Interview with Philippe (Yagmoth555) - Visual Studio and Active Directory Expert, and Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist in Exchange

Welcome to Monday's Interview with a Wiki Ninja! Today's interview is with one of our top translators for French articles on TechNet Wiki, and he is also an author on this blog! Please join me in welcoming...

Philippe - Yagmoth555

Who are you, where are you, and what do you do? What are your specialty technologies?

My name is Philippe. I live in the north Québec’s area in the Canada. (Where there is more trees than buildings - lol). I studied 3 years in TI/programming. I work for a telecom company in the Canada (Bell Aliant).

I started as a generalist so I started with hardware certification in my path. (HP Accredited Platform Specialist, Lenovo Desktop/Laptop’s technician, Dell Enterprise, CompTIA A+, Microsoft Sales Assessment)

I started to be a network administrator with my MCTS: Exchange 2007, XenDesktop certification and Dell SAN training. (and a lot of clients’ installation)

My main speciality is to manage virtual desktop in a fully integrated Active Directory domain. (Microsoft and XenDesktop/XenApp mix). I am on the integration/field team too. From time to time I am left alone with a ‘swiss knife’ and I do a one shot install. What I love is that you can
go with only a ‘knife’ and some ‘wood’ and build a network in only some days. Those are strong’s challenge that you always come back stronger. I talk it that way because where I live some sites are really isolated, so you have to think to anything, and when you arrive on site you always face new challenge ! (Like this week, In two day I did travel by car 2500km and in two days installed a fresh new domain and the new IP telephony’s systems.)

What are your big projects right now?

On the job side: I am finishing a long term project of 2 years. Migrating 6 different’s sites for the same customer all in virtual. No more computers.. just one centralized computer... (That always reminds me of the 90's era)

On the personal’s side: I am writing a small tool in C to save some Exchange database with the EWS’s API. While I was in training for Exchange, I talked with some others people, and I found a problem with a backup product for Exchange. That was the starting point of that small project.

Besides your work on TechNet Wiki, where do you contribute?

I love contributing on TechNet’s forums. It allows me to see actual problems and the solutions for them. It's a way for me to be up to date with the ‘debugging’’s part of the technology I use. (I mostly contribute in Windows 2008’s forum)

I contribute a bit on the citrix’s forum and some opensource’s project on sourceforge.

What is TechNet Wiki for? Who is it for?

The Wiki is for learning and finding information’s fast. The Wiki is for anyone that wants to get more knowledge of a product. It allows everyone to build a strong knowledge’s base.

What do you do with TechNet Wiki, and how does that fit into the rest of your job?

I contribute to the Wiki because I want to learn. Translating an article is for me a way to learn and to stay up to date without the need of training (or less training is necessary).

 

On what articles have you collaborated with other community members on #TNWiki? What was that experience like?

I contributed on the main articles for now (the articles that first welcome the user) because no fr-FR translation was done for them yet, and now I am fighting my way through the Exchange/Active Directory base of articles. It feels great to help! A strong wiki need exists for community contributors.

What are your favorite Wiki articles that you’ve contributed?

My translation of ‘Replication Over Firewall for Active Directory’. A lot of times when I install some gears network administrator try to close all ports between VLAN or in VPN’s tunnel.

Debugging an Active Directory problem with network access’s rules is such a recurring problem that it was a great article that makes you think of some others way to make that work. (I love network technology.)

 

Who has impressed you in the Wiki community, and why?

Ed and tonysoper; The way the wiki is led is really cool!

Fernando Lugão Veltem; I tried to follow him on the first week of the challenge (and I just told Fernando because we seemed to be active on the wiki at the same times, so I followed his activity feed more than any other translator on the main Wiki page), and woahh, it was like a black belt against a yellow belt (I was the yellow belt)! He's amazing!

What does success look like for TechNet Wiki?

Success for the TechNet Wiki is to see it grow.

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Thanks to Yagmoth for the interview!

We look forward to engaging in the community with you for a long time to come!

Have a wonderful Wiki!

- Ninja Ed