Interview with SQL Server Master Trainer Scott Whigham, Owner of LearnSQLServer.com

Scott Whigham is a SQL Server consultant and trainer. Recently, he started a new website called LearnSQLServer.Com. I recently met Scott at a training event and was impressed with his teaching ability, so I decided to interview him.

Give us a brief introduction to your website, LearnSQLServer.com.

LearnSqlServer.com is a place where people can go to basically get classroom quality training on their computer for only a few bucks. We have hours and hours of SQL Server 2005 and SQL Server 2000 video tutorials that our users can download and watch on just about any device out there; PCs, laptops, Ipods, Creative Zens, etc. And it isn’t streaming – it’s truly mobile, “Watch Anywhere” videos. We have free videos, subscriber videos, code samples, articles, and much more.

Tell us about yourself. What is your background in SQL Server and in training?

I started out many years ago doing network admin type stuff. One day, the SQL Server person was leaving so I went out, bought a book SQL Server, and read up on it. I placed the book strategically on my desk and, of course, my boss noticed it and asked if I knew SQL Server. “Why, yes I do.” I didn’t stay in that job long; I quickly worked towards getting the MCDBA (I was already an MCSE) because, back in the 90s, if you had acronyms after your name, you could get 25-50% more salary every six months just by switching companies. I kept changing jobs until I got into consulting, which lead to training opportunities.

Why did you start LearnSQLServer.com?

I had never taken a training class before I started being a trainer because all of the companies I had worked for all wanted to me to sign “payback contracts” if they sent me to training; i.e., “To attend training, you’ll have to sign this contract that says you’ll pay us back if you leave the company within the next 12 months.” I certainly couldn’t afford to pay the $2,000-per-class, but I knew that if I just kept working hard on my own towards the MCDBA/MCSE, I’d be able to get 25-50% higher salary in six months with a different company.

Later on, once I became a trainer, I talked with students who were there because they had signed that same contract. It made me think, “There should be a way that the average person can get quality training without having to sign their life away.” It took me a few years, but I eventually figured it out and now training is affordable to anyone. Look at our subscription prices: for $30-$40, you can get hours and hours of SQL Server training; that’s equivalent to taking a five-day class.

When I started working on the idea of http://www.learnsqlserver.com/, it was with the intent of just doing that one website. After talking with a few people who were very excited about the idea, I axed the idea of just a single website and created an entire company called “LearnItFirst.com” to focus on video training. Today, LearnItFirst.com has the “LearnItFirst.com Video Training Network” (http://www.learnitfirst.com/OurWebsites.aspx) which includes not only LearnSqlServer.com, but LearnExchange.com and LearnWindows2003.com, to name a few.

What is a videobook?

A videobook is simply what I think of as a website that covers the same content as a technical book and/or training class, but it’s all on video. Think of LearnSqlServer.com along the same lines as a “Learn SQL Server” book or training class; we cover it all in a downloadable video. And there’s no streaming video with us – it’s pretty much a “download once, watch anywhere” type of model.

Who produces the content for the videobooks?

To continue the analogy to the book industry, we have authors as well. I’m the author of http://www.learnsqlserver.com/, Grant Moyle, expert trainer and Windows guru, is the author of http://www.learnwindows2003.com/ for example.

Another question might be, “Who would you want to be the author of your next videobook?” We look for authors who are, first and foremost, gurus in their field. Second, having prior training experience is a must. We’ve all listened to speakers or read articles by people who confuse more than help because of their difficult examples and/or inability to convey the material. The world has enough of those people; we want people who have the ability to quickly give off-the-cuff examples and analogies that you’ll not only remember but would even be able to explain to someone else.

How do you decide what subjects to cover?

When I sit down to record videos, I usually have a log of questions/topics that have come up recently: a production problem that occurred, a student posed an interesting question in an email, a forum post produces a long discussion, I read a blog entry that talks about the latest and greatest feature, and I think to myself, “I’ve got a really good example of how to do that – I’ll shoot a video on it!” It’s pretty organic really. I also take “requests”. This last month’s release of videos included a big chunk on what’s new in SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) at the request of a subscriber. It’s really just the first set in a whole series on SSIS.

How do you go about preparing and producing a new videobook?

To bring a new site online isn’t that tough from an infrastructure standpoint; the hardest part is finding a good author and coaching them on how to work within this model. It’s not like a classroom environment – you have to learn to work without that immediate feedback from students. People who might otherwise be good classroom trainers become “stiff” or unemotional when they are just teaching to a computer screen. Once we have the author, we work on determining what the first sets of videos should be and go from there.

What have been some of the challenges of starting the website and producing videobooks?

I had some pretty big challenges when I first started working on the sites because I had to learn C# and ASP.NET! I talked to several web development companies and was quoted $50,000-$100,000 to develop the sites, which was way out of my budget. After learning C# and ASP.NET, then I had to learn all about web-based business and promoting your site. And, of course, that was an iterative process. Once I learned about search engines and how they work, I then spent a lot of time refactoring my websites.

My biggest challenge today is doing all the things that don’t require coding. I like to write code and create new things. When I have to stop that process so that I can write a press release, for example, I find excuses to procrastinate until I finally have this huge pile of work that needs to get done in one big lump. I’ve had to learn how to manage my time more efficiently.

And please excuse me while I shave during the rest of the interview. Saving time, you know.

What are some of the biggest advantages of learning by video over other methods, such as reading a book or taking a class?

It may surprise you, but I think that taking a training class is by far the best method when it comes to learning a new topic. In a class, I can ask questions and watch the demos. I’m a very visual learner, so when I can see the demo and hear the instructor, I remember it better. So why don’t we just take a class every time we need to learn a new concept? $2000-per-class is too steep.

