Years ago Andy Warren and I were talking about the Database Weekly newsletter and what we wanted to include in each edition. We knew there wasn’t enough news on a weekly basis, so we decided that we’d add blogs from various individuals as well as press releases, patches, and other items related to databases and SQL Server. At some point, we realized we were getting older and one of the unfortunate things that happen is people pass away. We thought about including obituaries as well since we knew a lot of people and we wanted to remember them. We did and this evolved into sqlmemorial.org, which I maintain out of a repo online.
I got a notice to renew the domain recently and I realized that I hadn’t updated this site in quite some time. That’s a relief and I was glad that I haven’t gotten any notes about anyone in the data community dying.
At the same time, I worry that I’ve missed someone who participates in the #sqlfamily online, at events, or just has developed a brand and presence in our community. I see a lot of news, but I get busy like most of us and am not always in touch with all communities around the world. Since the decay of Twitter and the scattering of places where people congregate online, it seems there is less interaction and less of a place to see news posted and re-posted by others. I used to hear about a lot of people passing on from Twitter, but these days that doesn’t happen.
Hopefully, because people aren’t leaving our community that often.
I remember when Jim Gray was lost and my surprise at his death. I didn’t know him, but I had seen him speak. To me, Robert Davis, Euan Garden, and Brian Moran were shocking. Those were people I’d had many conversations with, shaken their hands and hugged them, and shared meals with them. Tom Roush probably touched me the most, though I knew him through his cancer treatment and I wasn’t shocked when he passed. I know quite a few of the people on the list at SQLMemorial, but not as well as knew those gentlemen.
I’m at the age where I see more funerals than weddings. I’ve had friends pass, some far too young, and I try to remember that as I go through life, appreciating the good things I experience.
If you know of someone who has passed, please send me a note, a link to an obituary, or write your own statement of their life and include it in an email. Fork the SQL Memorial repo and submit a pull request so we can remember their life.
Steve Jones
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Getting old sucks but that’s why we have kids, so they can later on present us with part-time kids we call grandkids 🙂
It’s nice that you and others have helped keep this memorial site going but have you thought about how it will keep going once you can’t do it? Granted that’s still many years away but as you know when you get older and despite what science tells us, time does go by faster and before you know it 10 years has passed and it feels like it was at most 5.
I will have to disagree on the part about “the decay of twitter”. If you mean specifically for getting help/info on SQL then that may be true. I never use Twitter for that kind of info/help but instead I use online user forums like the almighty SQL ServerCentral.com . Twitter has transformed from a social media site with limited size messages to one of the few wild-wild-west like places on the net , somewhere you can go today with far less concern about being banned b/c some busy body employee or even higher up person in Mgt doesn’t like something about you or what you believe.
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Re: a long term plan, no. I want to move it to the SQL Saturday 501.c.3 foundation on GH so it’s there, and then I’m hoping to bring in some younger people to have rights and help manage things. Hard to find someone to commit, and I haven’t done anything there, but I think I need succession plans for:
– T-SQL Tuesday
– SQL Saturday
– SQL Memorial
For a lot of us, especially organizers/speakers, we could always find each other on twitter. Now I send DMs and they go unanswered for months because people aren’t there. I wish we had a good central place to communicate, but I also get the challenges of that.
I think Twitter, for all the problems, did a lot of good in the world.
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