Following in Midnight DBA’s more interesting half new blog fest topic.

My branding? I don’t have a clue. There, I said it. Up until very, very recently, I’ve just been doing stuff. I haven’t really even tried to think about what the plan was. Write a book? Sure, sounds like a cool challenge. Write another one? Well, the last one didn’t kill me, OK. Start a blog. Jump on Twitter. Pick a Name. Could I pretty please present at PASS?

I’ve been very focused on building my name, but I honestly never thought about my brand. It’s just not something that occurred to me. Yes, I am that slow. Now recently, stuff has been happening and I’m suddenly concerned about it. I too went through FreeCon with Brent Ozar (blog|twitter). And that got me thinking. Yeah, I’ve been doing all this stuff, but to what point? MVP? Yes, absolutely, but even that, why? I honestly don’t know. I’ve just kept going, running as hard as I could, winning a few, losing a few (let’s not talk about SQL Standard, ok?) and building the name… but I haven’t been building the brand. What’s more, I haven’t had a target that I was doing all this for (except the obvious). But, now I’m sort of there. I do sort of have this brand, Scary DBA, kilts, execution plans, MVP, query tuning… Cool! Now what?

I’ve been putting thought into it ever since Freecon (and I have a blog post percolating about FreeCon, still need time to assimilate & type) and I’m still not entirely sure what my plans are, but I have some plans now. We’ll see how things go with them. Oh, and my words for my brand wheel:

• Direct
• Instructive (gone through three words here, still not happy)
• Useful

Am I? I’m not sure. But those are the goals I’ve got and the approach I try to take.