As for books, they are an excellent way to learn and I think they’re a great companion to classroom training and video training. The only downside to a book is that you lose out of the audio/visual aspects; not everyone learns well by just reading a book.

The video tutorials that we offer sort of cover the best of both worlds. “Live” classes aren’t always available or your company won’t cover the cost. What if there are no classes scheduled in your city/country during the project’s timeframe? Traditionally, you’ve had to turn to buying books and doing self-learning. Our videobooks cost the same as a book - usually $30-$40 for a subscription – and you can immediately download every video on the whole site.

Most importantly, a videobook gives you the audio/visual elements that so many creative-type people require to learn effectively. You’re getting training from people who are not only true Subject Matter Experts, but who are also expert trainers. And we have one thing that you can never do in a training class – you can rewind and re-watch the video as much as you need to!

How any hours of training does the website offer? How long does a typical videobook lesson last?

We think of our videobooks as a “living book”; i.e., today there are over 25 hours of training on LearnSqlServer.com. 25 hours of videos equates roughly to about a five-day class. By the end of the year we’ll be closer to 40 hours of training. By the end of 2007, it will be well over 70 hours of video training. That’s almost three weeks of classroom training time for only $30-$40.

As for the typical videobook lesson, I’d say that most of them are usually 8-10 minutes. Some are five minutes while others are 25 minutes, but the bulk of the topics are 8-10 minutes. They are what we call “task-based videos”. Each video is on a particular topic (“JOINs and UNIONs – How Do I Know When to Use a JOIN or a UNION?” for example) and it takes about as long as it would in a class. The best thing that your readers can do is to take a look at the list of videos on the site and then click around. You can see the time of each video, the skill level, the version(s) of SQL Server, etc. Just go to http://www.learnsqlserver.com/VideoTutorials/ and see for yourself.

Is there any special hardware or software required to play videobooks?

No. We’ve had customers play them on their Ipods, Creative Zens, and people playing them on Windows Media Player, just to name a few. Anything that plays AVI videos will play our software. The only thing you might need is the TSCC codec if you’re watching it on your PC, but it’s free and we include instructions with each video.

Most people just watch them on their computer in Windows Media Player.

Are the videobooks for novice DBAs, experienced DBAs, etc?

We run the gamut. We offer our videos on a “scale” of 100-500 with 100-level videos being for novices and 500-level being for gurus. We try to have a wide variety out there with some for everyone.

We tailor the website content to bring in more the novice and intermediate users since the gurus don’t often need the training. We include the guru-level videos because we want to take the novice and, within “x” number of months, have them graduate to watching the guru-level videos. They’ll be the hero back at the office because they watched a 7-minute video on how sp_change_users_login works and can explain it to their DBA.

You can browse the videos by skill level as well: http://www.learnsqlserver.com/VideoTutorials/VideosBySkillLevel.aspx

More specifically, can you tell us about some of the videos you offer?

I just went up to our Free Videos page (http://www.learnsqlserver.com/FreeVideos) and picked a few to talk about. Right now, one of the freebies we have is a 17-minute video titled “COLLATE and How Queries and Table Data Work with Case-Sensitive and Accent-Sensitive Data”. This is an excellent discussion of how SQL Server uses collations and how the ORDER BY and WHERE clauses work with string data. Most people don’t know whether SQL Server sorts upper-case first and then lower-case in an ORDER BY, for example. This video talks about that and things like collations, character sets/code pages and/or working with accents and case-sensitivity.

Another one that we have up there right now is titled, “SQL Server 2005 Services and Service Accounts - What They Do and What's New.” It’s a perfect intro to SQL Server 2005 for someone coming from SQL Server 7.0/2000 because you have a few new accounts added and a few new services. It’s almost 15 minutes and includes good examples of what happens when you turn on/off the SQL Browser service, for example.

Which versions of SQL Server to you cover in your videobooks?

SQL Server 2000 and SQL Server 2005. I thought about putting a few 7.0 and 6.5 examples up there (like how to upgrade from 7.0 to 2005) but it’s just been so long since either of those were released that I just decided to focus on 2000/2005.

So you have any videos covering SQL Server performance tuning or clustering?

Performance tuning is one of my favorite topics since I’ve focused my consulting on performance tuning for so many years. We have several videos up on the site now focused on query tuning, indexing, query plans, and the various SET STATISTICS/SET SHOWPLAN options. One of the challenges of producing the videobook is getting all the content up, and that’s certainly an area where I’ll be putting a lot of focus in the future. As for clustering, we don’t have any as of this writing (August, 2006), but it’s planned. The hard part is getting a cluster setup to record the videos on! Do you know anyone with a “production” cluster who will let me sit down and record videos?

Do you offer any free sample videos?

Definitely – and anyone can download them instantly without any “nagging”; i.e. we don’t ask for your email address, for example, before you watch our videos and you don’t have to wait for the snail mail to arrive with your demo. Check out http://www.learnsqlserver.com/FreeVideos and you’ll see the current crop of freebies.

We also rotate our free videos each month. If you’ll look on the top right side of the page, you’ll see the next rotation date. Put it on your calendar and come back to get five new ones. These are just random videos that we pull from our list of subscriber videos; we don’t change them in any way.

How much does it cost to subscribe?

Just speaking for LearnSqlServer.com, it’s only $29.95 and you can download every single video on the site. Each videobook has it’s own pricing model but, as a rule, they’re designed to be the same price as a book on the same topic. You can’t beat it!