The fine MidnightDBA (blog | twitter) team brought up the concept of an UnSQL Friday to go along with the T-SQL Tuesdays. In this, the inaugural post, the topic decided upon was branding.

There is a lot written about branding on the web and there have already been some great posts on the topic as a part of this UnSQL Friday (such as http://nuurdygirl.blogspot.com/2010/11/brandinga-kinky-necessity.html).

I discovered my brand last week at the PASS Summit, and it’s interesting as it’s a case of accidental branding.

When I joined twitter a couple of years ago it was a nothing thing and I used it very little at first. As time went on I got more into it following folks, tweeting and using the #SQLHelp hashtag for when I ran into problems or saw folks that were having problems that I could assist on. Initially I had no profile picture. I’m really not a public person and so didn’t use a photo of myself and decided upon this funny image of a bush baby that I found online  I’ve not changed the image even though quite a few times I’ve thought of doing so.

Last week at PASS I was meeting people and being introduced. Folks didn’t recognize my name, they didn’t recognize my twitter handle (@anonythemouse) however the vast majority of people I interacted with who I knew from twitter recognized the bush baby image. In fact I was introduced on more than one occasion to people as the guy with the bush baby picture on twitter.

It seems that even without deciding upon a brand I had one anyway.