Getting started with the new blog

Hello! My name is Ed Hickey, and I am a Program Manager in the BPD Division at Microsoft. BPD is a division of SQL Server, and I arrived here by way of a reorganization of my former group. This may seem boring and irrelevant, but it is really the reason for this blog coming into existence. I’ll get back to that in just a minute, but I want to tell you a little more about me and what I do here at Microsoft.

I have been at Microsoft for over 12 years now, and for the last 9 years, I have been working in the Community space. What does that mean in English, you ask? It means that I focus on such things as Forums, blogs, Twitter, Facebook, conferences, User Groups and the like. This also means that I spend a lot of time looking at the people who use these tools, and how different conversations evolve. I also spend a lot of time with the internal Product Groups, working with them to improve the experiences of you, the customer, in their products and documentation. This is done via meetings, bug reports, feedback sessions and other ways too numerous to get into here.

Now back to why a re-org has prompted me to start a blog. I am now in the SQL Server group, as mentioned, but I have not worked with SQL Server in many years, and when I did work with it, I was doing Development work and left the administration to the DBAs. Now I need to learn about this immense product, and it is a rather daunting task for a non-DBA type such as me. A kind way of labeling my technical skills would be “eroded”, as I have not written code in many years now, and while I understand a lot of things from a high level, it is now imperative that I learn a lot more about all the technologies that I work with. Thus, I will be blogging about what I learn and where I find good content, as I am in a great position to do so due to my resources, both in Microsoft and externally as well. This is also the reason for the “Getting Started” title, I will be focused mainly on getting started with various technologies as my projects here get underway. It is also relevant as I am getting started in the blogging world, I just hope I can be as informative and as eloquent as the top-notch bloggers I follow regularly.