This week's interview puts the spotlight on another Wiki Ninja.

Instead of a normal paced interview, I've taken another approach.
Short questions, short answers: meet Thomas Vuylsteke (MVP FIM)!

Who are you?
Thomas Vuylsteke, Husband (almost 5 years), Father (almost 8 weeks! :p) and IT Pro

Where are you?
Sleidinge, Belgium. For those that don’t knowSleidinge… ;) Or Belgium… http://binged.it/KuZpM7

What do you do?
I work as a Consultant For RealDolmen

Besides your work on the Wiki, where do you contribute? (Forums, blog?)
I try to share with the community on a regular base.
On my blog,  ADdict (http://setspn.blogspot.com/), I post both tips and tricks or solutions to technical problems I encountered.
On the TechNet forums I try to jump in once in a while to pick up on some open threads. But life is busy…

What’s your favorite quote?
If I have a problem, someone else can have it too.

Why this quote?
Ok it’s not really a quote, but every time I think “is this worth blogging/writing a wiki about?”, I say it to myself.
It’s the sole reason I started blogging in the first place.
I have found many interesting blogs in the past and often I thought, if it weren’t for this or that article I would never have the insights I have today.

What are your specialty technologies? Name max 5.

1. Kerberos,
2. Forefront Identity Manager,
3. Active Directory,
4. AD Federation Services,
5. Forefront Threat Management Gateway
   

What do you do with TechNet Wiki ? (Hey, keep it short!)
I try to put “reference” articles on it. Mostly covering a topic which a lot of people struggle with. Mostly the ideas come from questions on the TechNet forums.
The advantage I see is that It’s a way to sharpen my understanding of a topic while writing. And besides that, if I were to make mistakes I’m sure somebody in the community will be glad to help me and correct me! So I get the opportunity to learn something as well!

How does your Wiki work fit into the rest of your job?
I’m often encountering all sorts of technical issues. Troubleshooting articles point me in the right direction. Or when designing it’s always great to get some deeper technical insights by reading some wiki articles written by people like you and me.

What is it about TechNet Wiki that interests you? Define it with a few key words.
The fact that you can start with a small article and that other people can pick it up and maintain it as a community effort!

On what articles do you spend most of your time?
Definitely on this one: FIM 2010: Kerberos Authentication Setup Kerberos is my all-time favorite piece of technology.
I just love to dive into problems regarding Kerberos. As I’ve see people struggle with it every once in a while on the forums I thought I’d try to write an article which has more info in it than “execute setspn –a …” and really explain how I tackle this configuration.

What are your top 5 favorite articles?
I would not put them in a particular order, but here are the ones I frequently use as a source of information:

• FIM How To Use PowerShell To * (ok not one specific article, but it’s amazing how many useful examples have been gathered by community members)
• FIM 2010 Wiki Articles (have all articles on one page! Super easy to ctrl-f!)
• FIM 2010 Build Overview (Started by me, but different people took over and kept it up to date!)

What are the top 5 topics that need more attention & development?
The #1 item on my list is definitely visitor statistical information.
I’m all into sharing content. But those articles sometimes take a lot of my personal time to write.
It would be nice to see if certain of those articles are hardly ever read, or on the other hand are very popular.
It would allow us to change the type of articles or improve them as we learn from the popularity.
Also some form of a table of content would be great.
In the regular TechNet documentation you can easily go back and forward through the various topics such as preparation, design, implement, troubleshoot,…

With the wiki’s it’s more like a bunch of loose pages and you have to find them yourselves. Ok there’s pages with links gathered on them, but a TOC would be nice.

Who has impressed you in the Wiki community, and why?
Markus Vilcinskas! He’s the one who got me started on the wiki writing. He gave me a great bunch of tips and has pushed me in the right direction.

What does success look like for TechNet Wiki?
Helping people understand technologies where regular TechNet articles fall short.

Technet Wiki is (highlight 1 choice per line)  

• Job / Fun
• Easy / hard to work with
• Sharing Experience / Passion
• Teaching / Learning => both!
• Sharing / gathering knowledge
• Open / closed platform
• Personal / Community driven
• For newbies / specialists à 3th option: Everyone!
• Quick win / long term investment
• Developer / ITPro => for both!
• ITPro / Developer => for both!

