL chefs, midnighters, chickens, sheeps, chicks, bucks, knights, doctors, m-a-chanics, soldiers, runners and of course regular joes and green handed masters.
- SQL Twitterers use the word Pimpin a lot.
- Body disposal services can be contracted through Twitter.
- SQL experts have hair feuds as well.
- Margaritas make you enjoy progress bars way too much.
- DBAs do have lives and are a good source of recommendations for places to eat.
Among other things,I think my first week on Twitter was with lack of better terms: interestingly fun, cool and informative.
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Filed under: SQL Server | Tagged: #sqlr2, #sqlserver, 2005, 2008, R2, Release 2, Server, SQL, Twitter | 2 Comments »
It is hard sometimes to take the time to acknowledge our Twitter followers and spend time getting to know them. I decided to change that a little bit and go beyond the 140 character limit and do a video conference spotlight on whomever became follower number 500th.
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