This is the second volume of a book that many people thought would never see the light of day. In early 2007, the editor of the first volume, Paul Nielsen, had an extraordinary idea. I’ll let him tell you about how this idea came into being, by including a section from the preface to Volume 1:
Each year Microsoft invites all the MVPs from every technology and country to Redmond for an MVP Summit—all top secret—“don’t tweet what you see!” During the MVP Summit, each product team holds a series of presentations where they explain their technologies, share their vision, and listen to some honest feedback. At the 2007 MVP Summit in Seattle, Bill Gates presented his vision of the future of computing to the MVPs and then took questions for about an hour. I really enjoy these dialogues. I get the sense that if BillG wasn’t the founder of Microsoft, he’d make a great MVP. You can tell he likes us as fellow Geeks, and he’s rather candid in the MVP Q&A time. It’s one of my favorite parts of the MVP Summit.
During the Q&A, the lines at the microphones are far too long to bother to join, so I daydream a few questions I’d ask BillG:
And then I thought of a good, deep, Charlie Rose-type of question: “Centuries from now, would you rather be remembered as the guy who put a computer on every desk, or as the guy who ended malaria and fought the good fight against poverty?” As I try to guess what BillG might say, the answer is obvious. I’m glad that BillG’s intellect and resources are being directed at improving the human condition, and as an original Windows fan I’m proud of BillG. But the answer to my question is both—Windows has already done as much to fight poverty as will the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
Toward the end of the Q&A time, which was mostly taken up with technical questions, I was thrilled to hear one of the MVPs ask for his advice as a philanthropist. BillG said that we should all be involved in our communities and give of ourselves in creative ways: at the library, at schools, and with charities. “Do philanthropy where you are.” This idea of giving of ourselves is central to the MVP community.
Paul then went on to describe how he decided he could make a difference “where he was” by writing about his passion, SQL Server, and using it to create a charity book to help children. He enticed me into the project, and after communicating with the rest of the SQL Server MVPs to determine if there was enough interest to make a project of this type viable, together we started approaching publishers.
It didn’t take long to find that Manning Publications was extremely interested in producing this kind of project. Michael Stephens liked both the community aspect of the project and the charity goals. Manning also offered us a higher-than-usual author royalty, because we were giving it all to charity. We recruited four other prominent MVPs to help with the editing, and the project was underway.
A project such as this had never been done before. We had 53 independent authors from all around the world trying to collaborate. Figuring out how to manage the technical editing and rewrites, and dealing with writers who were technically extraordinary but lacking in some writing skills, and deciding what to do with a chapter that came in at 40 pages when all the rest were 10–15 pages, made the project much more time-consuming than we expected. Many of the MVPs who had written chapters early in the process despaired of ever seeing their work in print.
But then it all seemed to come together, just in time for the 2009 PASS Conference, which is the largest conference in the world for SQL Server professionals. The book had been available for preorder, and by the time the conference started, the preorders alone had earned the chosen charity more than $10,000! Manning made an all-out effort to get 200 copies of the book available in print to sell at the conference. Almost three dozen of the MVP authors were speaking at the conference, and they told their audiences about this remarkable work we had done. On the Thursday of the conference, right after lunch, we launched Volume 1 in a special event in the vendor area and followed this with the most popular book-signing in PASS history. Most of the attending authors stood behind a long table, and eager readers flowed by in front of us, getting autographs from all the authors present. All 200 copies of the book were sold, which was another PASS record, and many people who wanted a copy weren’t able to get one and participate in the signing. Although my hand was numb from signing my name so many times, it was the most exciting event of my professional life. Volume 1 was so well received that there was immediate talk of another one. We all needed a rest, however, and we needed to give the community time to absorb the first terrific volume. But in late 2010, Paul and I decided it was time to start thinking about Volume 2.
Paul and I switched roles: he stepped down from the overall editor role to become a section editor, and I became the overall editor. Kimberly Tripp, Paul Randal, and Greg Low stayed on as section editors for the new volume, and we brought in Louis Davidson and Brad McGehee as new section editors. Manning was more than happy to continue to support us with its publishing team.
Like the first volume, this one is divided into five sections aligned with the five job roles dealing with SQL Server: database architecture and design, database development, database administration, performance tuning and optimization, and business intelligence. There was no rigid organization to the outline—MVPs were simply asked to submit abstracts for chapters that they wanted to write, and those abstracts were directed to the appropriate section editors. As in the first volume, the contents are driven by the MVPs’ individual passions, not by a comprehensive feature list. The section editors selected the best abstracts, but we committed to the idea that every MVP who wanted to contribute to the book could contribute. We had a much tighter deadline for this volume and also a much stricter page count limit, and we limited each author to a single chapter. But we didn’t restrict what the authors could write, and only insisted that it be never-published material in a topic area that wasn’t specifically addressed in Volume 1. So this volume is completely new material!
To select the charity, we collected nominations from the participating MVPs with the restriction that the charity had to be a secular group that benefited children around the world. And we wanted to give to a smaller charity—we didn’t want our contribution to be added to a billion-dollar fund. The vote this time was overwhelming in favor of Operation Smile, which you can read about on page xli.
I’d like to include another paragraph from the preface to the first volume, because there is no way I can say this better than Paul did:
If you are reading this book, then you are “rich.” Considering your place in human history, you’re wealthier than most kings of centuries past—you are well educated, your grocery store shelves are full, you have a family doctor. For too many in the world, that is not the case. There are communities without clean water, children hurting from war, and AIDS orphans who have no family or place to sleep. When one ponders the immense need and poverty in the world, it’s easy to become overwhelmed with hopelessness. How can a single drop of ink change the color of an ocean? But we have no other option than to do what we can. My philosophy is that of Confucius: “It is better to light one small candle than to curse the darkness.” Even BillG can’t heal the world, but we can each make a difference.
By buying this book, you’ve supported Operation Smile. We want to reiterate BillG’s suggestion that we can all find ways to do philanthropy where we are, and this book is one way to start doing that, both for the authors and for the readers.
Welcome to SQL Server MVP Deep Dives, Volume 2—a collaborative work by 64 passionate SQL Server MVPs.
KALEN DELANEY
