October 2009 Blog Posts
(This blog post comes from an email I sent to the Board about this. I left in some of the thoughts around it in addition to just what we’re doing. Plus we’re still working out some details.) This year at the Summit we want to give the community a chance to ask questions of the Board and provide feedback. We also want to capture any suggestions people have. First, The PASS Board of Directors will hold an open Q&A session Wednesday from 4:30PM until 6:15PM. It will be in room 6E. This overlaps with the last session but...
Over the last year I’ve watched my usage of Facebook change. A party in my hometown really capped off the change. When I started out on Facebook all my friends were technology people. Facebook hadn’t invaded my hometown yet. I grew up in Baldwin City, Kansas about 50 minutes southwest of Kansas City. The population was around 2,000 when I graduated from high school. That was back in the days of Miami Vice, Dire Straits, Back to the Future, Family Ties, Huey Lewis & the News, Rocky IV and Simple Minds. (And yes, I was just as cool as...
I launched the updated Ask SQLTeam almost a week ago and I’ve noticed a few interesting things. First, a big thank you to the people answering questions. As people answer questions and their answers are voted up they get “reputation”. Right now the top 3 users in terms of reputation are mrdenny, Kristen and TG. Overall 27 people have earned the “Teacher” badge. That means they’ve answered at least one question that someone else voted up. Anyone that has earned 15 “reputation points” can vote up answers. When your answer is voted up you get 10 reputation points. ...
Last week we launched Ask SQLTeam as an alternative to our forums. One of the interesting features of the site is that it uses OpenID as a login mechanism. Google and Yahoo both support OpenID and you can use them to login. What I really wanted was a way to login using a SQLTeam.com username and password. So I had to make SQLTeam.com an OpenID provider. When you get to the main login screen just enter “http://openid.sqlteam.com” in the text box. After clicking the Login button you’ll be taken to the SQLTeam OpenID page. Here...
I stared SQLTeam.com nearly ten years ago. I wanted to build a place where people could learn about SQL Server. In the early days we had something called "Ask SQLTeam". People could submit questions and we'd use those to get ideas for articles. We tried to answer as many as we could on the site. Gradually the flood of questions became too much and that changed into the forums you see on the site today. Today we're bringing Ask SQLTeam back. But in a different way. I've watched the success of http://stackoverflow.com with interest. It has a couple...