On Fridays on Twitter, people make a short list of a few people they recommend that other folks follow, and they tag their messages with #FollowFriday. I think that’s interesting, but I don’t participate often because I don’t wanna just name a few names in 140 characters. There are, however, a few people that I want to take a moment to recognize amongst the community for doing really good work.
Jeremiah Peschka (Blog – Twitter)
I met Jeremiah at the PASS Summit in Seattle last year, and we’ve been good friends ever since. He’s a developer (NO!) and a consultant (NOOO!) but still manages to be a completely likable guy. He’s constantly trying to learn and grow his skills, and we keep threatening to cross-train each other on our respective skill sets. (Not respectable, just respective.)
He’s launched a PASS chapter in Columbus, Ohio, and he’s stirring things up at PASS. He combined forces with Blythe Morrow and Tom LaRock to convince me that I really could start a Virtualization Virtual Chapter. That says a lot, because I abhor politics.
Jeremiah’s in the running for MVP, and if I had anything to do with the MVP process, I’d nominate him too. I think PASS volunteering is the second most important thing someone can do for the community, and convincing OTHERS to help the community is el numero uno.
Jimmy May (Blog – Twitter)
I met Jimmy, a member of the world-famous A.C.E. performance & security team at Microsoft, for the first time at the PASS Summit last year also. (Notice that? Two good people at PASS in a row. You meet a lot of good people at the PASS Summit.) I was absolutely blown away by his presentation. He explained partition alignment in a clear, straightforward, and hilarious way. He’s since followed up with a whitepaper on partition alignment, and it should be mandatory reading for every SAN administrator.
Just this past week, I got a frantic email from a client who’d just rolled out a new half-million-dollar SAN. Performance wasn’t what they’d expected, and was even slower than the last SAN I’d helped them configure. After troubleshooting, the SAN vendor gave them just one recommendation: align your partitions. The client wanted to know if the SAN vendor was pulling their leg, and no, they’re not. It really is that important.
He’s submitting the same session again for PASS this year, and I sincerely hope he gets approved quick fast and in a hurry. (He works for Microsoft, so they have a separate round of submissions aside from us mere mortals.) If he does, you need to go to his session. Partition alignment is an issue that isn’t going away until we’re completely done with Windows 2003, and judging by the number of SQL Server 2000 instances I see sticking around, it’s going to be at least another five or ten years of manual partition alignment.
Michelle Ufford (Blog – Twitter)
You might recognize Michelle’s name from any number of places:
- Founded the East Iowa PASS Chapter
- Her webcast on index fragmentation
- The SQLServerPedia article on index fragmentation
- The rap contest she ran with Ward Pond and me
She’s got an inquiring mind and she helps teach others the things she learns. When she writes a tutorial, I pay attention, because it’s usually something I haven’t seen before. When she used DBCC PAGE to demonstrate the effects of fragmentation, I was so impressed.
Like Jeremiah, I’ve heard that she’s also been nominated as an MVP, and I would cast a nomination for her as well if I had any power whatsoever. I don’t, so presto, you’re getting a sermon from me via my blog, because you might have some power over the process. If I was going to recognize valued members of the community, Michelle would be another one since she devotes so much time and effort into helping others in the community.
I won’t be doing this every #FollowFriday, but every now and then I might drop a few names here. These people deserve a round of applause for the work they’re doing. Here here!
Funny, I just blogged about increasing the signal of #followfriday this morning. You have taken it to the next level.
Ha! Yeah, jamming a ton of names into a tweet had eliminated the usefulness to me. It’s already gotten to the point where I just ignore ‘em.
I had arrived at a similar conclusion recently. Started doing it a little differently and when someone recognized the difference a seed was planted to blog about it.