This is the third and last in a series of interviews with speakers presenting at the SQLServerCentral.com track at SQL Server Connections in November 2010. This interview is with SQL Server MVP Allen White (blog | Twitter).

Tell us about yourself Allen.

After starting out as a theatre major, I got an Associate’s Degree in Data Processing in the mid-70s, and became a programmer. (COBOL, punched cards, all that old-guy stuff.) I wore multiple hats, developer, administrator (both Windows and Unix), even a salesman at one point. (I’d played Harold Hill in The Music Man and my company thought I’d be a good salesman.) In the early 90s I discovered relational databases, and through the 90s I transitioned to being a DBA. In 2003 I got a job where my boss believed in training, and sent me to conferences, where I met lots of great people. I also started working with Microsoft on certification, and I started writing. I was awarded the SQL Server MVP in 2007, and got my Bachelor’s Degree from Baldwin-Wallace College in 2008. I’ve been consulting and training since; teaching classes in North America and Europe, and helping companies implement solutions to improve their businesses.

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This is the second in a series of interviews with speakers presenting at the SQLServerCentral.com track at SQL Server Connections in November 2010. This interview is with Buck Woody, a SQL Server Senior Technical Specialist for Microsoft (blog | Twitter).

Tell us about yourself Buck.

Wow – I’m kind of old, so that would take longer than we probably have. Think of the old guy in the room randomly waving his arms blurting out “All of this used to be orange groves, far as the eye could see”, before dropping back into a nap.

But I actually feel like that. I’ve been around tech a long time, and seen the changes along the way.  I’ve always been interested in technology and electronics, even as a little kid. Star Trek nerd, the whole bit. I grew up on the Space Coast in Florida, and when I saw the moon shot I decided I wanted to work at NASA when I grew up. After school, the Air Force and college, I did end up working at both Lockheed Space Operations at NASA and at the U.S. Space Command at Patrick Air Force Base. I worked with mainframes to start, then built my own PC from a Zilog chip and played with everything from Commodores to Apples and IBM PC’s, and was one of the early adopters in business of OS/2 and Windows NT.

I’ve been a sysadmin, a developer, a network tech and even a hardware tech. But I’ve always lived in the data space, first with COBOL flat-file systems, then with Oracle, Dbase (Clipper, actually) Sybase, PostGres and then finally SQL Server. As far as training, well, it’s been a mix of college courses, OJT, and lots and lots of reading and practical applications. And the training never ends. In fact, I teach a database course now at the University of Washington, and I’m still learning all the time.

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This is a first of a series of interviews with speakers presenting at the SQLServerCentral.com track at SQL Server Connections in November 2010. This interview is with SQL Server MVP Glenn Berry (blog | Twitter).

Tell us a little about yourself Glenn.

After high school, I spent four years in the Marine Corps, serving in the Infantry and in Armor. I got out as a Sergeant and went to college. I have a B.A. in Economics and an M.A. in International Affairs. I initially wanted to be an intelligence analyst similar to Jack Ryan’s character in the Tom Clancy books. I spent a few years as a developer before I grew up and discovered that I liked being a DBA much better. I have been a Database Architect at NewsGator for about four and half years.

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