Council Spotlight: The Impact of the TechNet Guru Awards
XAML guy is a member of the TechNet Wiki Community Council, and he owned the area of integrating the MSDN and TechNet forums better with TechNet Wiki.
And so the TechNet Guru Awards were born!
They cause some pain. We've had many debates on the forums about whether or not answers on the forums should be converted to TechNet Wiki articles. And we've written those reasons in detail before. Here are those blog articles:
- Wiki Life: Why create a TechNet Wiki article when you can just link to a forum thread?
- Top Five reasons to use MSDN/TechNet Forums & TechNet Wiki together
- Community Win: Social Synergy across TechNet Forums, TechNet Wiki, TechNet Gallery, TechNet Wiki again, and now TechNet Blogs
And while we do that, we've had to be careful not to make the Wiki too much about a competition. And we've had to make sure we don't award articles that shouldn't be awarded (like if a solution was wrong or dangerous).
But overall these last five months have had an amazing affect on the Wiki. Let's take a look at that!
May Guru Awards: TechNet Guru Contributions - May 2013
- 23 New Articles
- 8 Visual C# Articles!
June Guru Awards: TechNet Guru Contributions - June 2013
- 63 New Articles!
- 20 SharePoint Articles!
- 9 T-SQL Articles
July Guru Awards: TechNet Guru Contributions - July 2013
- 59 New Articles!
- 12 SharePoint Articles!
- 9 Windows Store Apps Articles
August Guru Awards: TechNet Guru Contributions - August 2013
- 79 New Articles!
- 25 BizTalk Articles!
- 12 Visual C# Articles!
- 11 T-SQL Articles!
- 9 SSRS/SSIS Articles
- 8 SharePoint Articles
September Guru Awards: TechNet Guru Contributions for September 2013
- 56 New Articles!
- 8 T-SQL Articles
- 8 BizTalk Articles
- 14 New Medal Winners! Congrats and Welcome to:
- Suleiman Shakhtour
- M.R.Ashwinprabhu
- Timo So
- Olaf Helper
- MnisharMSDN
- ShankarGS
- Stefan Hoffmann
- John Anthony Oliver
- PaulDAndrea
- Mcosmin
- Thomas Claudius Huber
- Jordan RTG
- Peter_Stapf
- Jacques Swanepoel!
October Guru Awards: TechNet Guru Contributions for October 2013
- 24 New Articles so far!
- 6 Visual C# Articles so far
Overall, here is what the impact has been (from May to September):
- 280 New Articles!
- 55 SharePoint Articles!
- 45 BizTalk Articles!
- 36 T-SQL Articles!
- 33 Visual C# Articles
- 22 SSRS/SSIS Articles!
- 18 VB Articles
- 16 Windows Store App Articles
- 14 WPF Articles
- 13 Win Phone Articles
- 12 Small Basic Articles!
- 9 FIM Articles
- 9 SSAS Articles
- 7 SQL DBE Articles
- 64 Award Winners!
- More new article authors and editors than any other program or initiative! We've grown a new generation of contributors!
- Because the focus was initially on MSDN development forums, the message is clearer than ever that TechNet Wiki is for Developers too!
10/25/13 UPDATE:
New Categories Added: As Richard mentioned in the comments, we add new categories as we go! Here are the categories we've added (and then we consolidate some categories when we need to)...
- May 2013 - Visual C#, SharePoint 2010, Transact-SQL, Visual Basic, Windows Phone Apps
- June 2013 - BizTalk, Small Basic, SSAS, SSIS, SSRS/Power View, Windows Store Apps, WPF
- July 2013 - FIM, SharePoint 2013 (added to SharePoint 2010), Power Pivot (added to SSAS), SQL DBE
- October 2013 - Windows Server, Power BI (added to SQL BI & Power Pivot)
So special thanks to XAML Guy and to all the TechNet Guru contributors who make this possible!
- Ninja Ed