Feel free to contact me for anything, either through this form or email me directly.  My email address is Steve at this domain name, and you can find me on Twitter as @SteveHoodSQL.

I love getting comments and emails associated with my blog or public speaking, even the constructive critical ones.  The relatively little feedback you get doing this is actually one of the most frustrating parts.  WordPress does a great job at telling me how many people got to my blog, Google does a great job at telling me what search terms people used to find me, and a quick estimated head count at SQL Saturday or SQL Server User Group meetings tells me how many people heard the sound of my voice.  However, all that stuff falls short in my eyes.  Since few people write comments on speaker evaluations I don’t know much more than who stuck around to hear everything I had to say at in-person events, and online I don’t even know that much.

The people with something positive to say already heard enough, so let me talk to the people who have an issue with either me or what I said.

Do you feel I’m on the right path?  It’s ok to say “NO!!!”  I try to be accurate and helpful, but I also know perfection is a pipe dream that would stop me from ever typing a post or opening my mouth.  Are the flaws that make it through acceptable, annoying, or down right damaging?  Yell at me by commenting on my posts or do it in private with my email and twitter handle listed above…PLEASE!  I want to hear the negative, too.  Without it I could be completely off my rocker and never realize it because I’m lost in my own little world (it’s a strange place).

It’s actually not that bad when someone tells you they didn’t like what you did, be it harshly or politely, as long as they tell you why.   Being told I’m wrong actually gives me more confidence, as odd as that may sound.  If no one says anything then did they even read it, did they feel I did so poorly that it was better to just shake their head and move on, or, my greatest fear, did I somehow cause harm and my words are still out there for everyone to read?

Hearing someone tell me I got a detail wrong tells me that they read what I said, understood it, gave me something to fix, and implicitly told me the other stuff was done at least half descent.  There are a couple negative comments or emails I got that actually made my day.  I had someone point out that I came across as too harsh in a post and it was rewritten before anyone else could read it that way (thanks Grant).  Someone else pointed out that how I thought a certain counter worked wasn’t right, and that post got updated less than 2 minutes after the email (thanks Jeremiah).  Some have stopped by to say how my words helped them, and I felt inspired to put more content out there.  A couple people said I wasn’t very helpful, and I brushed it off in waiting for someone to come back to tell me why.  Others have said nothing, and…well…umm…hey, I made a Contact Me page, told you how to find me on Twitter, and gave you my email address!!!