History of TechNet Guru

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

• The "Microsoft TechNet Guru Awards" is now available in French !
• TechNet Guru - New Miscellaneous Category!!
• Introducing the Wiki and Portals category on TechNet Guru!!!
• Council Spotlight: Demystifying the TechNet Guru Judge System
• Council Spotlight: Impact of the TechNet Guru Awards (May 2013 - March 2014)
• TechNet Guru GOLD Winners in Windows Development (May-July 2013)
• TechNet Guru June Roundup & Commentary
• Community Win: the TechNet Guru June article
• Council Spotlight: The Impact of the TechNet Guru Awards

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!

• Want to start a TechNet Wiki contest around your technology?

It's part of the goal of Social Synergy. See these articles about the social synergy of TechNet Wiki + TechNet/MSDN Forums:

• Wiki Life: TechNet Wiki + MSDN/TechNet Gallery = AMAZING!!!!
• Wiki Life: Why create a TechNet Wiki article when you can just link to a forum thread?
• Community Win: Social Synergy across TechNet Forums, TechNet Wiki, TechNet Gallery, TechNet Wiki again, and now TechNet Blogs
• Synergy between the TechNet Wiki and TechNet Gallery
• TNWiki Article Spotlight - How to Post a Wiki Article Announcement to a TechNet Forum
• Impact of WikiNinjas on Twitter
• Wiki Life: YouTube + TechNet Wiki
• Synergy in Social Computing
• Community Win: dsforum2wiki - Help me unlock the mystery of the great content migration from the Windows Server DS forum to TechNet Wiki!!!
• Wiki Life: Why should I use TechNet Wiki if I already blog about Microsoft technologies?
• Top Five reasons to use MSDN/TechNet Forums & TechNet Wiki together
• Using TechNet Wiki as Documentation Platform for CodePlex
• Wiki Life: Should I use the Gallery or TechNet Wiki?

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

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):

• My first: Top #TNWiki Articles of the Week! - Tony Soper leads the pack!
• My second: Top Wiki Ninjas of the Week - Fernando Lugão Veltem (MCC) takes on Exchange Server 2010 and Lync Server!!!
• His latest: Top Contributors Awards! Super Security! Amazing Agendas! Rich References! Cool Codes! Sensational Summits! Read and Rejoice!

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:

• History and Technology Behind The TechNet Wiki Ninja Belt Calculator
• TechNet Wiki Ninja Belts - Reloaded!
• Ninja Belts Improved! Thanks to Eagle Eyed Ninja Durva Ramos!

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

• TechNet Wiki Ninja Belts - Updated! See which members gained a rank...

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 months, and so it deserves its shot to shine!

Here are the new category submissions for January!

We have 4 submissions so far!

• CSOM SharePoint PowerShell Reference and Example Codes By Chen V
• Time Stamp Conversion Using PowerShell By Chen V
• PowerShell Trick : Use AD PSProvider to enable inheritance By DexterPOSH
• PowerShell + ConfigMgr Trick : Remove WMI Instances By DexterPOSH

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...

• The Microsoft TechNet Guru Awards! (November 2014)
  • Gold: How to check the Activation Type and Status of Microsoft Visio 2013 installations by Mr X
• The Microsoft TechNet Guru Awards! (October 2014)
  
  • Gold: Unattended installation of Visio 2013 by Mr X
• The Microsoft TechNet Guru Awards! (September 2014)
  
  • Gold in the Wiki & Portals category: Visio Portal by Durval Ramos
• The Microsoft TechNet Guru Awards! (August 2014)
  
  • Gold: Build Visio 2013 diagram for SharePoint Online by Dan Christian
• The Microsoft TechNet Guru Awards! (July 2014)
  
  • Gold: Reverse Engineering a SQL Server Database using Visio by Durval Ramos
• The Microsoft TechNet Guru Awards! (June 2014)
  
  • Gold: How to open Visio files without Visio by Mr X
• The Microsoft TechNet Guru Awards! (May 2014)
  • Gold: How to export your Orchestrator Runbooks to Visio and Word by Mr X
• The Microsoft TechNet Guru Awards! (April 2014)
  • Gold: Documenting Use Cases using Visio Professional by Shreeharsh

   

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