Careers don’t always go to plan. I never actually planned to have my face appearing in advertisements on SQL Server and ASP sites around the Internet and in printed publications. In fact, it still takes me by surprise when I come across them. It really is me, and it is just one part of an interesting job that I never imagined I’d ever have.

I am the Director of DBA Education for Red Gate Software, but unlike most of the Red Gate staff who live in and around Cambridge, England, I live on the Big Island of Hawaii, a mere 7,250.7 miles (as the bird flies) from work. To avoid the long drive each day, I telecommute instead, only physically traveling to Cambridge about twice a year. In fact, I will be in Cambridge the latter part of September.

In my job, I wear many hats. I spend the bulk of my time educating DBAs, through book writing, article writing, poster creation, blogging, answering forum posts, creating video tutorials, and public speaking. In fact, I travel about 12 weeks each year speaking at user groups and conferences. When I am not educating DBAs, I am educating the staff at Red Gate software on what it is like to be a DBA, helping out in their marketing and product development efforts. I am also Red Gate’s production DBA, managing their SQL Servers remotely.

My current job has its roots in a website I founded way back in 2000 called SQL-Server-Performance.Com. When I started the website, I had no plans to grow it or to even to make any money from it. My goal was to just share what I had learned, and was still learning, about SQL Server performance tuning. Apparently, I guess I wasn’t the only DBA interested in performance tuning. Shortly after starting the website, traffic began to find me, and the website grew to the point where I was spending between 20-30 hours a week working on it, and this was in addition to my full-time DBA job at a very large organization in Missouri. At one point, SQL-Server-Performance.Com was the busiest community SQL Server-related website on the Internet, until it was eventually surpassed by SQLServerCentral.Com. During this time I also begin speaking at conferences and I became a Microsoft SQL Server MVP.

In the summer of 2006, I was exhausted from working what were essentially two full-time jobs. I was also a little tired of living in Missouri, where I has spent most of my life. I really needed a change. So without much thinking or planning, I sold the website, quit my job, and put my house on the market.

Shortly thereafter, the owners of Red Gate Software contacted me about doing some consulting work for them. I had known the folks at Red Gate for many years because they were the second company to advertise on my website, and they eventually became the largest advertisers on the site. I agreed to some consulting work, which eventually lead to my full-time job as the Director of DBA Education, which is where I am today.

And a little later, after selling my house, I moved to Hawaii, where I work out of my home. I decided to move to Hawaii because I had lived in Alaska during my high school years, and I felt that I needed some compensation for all that cold weather I had endured.

Because I have the opportunity to travel and attend many user group meetings and conferences, and I get to speak to hundreds of DBAs, I now see the DBA world a little differently than most DBAs. I also have the luxury of having time available to spend researching SQL Server as I write new articles and books, and as I create new presentations. Because of this unique view, I run across all kinds of interesting things, such as industry news and gossip, real world stories of DBAs hard at work, feedback from those who read my articles and books, odd and interesting SQL Server facts, and much more. So the goal of this blog is to share and discuss this information with you.