Great article.  I have been fortunate with the companies I have worked for and have had a lot of training and opportunities to attend conferences/seminars.  My challenge in my development has been the lack of interaction with fellow DBAs.  I have always worked in a company where I am the only DBA and have not had the pleasure of having a group to interact with and bounce ideas off of.  I am a visual, hands on kind of person.  I learn by doing and I find myself struggling to keep moving ahead and getting to that 10% spot working by myself.  I spend alot of time on forums and posting questions, but I would love to find a DBA mentor that I could interact with and be able to work out problems with or just plain talk about things.  The forums are great (I learn so much from everybody!!) but it doesn't replace the need for some one on one interaction.  So for me, the training and seminars are great, but I would really enjoy some DBA co-workers to work with and unfortunately the company I am currently with only has me.  I have primarily been an operational DBA over the years and I'm trying to transition into the development side and could really use a mentor to help me understand how to write good Transact SQL code and stored procedures.  In the meantime.....I press on!

Isabelle