#meme15 for Twitter

Jason Strate (blog|Twitter) has started a new meme project about social networking for SQL Server professionals.  This month’s theme is all about Twitter.  We have been asked to answer the following two questions:

  1. Why should the average Jane or Joe professional consider using Twitter?
  2. What benefit have you seen in your career because of Twitter?

I consider myself an average Joe SQL Server professional.  I’m a DBA for a private University and enjoy solving business problems with data.  Up until June of 2010, I did not have a Twitter account and was not involved in the #SQLFamily.  When I was getting back into the DBA field after going to the dark side (management) for a few years, I found Twitter as the catalysts for learning.  I was able to follow a few big hitters in the #SQLFamily and with in the first day, started reading tweets for webcasts and blog posts.

This is the key for me using Twitter, there is so much good information posted everyday to keep you informed about SQL Server topics.  The beauty of Twitter is most of the #SQLFamily don’t post the same as your friends do on Facebook.  Twitter has become a medium for disseminating information.  Now, there are plenty of tweets from celebrities and even your friends that are just plain noise, this is where the #SQLFamily stands out.  Most of the people I follow tweet about topics related to SQL Server.  I enjoy reading new blogs and being notified of webcasts where I can learn new things.

As I stated earlier, I found Twitter as my means of getting back into the DBA world.  I started with Brent Ozar’s Twitter Book and created an account.  From there it was as easy as following Brent Ozar (blog|Twitter), Glenn Berry (blog|Twitter), Thomas Larock (blog|Twitter) and Aaron Bertrand (blog|Twitter).  From just those four people, I was introduced to so many more and started following them.  Each time I started following someone new, I was introduced to few other people and the Twitter snowball kept growing.  As of Jan 2012, I’m following ~150 people and it’s hard to keep up during the day and usually spend nights catching up on all the tweets for the day.

The benefits of Twitter helped me land a great DBA job in higher education.  I had plenty of experience under SQL Server 2000 & 2005 but only limited direct interaction with SQL Server 2008 & 2008 R2.  This is where the webcasts and blogs that I was notified about on Twitter helped me fill the gaps and use that knowledge to practice in my home lab.  Without Twitter, I would have not had the #SQLFamily behind me and would have struggled getting back in the game.