I am very pleased to be able to introduce Rob Farley, today’s Interview with an IT Professional. Rob is a Microsoft Most Valued Professional (MVP) for SQL Server and runs the Australian SQL Server User Group in Adelaide. In the last year Rob has made several trips to the Microsoft headquarters in Redmond, United States to assist with the content released in many of the upcoming Microsoft certifications. Rob also works as a mentor/trainer for Solid Quality Learning and is on the ACS South Australian Branch Executive Committee. Rob is also very active in the blog community, and has his own blog.

Your background is mainly to do with databases, whether it has been Oracle and UNIX systems or using SQL Server. What is it about working with databases that appeals to you?
I guess I just clicked with them. At uni the database subject was considered easy marks, and I didn’t do it. Without realising the connection at the time though, I was doing pure maths subjects like Logic, Set Theory and Number Theory. I’m not sure that makes me more logical, or an expert in sets or numbers, but I did find them quite interesting. During my honours year when I was offered a job at Oakton, the boss said I had better read up on databases before I joined the company. It just made a lot of sense to me, and I could see how to approach them in a set-based, non-iterative way. In many ways, the academic in me finds non-iterative languages (SQL, Prolog, LISP, etc) much more interesting than the iterative ones like C# or VB.

But more than that, databases hold data, and data is what it’s all about – information. It’s the I in IT. Having information can help you understand so much more about your business, so it really matters. Software is great, but data is what’s really important.

What advice would you give to anyone wanting to pursue a career as an IT consultant?
Get hired by a consultancy. Haha. But really, that’s a major aspect to it. They will help you be a good consultant, by letting you work with other good consultants. If you are smart and can pick things up quickly, then you can probably succeed. But there’s a lot of things that really help with being a consultant that can be hard to teach, and sometimes hard to implement too. The biggest would probably be to value your clients, and their perspectives. The customer isn’t always right, but in their eyes they are, so you have to understand their perspective on the situation. Befriend your clients if you can, and actually try to help their business work. If that can become your priority, then they will see that and understand you’re actually there to help.

Currently you are commuting between your workplace (Melbourne) and your home town (Adelaide), you run the Australian SQL Server User Group in Adelaide and you are on the South Australian ACS Branch Executive Committee. Where do you find the time to fit everything in?

Well, I’m not working every week, which makes a big difference. Obviously as a trainer I need to make sure I’m ready to teach each course, but I do have the time to spend some with the family, and do a few other things like run the user group and (hopefully) get to ACS meetings. It’s a bit hard if I’m out of town though.

What exactly is a Microsoft Most Valued Professional (MVP)?

An MVP is the recipient of the MVP Award, which is given to people who MS feel have contributed to the MS community significantly. That could be through newsgroups, usergroups, etc… For me I guess it was largely because of what I’ve done with the SQL User Group in Adelaide, but I try to get involved in other ways too, like blogging, newsgroups, things like that. There are currently seven MVPs in the Australian SQL space.

Where has being an MVP taken you?

Well, there was the MVP Summit in March, which was a lot of fun. Bill Gates was there, which is always quite interesting, even though I didn’t get to ask him which Dilbert character he was most like. Being an MVP also gets you access to the MVP newsgroups, which are full of interesting discussions. But really it’s just an award. Probably looks good on a CV. I hope to get renewed in October, because I’d love to go to the next MVP Summit too.

Before I became MVP I’d already had a couple of trips to Redmond to help with certifications. I got to do that because Andrew Coates at MS put me onto the beta exam process, and things progressed to the point of getting some invitations to go there. I’ve been there three times for those trips so far, and I always find it really interesting. But that came about through community involvement, and that’s the key. Community involvement has taken me places. It’s got me the job I have now even.

Already in your career you have achieved so much. You have consulted in Melbourne and London, had many large multinational clients, run user groups and are a mentor and trainer. What has driven you to achieve what you have already?

I don’t really feel I’ve achieved all that much. I know plenty of people many years younger than me who have achieved just as much. Consulting in Melbourne was easy because I lived there. Then as a family we moved to London, so I worked there… that’s not really a big step, even though it may seem a long way. If you are eligible for a UK passport, then apply for it. Once you have that, moving there is just a matter of buying an aeroplane ticket. I guess you should find somewhere to live, but you can always stay in a youth hostel for a while or something. You can line up a bunch of interviews before you arrive, with both recruitment agents and companies, and hopefully you can find work quickly. Having family already there that I could stay with made life easier for me.

