So, Hey Everyone, This Is Daniel Christian and Today We Have a Great and Exciting Technet

Intro -

<Daniel>

So, hey everyone, this is Daniel Christian and today we have a great and exciting TechNet Wiki interview. And we're going to interview none other than Peter Geelen.

So, Peter I'm going to jump right in and ask, you know, tell us who you are, where are you, what you do and what are your speciality technologies.

<Peter>

Hey Daniel, thanks for having me, so quite exciting for me to. So yeah the first introduction, well: Peter Geelen, living in Belgium, Leuven actually, so home base here.

My speciality for work from a professional point of view: I’m currently a contractor, independent consultant. Although I have been working quite a while with Microsoft, actually for Microsoft, have been working for Microsoft for a few years now. Since march actually I got independent.

But as you will see still doing some work for Microsoft, teaching, some technical work in my expertise area which is enterprise security. And what you will see also on the Technet Wiki: identity management.

I've been long time already on the technical platform, for FIM, now since august it’s MIM (Microsoft Identity Manager). And that’s what I’m doing.

Outside thatexcept for my professional time, you willsee that actually I’m quite busy out of office hours, on TechNet Wiki. Yeah, sort of addiction right now…

There we go…

Thank you, all right.

So what is TechNet Wiki forand who is it for?

WellI’ve been actually on TechNet Wiki since the early beta days…in 2010. So, since quite a while right now.

The interesting part ofthatone, although it’s initialy called as words initially called “TechNet”Wiki, it’s actuallyvery much open to both IT Pro’s and developers. Andcertainly thelast year, I think we seeactually a lotof new participationon developers. We see lots of code samples, lots of interesting thing and coding techniques. So it'sa kind of good mix, from bothcommunities as we know it from TechNet and MSDN on TechNet wiki right now.

Great, thank you.

Thisquestion, you kind of already answered it abit, but if you want to give moreinformation, you're welcome. The question is what do you do with TechNet Wiki?

Well, I think, in contrary to the most ofthe technical writers on TechNet, it’s a bit of an

exception for me. Although you might see on TechNet Wiki, I’ve been writing some articlesmore or less in the area of security and identity management, of course some articles on FIM and MIM.

But what you will actually isalso that I havebeen writing quite some articles and a lot of content actuallyon the Wiki governance.

So I’m shifting,my focus rightnow, is rather on governance and bestpractices, which is actually based on best practices notonly for TechNet wiki but general wiki and on the internet.

it's kind of a learning curve or learning in progress, meaning that the governance evolves over time.

Best practices evolve. We act and reactbased on things that happen on TechNet Wiki so, that's my main focus right now. Always is trying to guide everything actually from a governance point of view.

#2-

Hey, Peter, so the next set of questions is: what is it about TechNet Wiki that interests you?

Well, yeah of course the cooperation of it. That's kind of a different thing, like for example the TechNet Forums. In most of the cases, TechNet forums for example, is a rather asking question and response to that one. In most cases these articles are sitting there and not reviewed anymore. That's a different thing at TechNet wiki that interests me the most is they are kept alive and it’s a long term investment. For example, we have quite interesting collection on build numbers and platforms that are actually revisited and reviewed over time. Most of the long-lived articles are updated very frequently but are still there since the early start of TechNet Wiki. And that’s one of the interesting things. So, cooperation and the long term investment actually that people are putting in the TechNet Wiki is quite a different approach than blogs and forums. That’s what I like very much.

Ok alright, so, in what other sites andcommunities do you contribute your technical knowledge?

I mentioned that one of my favorites, the one I visited more, is one of the forums…historically it’s the FIM/MIM forum. Although I have been spanning my attention to the Wiki blog, sorry forum.

Because, for what strange reason, actually the Wiki forum is a sort of open forum because people tend to post to that forum quite some questions in the Wiki forum which are not always related to Wiki. So I spend quite some time to keep it clean.

What I always try to do is to divert the questions and at least give them a basic answer, and to get them started because usually you see that if you've got the first answer on the forum that people start talking about it and then they get the proper attention. That’s one thing.

