As Summit 2014 begins to wind down, it is time for some more impressions from the week. The week has been good so far. It has been very busy and also can be quite a drain mentally and physically from everything that has transpired.
If you are interested, I have written about some of my other impressions from the week, here.
Several years ago, I blogged about an incident with plagiarism with both an original post and a follow-up. I bring that up, not to rehash the negative, but instead to discuss an impression from this week. If you read the follow-up, you will see that I had a chat, at that time, with Steinar (twitter) about the problem and how to resolve it. I met Steinar for the first time this week. And to be honest, I had forgotten about the conflict and had removed the RSS feed since the original domain had gone down.
Anyway, Steinar and I had the chance to chat for the first time face to face this week. Steinar, in my opinion, is a pretty cool guy that made a simple RSS mistake. The impression is that he remembered me for how I treated him several years ago and was very appreciative of that. How cool is that? I really appreciate the opportunity to chat with him and that something I did left a positive impact on him.
Another opportunity is to be able to perform random acts of kindness or service while at Summit. Much like helping Paul White learn how to use a smart phone, I had the even more rare opportunity to help Kalen Delaney (blog | twitter) out of a sticky situation. It was a minor but frustrating thing that all of us run into from time to time. The zipper on her Surface case had become stuck, so I helped her with that. It’s a little thing but it is the type of thing that, if you are watching, you will see happening all over the place during the week of PASS Summit.
So, the next time you are at Summit, and while back in your local communities after the week has ended for Summit, keep an eye out for those little acts of kindness. But at the same time, keep an eye out for those that might be watching you. What kind of impression are you leaving for them or for the SQL Community?
