When I began at Command Prompt, Java was coffee, Python was a snake, and a Ruby was best used on the color of glittery slippers. If you would have asked me two and a half years ago what "PostgreSQL" does, I would have asked you what language you were speaking.

A year later, I took my first sales call with out Joshua Drake (jd, @linuxhiker). I was shaking in my boots and it was inevitable that I was going to be sick. Then something happened as soon as I heard the customer say, "Hello".

I understood what the customer needed and most importantly, I knew we could do it. I was able to say confidently and with out doubt, "Yes, we can take care of you."

I still have a LONG way to go and I will never be a geek. But here are some key things a non-geek girl has learned from playing with geeks:

1. It's a big, technical world out there. It is vast and fast-paced. To keep up, you have to continue to instigate fresh ideas and put the time in to develop them. You also have to learn from other people's ideas. The PostgreSQL world is about more than consulting. It's a community of people passionate about the dynamic capabilities of PostgreSQL.

2. Document down to your underwear. We are passionate about documentation at CMD and you should be too. Only good things can come from documenting work and as Open Source advocates, we promote sharing the Postgres love.

3. Keeping your software, hardware, and underwear (sorry, it rhymed)updated is key in keeping up the health of your systems. If you don't, you will have problems at some point down the road and you will kick yourself for not making the upgrades sooner.

4. Our goal is for people to be successful with PostgreSQL. In order to help people do that, it sometimes takes asking "stupid" questions. It will be worth your technical ego if it saves you time, money, and your sanity in the future.

5. Take risks! Customers sometimes get nervous when we tell them what they are currently using just isn't going to work. The unknown can be unnerving but we are here to make things run as smoothly as possible. Take the risk and trust us!

So there it is, folks. You Postgres guys (and gals) out there do some really cool stuff. You make the technical world go round and most non-technical people don't even have a base understanding of your brilliance. I'm fortunate to have the CMD team to answer my "stupid" questions with patience and kindness. This is an adventure!

Angela

Angela Roberson has been with Command Prompt for two and a half years. She is currently the CMD Team Manager and can help you with all of your non-geek customer needs.