Second thing people probably have noticed that our Wiki blog is very active. And we have been building quite some community around it. We have some agenda for bloggers and so on. We get some nice frequent role on the Wiki blog.

Plus, on that one, quite recently with Ronen (Ariely) and Ed (Price) and a few other we have been starting the Forum Ninjas blog for the exact same reason to combine both worlds to get more attention from the people on the forums.

And last but not least, you have notice I’ve spent a lot of time on the Technet and MSDN blogs, but I also have my own blog also, on Wordpress : Identity Underground.

I tend to post more technical content on that one, or a test post or something that pops up, or something that’s pretty recent, a few things... And in the most of the case, I use it a external memory. Also what I try to do is to post some technical content on the blog which is a really practical solution for some issue and which is of course more related to FIM/MIM and identity management.

Okay that's great thank you. And you already covered it a little bit but you are welcome to use this to deepdivebe a little bit more is that on what Wiki articles you spend most of your time?

One of the things that are already mentioned is more technical content for FIM or MIM. But one of the things I’m very passionate in. And because of my role on Wiki governance, I almost scan every new article, to format it in a form or structured, uniform way.

I also try to push new editors to keep that formal, Wiki like structure and input.

As you will see we have a lot of new people joining every week and every month.

And they are are not always used to the way we work. So we try to format it and push them in a uniform way. Like for example, removing personalization, trying to keep it in an open format, in a more attractive way that the community CAN contribute to these articles. And as you might have noticed, a few weeks ago, I tried to clean the “new articles”section, actually for tracking the new articles and getting proper attention to these things.

Sadlyenough also is that actually even on a daily/weekly basis, we spend, (I and a lot of people helping me out, spend) a lot of time on this spam management.

We actually spend a lot of time keeping the spam under control.

Right now, there is no automated spam management, as such as we have rolled out a few weeks ago on the blogs (and the forums).

It's coming up but there is no timeline yet, but that would help us a lot to get a better quality on the TechNet Wiki.…

#3 - (4:34)

Alright, Peter, so tell us what are your favorite wiki articles that you contributed

Well, this is probably going to bore more people, but it’s FIM, and its MIM.
Actually there are 2 sets of articles I really like.
First one is an article about FIM 2010 Security, meaning that it’s a white paper on how to secure and what are the best practices in security.

It’s pretty unique in that sense that it’s all about public information how to put in best practices for security for FIM. Although if you need to look it up yourself, you’ll find that’s it’s all over the place on TechNet. This article is one single shot, one single document that connects all information.

I’m pretty much proud on that one because it actually has been revised or review by quite some of my community colleagues, also internally at Microsoft and have been approved for use.

Second thing is what you will see, it’s quite interesting: I’ve added it as a downloadable document in TechNet Gallery. So it’s a good combination of Wiki, forum and Gallery more specifically. I still realise I need to update a few things.. But it’s a very practical document and I use it very much in my daily operations and my daily professional work.

And that’s exactly the second part of my favorite set of articles: is…

I’ve actually collected a few of these quick start guides on FIM with a lot of quick links, so essentially I can go to my FIM and identity management student “Hey, this is the one URL and actually from that point of view, it’s a one single point of contact to find all the useful articles with very common questions for students”. This also a set of articles you quickly find on my profile, so it’s very useful and very Wiki alike.

Very well, thank you!See this is a really good question for someone with your expertise and the question is what are the areas that you think more attention or development?

I think I actually could refer back to what I have posted on the Wiki ninjas blog quite recently, is the following.

As I mentioned on one of the previous question, we see a lot of people jumping on TechNet wiki, popping up as a new writer on TechNet wiki.

But in most of the case they take content for example from their own blog (which is fine) but realise that the Wiki is not a blog, You need to take some measures, to make some changes into

these articles. Meaning, for example, the “first person”writing is “I did this”, “I did that”and “this is what I did”. That’s something you need to convert, to a more open “third person”writing, or to “we ..”statements, or what “you”should do. The point of view changes in most of the cases.

In that sense I always try to review documents even if I’m not a specialist on the technology being described in the document.

