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The Wedding Dancer

In the immortal words of H. L. Mencken, “Those who can, do. Those who can’t, teach.”

Troy Coleman, a “technical sales support guy” with the Asheville, N.C.-based SoftBase Systems, is an exception to that old saying. He’s done both, and not just in the computer-science industry.

Before attending Concordia College in River Forest, Ill., and becoming a DB2* for z/OS* expert, he began singing jazz and dancing as a high-school senior in Clovis, Calif. Soon, he found himself teaching jazz and tap dance at a local dance school. And then, after performing in a dinner-theater production of “West Side Story,” he was asked to join the Fresno Civic Ballet.

“When I first started, I just did the waltz—it wasn’t formal ballet—and I escorted and spotted girls around on the stage. But after three years of training, I got to the point where I could do real ballet,” he recalls. He even tried out for a Dr Pepper commercial, but didn’t get the part. “I wasn’t tall enough,” he says.

At the same time, Coleman was also a cabinetmaker. He started loading trucks, then tried sanding and doing some finishing work, and finally made doors. “I wasn’t planning on going to college at that time,” he says.

Until, that is, he met his best friend’s cousin. She was studying computer sciences at Concordia, and even though she was dating someone else at the time, he followed her to Illinois. “I guess they’d call that stalking now,” he jokes.

Although she discouraged him at first, he followed her into computer sciences. This was in part because he was enamored with her (and eventually married her), but also because he discovered he was a natural at it.

Programming came so easy to him, in fact, that the college hired him as a full-time IT employee his junior year. After his graduation, they made him an offer he couldn’t refuse, although he did. “I went to work for a consulting firm because I wanted some real-world experience,” Coleman says.

Coleman, an IBM Certified Database Administrator on DB2 9 for z/OS and Linux*, UNIX* and Windows* and self-employed consultant, has since gone on to other pursuits, including his current position of support engineer at SoftBase where he does customer software demos and onsite-implementation services. He’s also a boardmember of the Chicago Midwest DB2 Regional User Group (RUG) and was on the planning committee of the International DB2 User Group (IDUG). Based on his 20-plus years of experience with DB2, he’s a frequent speaker for various RUGs and writes a weekly blog called “DB2utor” on the IBM Systems Magazine Web site (www.ibmsystemsmag.blogs.com/db2utor).

This diverse background may seem disconnected, but Coleman insists it isn’t. In fact, he sees parallels between what he did then and what he does now. “For me, memorizing steps to a dance came easy and analyzing and figuring out programming came easy,” he says. “In fact, I know several IT people who were in bands. One was in a punk-rock band the other one was in a hard-rock band. My wife is in IT, and she plays the flute. It could be the mathematical side of your brain, counting rhythms and analyzing programs.”

When asked if he still dances, he says, “Only at weddings.” Whatever the case, it’s clear Mencken never met anyone like Coleman, both a doer and a teacher.