During one of the sessions that I attended during SQL Saturday in Orlando I had the privilege of listening to the Wise One Steve Jones.  He had a great session called ‘The Modern Resume – Building Your Brand’.

It really opened my eyes about what anyone can do to build their brand.  Do you want to be the person that gets turned down for a job because you’re one of two people that have essentially the same experience but the other person has more of a Google footprint (search your name on Google…Do you actually have any results?). 

I know I want to make sure I’m the guy that gets that job so I’m going to make sure the hiring manager doesn’t confuse me with the other Devin Knight that’s a magician if he/she Googles my name (This is just theoretical, I don’t want to scare my current employer into thinking I’m going somewhere).  Now, the magician has a big head start on me so I have a lot of work to do, but Steve the Wise One gave me the steps to take so I can increase my footprint. 

The first step I’ve decided to take is with my blogging.  I’ve been very inconsistent with my blogging.  I have always feel like the topics I think of might not be relevant when truly they’re probably all great topics because someone else out there is probably going through the same thing I am. 

Now that I'm a little more confident in what to write about I need to increase the amount of times I write.  To do this I’ll create a pipeline of topics that I can write about.  Also, I’ll start to think about a topic I can write an article about.  Lastly, on the step to writing more I will start answering forum questions.  Known as ‘Paying it Forward’, if I start answering question I’ll not only learn but my name will get out as someone to go to when others need help. 

Another thing along the same lines that I believe was a big help for me was tech editing a book.  I read and tested every line of code that was written in Professional Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Integration Services.  This not only helped me learn everything new with SSIS in 2008 but I got my name in a book!

I’ll continue writing about my progress on this step and here are some of my other steps that I’ll write about in the future.

Steps	Progress
1.  Writing	Building blog pipeline, thinking of article topic, and start answering forum questions
2.  Speaking	Past Speaking Events: SQL Saturday Jax, SQL Saturday Orlando, and JAX User Group Meeting Future Speaking Events: PASS Nov. 19th
3.  Leading	Find ways to be a thought leader (come up with great ideas)
4.  Volunteering	Find ways to not only volunteer to be a speaker but volunteer in setting up events.  The backbone of events seem to be volunteers working behind the scenes doing things like getting food for 250 people.

I’m pretty sure Steve had more steps than this so I'll probably add more to my list later.  So thank you Steve the Great One for the great lessons that I really took to heart.

By the way these are some of the great lessons you can learn to when you go to events like SQL Saturday and guess what it was FREE!