Is it usable for the community? Can we do something with it? Can people do something with it?

So that’s one of the things I try to stress when I write or update an article. That’s one thing.

Second thing is, due to the fact that the Wiki is a large collection of documents, I try to minimize the layout of the articles. And in most of the blogs we see a lot of MS word comments, lots of layout…

I try to minimize it using basic layout, basic headers, basic information, and certainly try to minimize the coloring, because that get very aggressive from a readers point of view.

Another thing is, we know we have some bugs and some way of working on the TechNet wiki, which blocks this kind of advanced layout. We know that some articles got blocked, got stuck on TechNet Wiki because of this advanced layout. So I try to minimize it.

You will actually see more of these situations where articles get much more stable and get much more interesting. And it might sound weird, but actually if you minimize the layout, make the readability optimal.

#4-

<MISSING>

#5-

Alright so you know, the last two are the most common questions. We ask for all the interviewees and these questions best fit someone of your knowledge and experiences. Do you have any comments for the sharepoint TechNet Wiki groups or product groups?

The short answer is, I think, “spam management”. I referred to it before already. That changed quite recently actually how spam is managed at the forums. And it’s a quite good platform now.

If you see for example, on the general access of the forums is actually, the spam has gone down significantly. I would be much more happyif we could apply the same kind of procedures on the TechNet wiki.

Because we’re currently spending way too much time on this “non-useful”content on TechNet wiki.

Which essentially would mean 2 things, if we can find a rule or something to block spam.

First of all there are very common factors in this kind of spam content

Second thing is: sort of maturity profile as it is right now for the blogs for example. People that post comments, in case they have a junior profile, meaning not having posted posted to the blogs before or a low experience number, so you see for example the points on your profile. If it’s below a certain number …I don’t know exactly what the (required) points are, but people that are not active for a long time or not very frequently…if they post something, the blog owner gets a moderation request in most of the cases. And if you get a sort of mature profile, you have been very active and very positive, and a few obvious contributions, you get a profile that can post and can automatically comment on a few things;

And I think if we could implement that, or have it at TNWiki, it will put the quality at TechNet Wiki at a much more higher level.

That’s one of the things I look forward to, if we can implement it on TNWiki.

There is one more difference we should know about: the TNWiki actually is not funded as such. Of course it’s operated by the technical teams, but there is no funding like as in the forums and the blogs, where we have (dedicated) product groups that are responsible for that blog or these forums. So they spend or have a budget for these blogs to support it, which we don’t have for the TNWiki. Which makes it difficult to push things to get things approved and then it’s very hard for Ed (Price) and me to defend the TNWiki and to move people to do it better.

And that’s the fun part of the job, to prove the value of the TNWiki to these teams and to get and engagement from the supporting teams.

That’s another thing, a bit more future support, maybe funding to get more professional support or more advanced and priority support on a few things. We have for example a page on the TechNet wiki that has some suggestions for improvements; and we realise these improvements will take some time and budget to get there.

#6 -

Hi Peter, so the last question I have for you is: do you have any tips for new wiki authors?

Well, actually a lot of tips I think. I’ve already posted a few and answered a few during this interview. But let me make it very short and simple. I would actually advise every new guy or girl, writing on Technet Wiki, just look at the landing page. On the right hand side you will discover a column for new contributors. Have a check on that one, it collects the most important things to get started with the Technet Wiki. There are a lot of practical hints and tips on there. So instead of running through all of it, I would like to invite you to go to the portal.

It’s called “Before you contribute”on the right hand side. Just check that one.
Even for people with a lot of experience in Technet Wiki, it’s still useful.

It has a lot of things and it moves around quite frequently, so we try to keep up to speed with that one.

Go there, have it checked!

All right, go!
Hey Peter, this was a fun interview, I thoroughly enjoyed it. I can’t wait to go ahead and build that article so that everybody else gets to enjoy this. Thank you so much for all the hard work, that diligent work that you and your team do. And we thoroughly enjoyed.

So, thank you so much and I look forward to communicating with you for some more things in the future. Thanks.