400K and Still Growing!!!

Wow, it's amazing to think of yet another milestone, especially after just crossing the 300k barrier last February (Feb 7, 2006 to be exact), and less than a year later we've grown tremendously to reach 400,000 members just before our sixth year anniversary.

As a celebration, SQL Server Central is donating a number of free prizes this year to show the members of SQL Server Central how valuable they are to the community at large. As a reward to the busy professionals that participate, we've decided to give away a large quantity of software (thanks to Red Gate for agreeing to supply this!) to the top posters on the site. We've also got some random prizes to give out as well so everyone in the community gets a chance to get something back.

Here are the prizes we're giving away:

Top 400 Posters - A free copy and license of the new SQL Prompt -

After acquiring this tool last year, Red Gate went to work rewriting it and making an improved version that is ready to release. This valuable tool adds Intellisense to your queries, something Microsoft hasn't gotten around to implementing for T-SQL. A list as of the 400k mark of top posters is below.

Top 20 Posters - A SQLServerCentral.com polo shirt. We've got them in a nice forest green, perfect for those warm days at the office. I'll be emailing you to get the sizes.

Random 20 posters - A SQLServerCentral.com polo shirt. The same forest green ones, but distributed among anyone that's ever posted here at SQLServerCentral.com.

Random Poster - An Apple iPod

I've randomly selected one person who's posted more than 100 times as the winner. And it's:

Why 100 times? Because that shows real dedication to the cause, and when alls said and done this is a community and everyone's time here is appreciated. We know many of you are learning and come here to get answers. We hope that we can help and one day you'll be back answering questions for others.

But it's those who give their time, that answer questions, and point people in the right direction who have helped us thrive. I can't do it alone, and even with Andy and Brian helping, we could only do so much. It's the amazing ideas, suggestions, and solutions from so many of you that we have greatly appreciated.

Please join me in congratulating and thanking the winners.

There are so many people that have really participated and helped to build the site. This is just our way of recognizing a few people that have answered lots of questions for people, taken the time to share their knowledge, and contributed content to the site. We look forward to doing this again when we cross 500k members.

Every year we also sponsor a few people to attend the PASS Summit. We go through our list of authors and contact the contributors from the past year and offer admissions. We can't reward everyone, but we try to give back to the community. So participate and maybe you'll get picked in the near future.

Once again, thanks to everyone for being a part of the community.

Steve Jones

Top Posters