OMG, it’s still going.
In January 2013, I started DBAreactions.com on a whim. As the dog would say, I had no idea what I was doing. I thought it might be a small passing fad, fun to read for a while but then quickly dying off. However, this thing had legs:
It’s mind-blowing to me that this little fun experiment has had over a million sessions. That’s a lot of laughter to generate:
GIFs are a global language, too – less than half of the readers are from the US:
DBAreactions as a Teaching Tool
Earlier this year, I used DBAreactions as a storytelling tool at a packed session at the SQLbits conference. I had a great time with that – it let me run a comedy act with the slide deck as the comedian, and myself as the straight guy. Sadly, that session wasn’t recorded, but you can watch a portion of it recorded in my home studio.
I’m always looking for new techniques to convey training material, and I think this one worked pretty well. Obviously it doesn’t work for every topic, but no training technique does. It worked really well to critique the oddball features in SQL Server 2014, but will it work to teach a serious, non-sarcastic topic? Only one way to find out. For 2016, I’d like to work at least one DBAreactions module into each of my week-long training classes. They’re good for afternoon sessions to reinvigorate attendees.
The Future of DBAreactions
A couple months ago, I decided to quit contributing images & captions to it myself. I thought I’d let it just wind down and slow to a halt.
But it kept going – especially since I added the search box on the left side.
Readers keep submitting their own DBAreactions through the submission form on the left side of the site. There’s instructions on how to credit yourself, but most people don’t even bother. Anything you see on here is from readers, though. Now it’s even more fun for me because now I get to laugh along with everybody else.
DBAreactions just keeps going.
