A little over 5 years ago, Adam Machanic (B|T) had this great idea of getting everyone in the SQL Community to all blog about a specific topic on the second Tuesday of the month. This monthly “blogging party” has a host, aka party organizer, that decides the theme. It has evolved: it goes by the name “T-SQL Tuesday”, it has its own Twitter hashtag (#TSQL2sDay), and monthly we are seeing more and more people joining in. For some people, this has become what draws them out of their shell to write something on their blog at all. This month starts the 6th year, and I want to thank Adam for giving this to our community.

This month, I’m the party organizer, and the theme that I had selected was Giving Back. Specifically, I asked:

In “The Spirit of Giving”, I want to know how you plan on Giving Back to the SQL Community during the coming year. Are you going to start speaking at your local user group? Speak at your local SQL Saturday? Perhaps step up and help run your local user group? Do you want to start becoming an active blogger – or increase your blogging? Do you plan on volunteering your time with larger organizations (such as PASS), so that SQL Training can occur at a larger level?

In order to decide how you want to improve, you need to take stock of what you’re currently doing. During 2014, I have (or will have) spoken at 12 SQL Saturdays across the United States (mostly in the East), where I’ve presented 16 sessions and I’ve co-presented 6 workshops (aka precons). Additionally, I’ve presented to three SQL User groups. Locally, I arrange the speakers for my local user group in Richmond, VA and I was a co-organizer for our SQL Saturday in March. For the PASS Summit, I served on the PowerPoint review committee. As far as writing goes, I’ve only blogged 16 posts on my blog, with 5 more on my work blog and 2 articles published at SQLServerCentral. And I just haven’t had the time to help out with online forums.

I’m happy with an average of 1 SQL Saturday per month. However, I really enjoy presenting, and I want to do more. What is missing here is presenting outside of PASS. Furthermore, I’d like to present internationally, though this does need to be at an English speaking location. I have plans for participating in SQL Summer Camp in June in Nova Scotia. And I’d like to present again at the PASS Summit.

Another area that is missing is giving back to user groups – I was shocked to see that I only presented at 3 during this year. I want to do better in this area during the upcoming year.

So, how I plan to Give Back to the SQL community during the coming year are:

Present to at least 1 SQL Saturday per month (average).

Post at least 1 blog post per month (outside of T-SQL Tuesday blog posts or my work blog).

Present at one non-PASS conference.

Submit to present to international conferences (SQL Bits, SQL Rally, etc.).

Present to at least 6 user groups. (Hey user group leaders – contact me!)

Submit four articles for submission at SQLServerCentral.

Participate more in online forums for SQL help.

I hope to be selected to be a volunteer with the PASS Summit again in some capacity.

And I’ll be the heading up our SQL Saturday event on March 21, 2015 (though we all know that this is a team operation).

And now I’ll ask everyone reading this to help hold me to these goals.