Thanks Thomas!
Ask any questions you have for Thomas in the comments!

[Ka-jah Shakaah!]
The Security & Identity Ninja.

Peter Geelen     
peter@fim2010.com
Premier Field Engineer - Security & Identity at Microsoft
CISSP, CISA, MCT, former-MVP Forefront Identity Manager

Follow me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/geelenp

So it's my turn to do the Friday post with our International Update!

This couldn't be anymore international, I'm sitting cozy in Business Class heading to Italy to attend and speak at the Overnet BizTalk Innovation Event. International speakers are attending and a total of 4 BizTalk MVPs and 2 community members. (MVP Saravana Kumar, MVP Steef-Jan Wiggers, MVP Sandro Pereira the host MVP Nino Crudele, Community member Lex Hegt and myself.) So this blog post is written in the sky, where the limit for the wiki is!

So with my shoes off and a cold drink (cola) I decided to use notes on my iPhone and I wonder why the font is so bad.  It's really hard to use it for anything other than notes. When I was younger I decided to study graphical and multi-media design but ended up as a developer and now a BizTalk Administrator Expert. But now I'm getting off topic (I love to elaborate and go on and on, so please excuse me)

The international update this week is by the commitment for the Norwegian community. At the moment only one out of thousands IT specialist in Norway contribute to the wiki, and that's me. You might ask why I do an effort, what is really the point? Norwegians are usually good at English and have no trouble reading English (it's a part of school and everyone learns English parallel to Norwegian from first grade in elementary school) One wise man (Laymon Patterson) once told me that I could be someone, and that I could do anything I ever wanted. That ignited something in me, someone have to start making the ball roll, someone needs to "take the first bullet" (a bit drastic?) So for me translating these articles over to Norwegian was the start of something, the beginning, making the search engines see it and users locate it. It's up to 45 pages in the TechNet Wiki. And people view, read and update them!

My work brings me into many funny scenarios and issues that might be well known to me, but not for all, good example are stress testing, BizTalk architecture etc. I often explain how it's done and refer to a TechNet Wiki article later on in an email, having it in Norwegian will often let words that are "big" and not so often used in the English vocabulary easier to understand in their native language. So Even though English is your second language there is no harm in translating, last but not least for students, kids etc. Maybe where English maybe isn't developed that well, yet a native copy of the article is worth more then it's weight in gold.

So for those thinking about starting or creating the first article in their language go ahead, broadcast it out to your community and share it to everyone, even your better half or kids. Make use of what we have and show community spirit by sharing and helping! 

The International Contest #2 - Connect and recruit!

So to start out something new, a new competition, get the most people to help contributing to TechNet Wiki in any language! To keep a record, the person you "recruit" to the Wiki must complete at least one article (I will elaborate more about this), in their native language and they must comment in this blog post that you recruited them.You've got 5 weeks from today!

 Ex: I started "wiki-ing" thanks to Tord G. Nordahl, and I LOVE IT!

So in order for the nomination to have an effect, and to count as a point one of the following choices must have been fulfilled.

1. Edit a current article with their native language (must be edited to provide a better article, spelling and layout does not count as an edit). Or...

2. Create a new article in their native language (or any other language). It can be completely new or a translation... so it can be from English to Norwegian, or Norwegian to English.

This can be on TechNet Wiki English (with the language tag ex. en-US, nb-NO) or on one of the three devoted language wikis (Portuguese, Chinese, Russian).

So a few tips to win:

1. Comment on non-English articles and tell them about the competition, make them join and translate their articles.

2. Connect with others and help them out!

3. Talk to your friends and co-workers, they can join too!

So what can you win?

1st price is: An interview for the top individual recruiter and a Jedi Knight Ninja stick figure! Example

2nd price is: Jedi Padawan stick figure for your language's group! Example

And all contributions will be checked and verified!

Are you up for the challenge? Spread the word and continue sharing!

 May the force be with you all!

Jedi Knight / Norwegian Ninja Tord (Blog, Twitter, Wiki, Profile)

Welcome to our weekly Top 10 Wiki Ninjas. Let's see this week's chart...

Fernando easily takes the top spot with 264 edits! It's a mix of English editing, Portuguese editing, and adding tags.

Fernando's Profile

Fernando was one of the first people we featured here.

We also recently featured the #2 and #3 performers this week, Richard and Margriet.

