January TechNet Guru: Rise of PowerShell!!! And Visio takes a nap.

History of TechNet Guru

First of all, if you don't know the history of TechNet Guru, then you should read up on it:

   

It started as a challenge from me to our council members to start a competition in the forums for the forum members to turn their awesome forum answers into Wiki articles!

It's part of the goal of Social Synergy. See these articles about the social synergy of TechNet Wiki + TechNet/MSDN Forums (and our other social apps like the Gallery, Twitter, or YouTube):

And through that challenge, one person on our council rose to the challenge. He made it bigger and better than anything we've ever done! He's impacted Microsoft arguably more than any other community member. And that one amazing contributor is XAML Guy...

XAML guy

XAML guy's avatar

Profile Stats:

  • 105K+ Recognition Points
  • 13 Gold Achievement Medals, 17 Silver, 24 Bronze
  • 854 Forum Answers
  • 102 TechNet Wiki Articles
  • 91 Gallery Contributions
  • 261K+ Downloads on his Gallery Contributions!
  • 142 Wiki Ninja Blog Posts
  • 878 4 or 5 star ratings on those blog posts!

   

Top Contributors and Wiki Ninja Belts

He's also the one who took over the reigns of our weekly Top Contributors from me, and he also built that into something bigger and better than I ever did (I just had the two leaderboard images, thanked people, and called it quits). Once again he knocked it out of the park (with categories, awards, and now amazing winner summaries):

See the difference? =^)

    

And yet again, he recently knocked it out of the park by helping automate my old labor of love, the Wiki Ninja Belts recognition system:

And special thanks to Margriet and Durval for banding together to help us carry that system out into our Wiki-licious future:

   

That pretty much catches us up with the present. Over the course of the TechNet Guru contest, we've added, removed, and combined our categories. Here's the history of that:

  • This awesomeness is coming soon(ish)!

 

And that brings us to the current announcement! 

   

The Rise of PowerShell

Thanks to the prodding of Chen V, we're launching the new PowerShell category for TechNet Guru! PowerShell has been the most consistent topic in our Miscellaneous category over the past few months, and so it deserves its shot to shine!

Here are the new category submissions for January!

We have 4 submissions so far!

  

Visio Takes a Nap

It's not exactly a retirement, because we still encourage our Visio enthusiasts to submit their amazing Visio articles in the Miscellaneous category. But it has become evident to us that the Visio category is usually only getting 1-2 articles. Even occasionally zero. So it's time to shift those articles into the Miscellaneous category and make room as we continue to expand the TechNet Guru impact!

Thanks to all our Visio Gurus! I'd like to thank you personally...

So a hearty and special thanks go out to Mr X by contributing four winning articles! And a special thanks also to Durval for another two great articles, as well as Dan and Shreeharsh! You can probably see why we're closing the category, but also please know that we welcome Visio articles in the Miscellaneous category! Also, this was still a big community win, because it rallied together a handful of great articles that greatly benefited our Visio users! So thank you to all who were involved!

     

  

And that's it! Thanks again to XAML guy, Chen V, our Visio Gurus, and our future PowerShell Gurus! Let's continue our Guru collaborations! Because after all, with TechNet Guru and TechNet Wiki, the true winners are the community!

   - Ninja Ed