So now that we’ve dismissed the “achievement” of working in Melbourne and London, the ‘mentor and trainer’ thing can be dismissed just as easily by the fact that a training organisation wanted to hire me as that. I only run one user-group, and I kinda fell into that. I started attending the Adelaide SQL User Group, and noticed that the guy who was running it didn’t seem to have the time. So I offered to help, and within a few months he had asked me to take over.

So you see, I haven’t really achieved all that much. Why are you interviewing me again?

My proudest achievements are actually persuading my wife to marry me and having my kids. We have two boys who are just brilliant.

What roles have you enjoyed the most?

That would be “husband” and “father”. Oh, work-wise? Sure. I’m really enjoying the training at the moment. I love hearing the stories about when students leave at the end of the day, and immediately log onto their work server to implement something they learned. I have the same with the user-groups, which is really good too. I enjoyed consulting as well though – I would really enjoy talking about things with clients, and helping them smile. I really like the people aspect to my work.

What would you like to do that you haven’t already done?

Technology-wise, I’m not sure. There are plenty of things outside work I’d like to do, though – and many of them involve helping people. A few days ago I met a guy who helps homeless people in Melbourne find somewhere to live. A large part of me wanted to find out how I could be involved, to see if I could go there one night a week when I was in Melbourne, or something like that. But I don’t really have the time, and I need to choose my efforts carefully.

For most people public speaking is something that scares people more than anything. You quite frequently present at many events. What is your secret to being such a confident public speaker?

I’m not sure I am. Really, why are you interviewing me? I keep wanting to find ways of being better – I keep going off on tangents, for one… I think knowing why you’re up there helps. You’re not up there to be about you, you’re up there for the people in the audience. If I’m presenting about something, I’m there to explain it to people. It’s not just an exercise in public speaking, it’s about conveying information. Someone once said people are more afraid of public-speaking than death, so if you’re at a funeral you’d rather be in the coffin than giving the eulogy. But if you are giving the eulogy, just remember that it’s about honouring your friend, it’s not actually about you at all.

I’d love to be a comedian. That’s one of the things I’d love to do, for your earlier question. I think I’m quite good at wise-cracks, but there’s a big difference between writing jokes and being able to reply with a nice line. I try to be funny in my user-group mailouts, but I don’t know that I do a very good job. If I quit my day-job to be a comic, my family would probably be trying to get in touch with that guy I met a few days ago.

What other events do you have coming up in the future?

Well, I’m hoping to present at TechEd on the Gold Coast in August. I’ve told the guys organising the data platform stream that I’m available. Now that I’ve said this and you’re going to post it on your blog, I’d better hope that I do, otherwise I’ll look a bit foolish. Other than that, there are plenty of courses being offered – if you want to do a course about SQL, then give the office a call and get on one.

July 7/8 sees Adelaide host Code Camp SA. This is going to be a similar format to the events they have in Wagga Wagga, but being a lot more accessible for Adelaide-based people. I won’t be at the whole thing, but I’m sure I’ll make an appearance, and maybe even present on something.

You have a blog that attracts many visitors every day. If you could offer advice on how to create a popular blog, what would it be?

Funnily enough, this is my second blog. I used to have a blog at blogspot.com, but when I got the MVP award I moved to msmvps.com. But my old blog gets far more hits than my new one. At the MVP Summit they showed a slide of the top sites for SQL Resources – my old blog was quite high on the list, but my new one was nowhere to be seen.

I don’t really know what the tricks are… but if you can write well, then that helps. Having posts that people want to read, of course. One of my most popular posts recently was about the movie “Meet the Robinsons”. It’s had far more hits than some of the posts that I think prefer, but I doubt any of the people that read that post will have subscribed to my blog. There are well established ways of getting readers, but you need to ask why you’re blogging if that’s what you’re after. If you’re blogging as a way of providing a resource, then write things that solve people’s problems, and make sure you use terms that people are likely to use in a search. If you want to make people laugh, then be funny. If you want to be provocative, then be controversial. I tend to be a mixture – I like to write things that help people in the SQL world, but I also tend to use it as a way of communicating with those people I know subscribe, so I tend to just write whatever comes to mind.

But you don’t need advice on writing a good blog, Debbie…