So today we're going to take a look at Patris 70.

Patris' Profile

Patris has done a lot this week.

First, Patris has been authoring and editing some content in English:

 Active Directory Attributes in the ADUC GUI Tool (en-US)

Second, Patris has been editing and updating other peoples' articles:

Event ID 1014 Microsoft Windows DNS Client (en-US)

Event ID 1060 - Application Popup (en-US)

Event ID 6 Microsoft-Windows-Kernel-Processor-Power (en-US)

TROUBLESHOOTING: Event ID: 6801: The Exchange server address list service failed to respond (en-US)

Event ID 500 Windows Diagnostics Performance (en-US)

Event ID 1111 — Terminal Services Printer Redirection (en-US)

Using MOM Tasks to Uninstall SSA from FCS Clients (en-US)

Forefront UAG Troubleshooting: Event ID 161: The User Name Claim Type Is Missing from the Security Token (en-US)

Prepare Your Existing Systems and Be Ready to Transition (en-US)

Many-to-Many Mapping in Master Data Services (en-US)

Third, Patris has also been translating Active Directory content into Farsi/Persian:

ایجاد Domain Trees جدید (fa-IR)

کتاب مشاور جیبی ادمینهای اکتیو دایرکتوری (fa-IR)

Fourth, Patris has edited other people's Farsi/Persian articles:

سطوح کارکرد در اکتیو دایرکتوری (fa-IR)

طراحی ساختار مناسب برای واحدهای سازمانی در اکتیو دایرکتوری (fa-IR)

Plus, Patris has helped clean up spam this week too! Quite a busy week!

So thanks to Patris, and congrats to Fernando, Richard, Margriet, and all the other contributors this week!

Thanks for making TechNet Wiki a wonderful place!

  - Ninja Ed

It has been a while since my last blog post on Wiki-Ninjas on Technology. This post will discuss this great new set of integration capabilities in the cloud and what has been contributed by community so far on this topic. Windows Azure Service Bus EAI and EDI Labs is the entry point to learn the integration capabilities for the Windows Azure Platform (aka cloud). These cloud integration capabilities provide a way:

• to extend on-premises applications to the cloud
• to provide rich messaging endpoints on the cloud to process and transform the messages
• to help organizations integrate with disparate applications, both on cloud and on-premises.

To summarize the Service Bus EAI and EDI Labs provides common integration capabilities (e.g. bridges, transforms, B2B messaging) on the Service Bus.

On Windows Azure Service Bus EAI & EDI you will find the following articles contributed by the community and Microsoft employees:

• Announcing the Service Bus EAI & EDI Labs Release
• Windows Azure Service Bus EAI and EDI Labs - Introduction
• Windows Azure EAI and EDI labs - installation step-by-step
• Creating a LOB Target with Windows Azure Service Bus EAI and EDI Labs - step-by-step

The number of integration capabilities will grow over time. The maturity of these capabilities will increase too, so you will see in the future more articles being contributed to TechNet Wiki by the community and Microsoft employees.

Welcome again to Wiki Life Wednesday!

Being a member of the Technet Wiki community is good, but isn't it better to be a member of a bigger community?

Nowadays, connecting different networks is a quite common feature, and have some benefits.

For example, Technet Wiki has a feature to share Wiki articles with social networks - and using this, you can draw the attention of members of other communities to valuable contributions on Technet Wiki.

Why is it good?

There are people who might be unaware of Technet Wiki, however they would be valuable contibutors.

For you, if you share an article you created or modified, you can increase the view count, so you can earn more recognition points! See the earlier article by Ed Price how.

For the people, who were notified on different networks by you about the articles, it's good because they can get information regarding the technologies they are interested in.

And it's good for the Technet Wiki community as well: you basically give the chance to grow, since more people can contribute!

You can share the articles very easily: you can find the buttons at the bottom of each Wiki article (right above the comments section). By clicking the More button, you can see more networks listed:

You can share content on the following networks:

• Facebook
• Twitter
• LinkedIn
• Digg
• Reddit
• del.icio.us
• SlashDot
• MySpace
• Technorati
• FriendFeed
• Messenger
• and StumbleUpon.

Add new articles, use this feature and compare the results with your earlier contributions!

Zoli
(blog | twitter | profile)