Personal Contact Is Vital

I'm writing this while in hiding at the PASS Data Community Summit that's taking place in Seattle this week. I just had a real surprise, finding out that DocumentDB is PostgreSQL under the covers and always has been. However, as much as I enjoy talking PostgreSQL, for the moment, I'll shut up about it. Instead, I'd like to take some time and share a couple of lessons I had this week that have reminded me just how important direct, personal, contact between humans really is.

I'm not speaking for anyone but myself when I say, it's easy to lose sight of how important creating, and then maintaining, direct communication with other people is. I screwed up this year and I didn't reach out to a few people who I absolutely should have been in contact with. Either, I just wasn't paying attention, or I thought other people would do it. Regardless of the excuse, I dropped the ball. I didn't talk to them through any of the mediums I had available. Because of it, frankly, we're missing a few voices this year. That's my fault. I'll own it.

Don't worry, this isn't all Debbie Downer talk.

I also, just a couple of minutes ago, had a great moment. Wonderful in fact. I was hanging out at the PostgreSQL Community booth (hey, it's fair within the rules, I'm talking about the community, not the data platform). I had someone walk up and thank me, because years ago, I gave them a little advice during a session. It was almost a throwaway line, but it resonated and they've been applying it for years to great success. It gave me such a warm and fuzzy, I just had to share.

I know a lot of you are like me, introverts. Please, don't lose sight of keeping in touch with the people around you. I know it's not easy, but it's so important. I just had my positive and negative reminders. Get out there, make your reminders all positive ones.

And in case anyone wants to know, the advice was simple. Before you get into all the complexities of query tuning, try just getting a WHERE clause in there to filter the data you're dealing with. That's it. Simple, but evidently effective.

Grant Fritchey

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