This video was my first introduction to Doug Lane (Blog – Twitter):
You can see the full video on SQLcruise.com, where Doug had entered a contest for a free cruise a couple of years ago. Of course he was picked as one of the winners, because I was in stitches as soon as I saw the viking horns moving through the cubicles.
When I met him in person on the cruise, he lived up to expectations by being witty, smart, humble, and just genuinely fun to be around. I enjoyed being around him, and I wished I could hang out with him more often.
Fast forward to last month, when he answered our call for SQL Server people looking for a good time. We got a ton of good responses that we were really excited about, and this week we’ll blog about the hiring, interviewing, and tech screening process. Doug was definitely one of those people where we all said “Wow!” out loud when we saw his name on the email.
We didn’t even have to look at the email contents to know Doug’s contributions to the community. I’d been particularly excited about his recent presentation idea, SQL Server Murder Mystery Hour: Dead Reports Don’t Talk. He turned the session into a fun, interactive experience.
When we *did* look at his email’s contents, Doug blew us away again with a video about his community contributions:
He knew we did a lot of video work, and he wanted to show that he understood how we work. Jeremiah, Kendra, and I are so passionate about making databases easier – and more fun. Just like Jes (our Employee #1), Doug really gets that.
We’re so excited to have Doug join our team.
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RT – You’ve been assimilated by the Ozarians! Congrats! #IKnewHimBeforeHeBecameLocutus
Doug (or as I’ve called him since SQl Cruise, SQL Neil Peart) simply amazing and highly creative. Nice fit. He was a blast to work with on his murder mystery presentation and one day I expect him to return to SQL Cruise, but as a presenter. Congratulations Doug!
I had to look up who “Neil Peart” is. 🙂 Don’t hate me.
How can you … wait, nevermind. Sigh.
Congrats to both parties!
Congrats! I look forward to some “goose the SSRS engine performance up to facilitate the unspeakably ill-advised things the developers want to do with it” webcasts!
Also, @SQLNumberTwo seems to still be available on Twitter! “Who does Number Two work for?!”
Congratulations on your new employee! He sounds like a ton of fun. And Kendra, shame on you. Time to go listen to 2112 and Moving Pictures. 🙂
It is depressing to know I will never work for a excellent company like yours, or Stack Exchange. I admire what you do, I come to events you are presenting at, I follow the blog and videos, etc., but I have no desire to do my job in the manner in which you do it. I have no social media presence, and I don’t want one. In fact, this may be the first comment I have ever even left on a web page. I am not interested in being a blogger, or presenter, or having lots of stackoverflow points. I do train people internally at my company, and I love sql, and data, and programming, and problem solving. I even think I am pretty good at it. I hope you keep attracting awesome employees, I will enjoy following along for the ride, passively, from the sidelines such as I do. Thanks for what you contribute to all of us out there in the sql world.
Congrats Doug and Congrats to the “Unlimited” family. Great addition to the team