I love the "this guy" piece... Meanwhile he's been the most public person in academia talking about databases over at least the last 5 years, maybe the last 10. He's not only done an awesome job of talking about foundational pieces of databases, but also examining new databases that have come up over the last 10 years or so. He's course is quite open as well, so it's not just the student base that gets to take advantage - https://15445.courses.cs.cmu.edu/fall2023/
The shirts he's generally helped promote and publicize those companies so he has things to hand out to his students, TAs, graduate students.
Back in grad school he got put on probation a second time after hiring a magician off craigslist for admitted students day. The magician showed up drunk and lost his dove in the building.
The shirts he's generally helped promote and publicize those companies so he has things to hand out to his students, TAs, graduate students.