In Memory of Scott Hayes

I was very sad to learn that Scott Hayes passed away from COVID-19 on August 18.

The comments on his obituary are a list of friends and mentees from the Db2 community. I wanted to pay tribute to him by sharing my good memories of him and sharing the impact he had directly on my career.

I first met Scott at a conference in Denver. I was a peon DBA in IBM Global Services with less than 5 years of experience, and had managed to get management to allow me to split a conference pass with a colleague. Out of my own pocket, I came up with the money to attend Scott’s day long performance tuning seminar the day before the conference. This was an excellent choice for me. Halfway through the day, I found what Scott was teaching so interesting that I had pulled out my laptop and was actively coding some of what I was learning.

Several years later, when I had been writing this blog for about six months and was still only getting about 50 page views a day, I went to Scott and asked him to look at the blog and tell me what he thought of it. He immediately scheduled me to present on the Db2 Night Show and proceeded to help me get the blog in front of more people. In January, after I presented on the Db2 Night Show for the first time, page views started going up, and continued that upward trend for a number of years.

I often went to Scott’s presentations, and learned a lot from him over the years. A few times I was a client of his, when I worked for someone who bought the DBI tools, but not always. He had this odd combination of being a great salesman, but at the same time giving of himself to raise others up. I still remember when a DBA he was mentoring was having a hard time getting an IDUG presentation accepted. Scott submitted the session with him as a co-presenter, and then on the day of the presentation, Scott sat off to the side in the room reading a newspaper. It was a great presentation that I still remember today. Scott knew his mentee was ready for this, and did everything in his power to support him, making it clear to the audience that his mentee could stand on his own.

I talked with Scott a couple times over the years about working with him at DBI, and while that never happened, It still triggered a lot of thinking and discussions with others about what I want out of my career and what is not important. I will miss his presence in the Db2 community and in my own career, and at every conference.

Based on his facebook posts, Scott was not vaccinated. If you’re not vaccinated against COVID-19 and have the opportunity, please get vaccinated! Don’t let this disease take another member of our Db2 community away from us.

A few pictures from conferences over the years: