Welcome to Monday's Interview with a Wiki Ninja! Today's interview is with one of our top translators for French articles on TechNet Wiki, and he is also an author on this blog! Please join me in welcoming...

Philippe - Yagmoth555

Who are you, where are you, and what do you do? What are your specialty technologies?

My name is Philippe. I live in the north Québec’s area in the Canada. (Where there is more trees than buildings - lol). I studied 3 years in TI/programming. I work for a telecom company in the Canada (Bell Aliant).

I started as a generalist so I started with hardware certification in my path. (HP Accredited Platform Specialist, Lenovo Desktop/Laptop’s technician, Dell Enterprise, CompTIA A+, Microsoft Sales Assessment)

I started to be a network administrator with my MCTS: Exchange 2007, XenDesktop certification and Dell SAN training. (and a lot of clients’ installation)

My main speciality is to manage virtual desktop in a fully integrated Active Directory domain. (Microsoft and XenDesktop/XenApp mix). I am on the integration/field team too. From time to time I am left alone with a ‘swiss knife’ and I do a one shot install. What I love is that you can
go with only a ‘knife’ and some ‘wood’ and build a network in only some days. Those are strong’s challenge that you always come back stronger. I talk it that way because where I live some sites are really isolated, so you have to think to anything, and when you arrive on site you always face new challenge ! (Like this week, In two day I did travel by car 2500km and in two days installed a fresh new domain and the new IP telephony’s systems.)

What are your big projects right now?

On the job side: I am finishing a long term project of 2 years. Migrating 6 different’s sites for the same customer all in virtual. No more computers.. just one centralized computer... (That always reminds me of the 90's era)

On the personal’s side: I am writing a small tool in C to save some Exchange database with the EWS’s API. While I was in training for Exchange, I talked with some others people, and I found a problem with a backup product for Exchange. That was the starting point of that small project.

Besides your work on TechNet Wiki, where do you contribute?

I love contributing on TechNet’s forums. It allows me to see actual problems and the solutions for them. It's a way for me to be up to date with the ‘debugging’’s part of the technology I use. (I mostly contribute in Windows 2008’s forum)

I contribute a bit on the citrix’s forum and some opensource’s project on sourceforge.

What is TechNet Wiki for? Who is it for?

The Wiki is for learning and finding information’s fast. The Wiki is for anyone that wants to get more knowledge of a product. It allows everyone to build a strong knowledge’s base.

What do you do with TechNet Wiki, and how does that fit into the rest of your job?

I contribute to the Wiki because I want to learn. Translating an article is for me a way to learn and to stay up to date without the need of training (or less training is necessary).

On what articles have you collaborated with other community members on #TNWiki? What was that experience like?

I contributed on the main articles for now (the articles that first welcome the user) because no fr-FR translation was done for them yet, and now I am fighting my way through the Exchange/Active Directory base of articles. It feels great to help! A strong wiki need exists for community contributors.

What are your favorite Wiki articles that you’ve contributed?

My translation of ‘Replication Over Firewall for Active Directory’. A lot of times when I install some gears network administrator try to close all ports between VLAN or in VPN’s tunnel.

Debugging an Active Directory problem with network access’s rules is such a recurring problem that it was a great article that makes you think of some others way to make that work. (I love network technology.)

Who has impressed you in the Wiki community, and why?

Ed and tonysoper; The way the wiki is led is really cool!

Fernando Lugão Veltem; I tried to follow him on the first week of the challenge (and I just told Fernando because we seemed to be active on the wiki at the same times, so I followed his activity feed more than any other translator on the main Wiki page), and woahh, it was like a black belt against a yellow belt (I was the yellow belt)! He's amazing!

What does success look like for TechNet Wiki?

Success for the TechNet Wiki is to see it grow.

============

Thanks to Yagmoth for the interview!

We look forward to engaging in the community with you for a long time to come!

Have a wonderful Wiki!

- Ninja Ed

Did you have a childhood hero when you grew up? Most people do. The hero often is an athlete, soccer player, ballerina, pop star, president or movie star. For girls, the idol can be Madonna, Lady Gaga, Sissi/Romy Schneider, or Meryl Streep. For boys, the idol can be Tarzan, Bruce Lee, Lionel Messi, or Al Pacino. Me? I had a rather unusual childhood hero: Sigmund Freud. I surely would have become a psychologist, if I hadn’t fallen in love with programming so much. I rarely mention the fact that I’m interested in social science, as it is seldom relevant. But today, it is. You’ll see why in a little while, but if you’re suspecting it has something to do with Wikis you’d be right. For now, we’ll let that rest…

Moving on to the topic…

A little while ago, somebody in the SharePoint forums wanted to know how people go about estimating the size of SharePoint projects. Basically, I believe there are three ways of estimating IT projects:

• Machiavellian count.
• Expert count.
• Function point count.

Let’s elaborate on these forms a little more.

Machiavellian Count

Yes, you won’t find that one in the study books. This one is quite easy to understand, and instead of providing a definition, I’ll provide some anecdotes to explain its meaning. I do this, not because it’s absolutely necessary, but because I find it’s more fun that way.

Anecdote 1. On my first job, I was sitting close to one of our account managers (let’s say his name was Fred). He was talking to a customer, discussing a new project. Fred said that the project would cost approx. 20,000 euro. The customer replied that that was okay, because they had a budget of 40,000 euro. Fred said that that was a good thing, because naturally, the 20,000 euro excluded project management, testing, communication, and documentation. So, in the end, 40,000 euro would just cut it, luckily. That was the fastest 20,000 euro loss/gain (depending on your perspective) I’ve witnessed.

Anecdote 2. On another job, the company I worked for was trying to win a new, pretty big project. People at my company did a careful estimation, let other people take a look at it, and did a re-estimation. Finally, they came to the conclusion that the entire project would cost 600,000 euro and that that was a fair price. They didn’t win the job, because of the following reason: the potential customer had a budget of 600,000 euro and used a rule that, internally, they doubled the offer made by any company, and would assume that that figure would be the real cost of the project. It turned out that another company (let’s call ‘em compA) offered to do it for 300,000 euro.The customer doubled that number, and saw that 600,000 euro was just within the limits of their budget. The offer by my company was 600,000 euro. After you double it, that becomes 1,2 million, which didn’t fit in the budget. At that point, it didn’t matter anymore that the estimation by CompA may have been far from the truth. They won the job and must have thought: “Well, there’s always budget for bug fixing, we’ll see what happens later”.

By now, you should have a firm grasp of the meaning of Machiavellian count. If you want to learn more about Machiavellian count, don’t ask me, as I’m far too nice a person to be good at it!

Expert Count

In the companies I’ve seen (and I’ve seen a lot of them) some sort of expert count is used regularly. Expert count is the scenario where you have one expert (or more) estimate how long it will take to complete a project. Depending on the quality of the expert(s) and his/her team members, this can be a fine approach. Over the years, I’ve been getting quite good at it, and I’m seldom mistaken by far. The obvious drawback is that it’s subjective by definition. So, the fact that it’s working for me, won’t mean much to anybody else.

Function Point Count

A more formalized way to go about estimating IT projects is to use a standard (and rather objective) methodology for establishing the functional size of a, in my case, SharePoint project and express it in function points. Every function point is associated to a certain cost (in hours). The total project size consists of the total number of function points multiplied by the cost. There are several methodologies out there, such as COSMIC Full Function Points or FPA.

The main advantage of function point count is that using this methodology, it becomes quite possible to compare projects to each other, determine how well a certain project team or member is doing, and, if you have enough empirical data, you’ll find a more objective way to do estimations. A drawback is that gaining enough empirical data in the fast and ever changing .NET world can be truly hard to do. Also, doing a Function Point Count simply takes more time.

Coming to a Full Circle

We’re coming to a full circle now, because it turns out that social science, Wikis, and project size estimations are totally related. Social science succeeds in finding patterns/laws in human behavior. One example of such a social scientific law is that a group of people tends to be very good in doing estimations (especially compared to individual guesses). To verify this, as a party trick, you can let your guests guess the amount of beads in a jar. Please note: I’m not actually suggesting you should do this, as I want you to have fun on a party, I’m just saying it’s one of the things you can do.

In a project size estimation world, since we already have a more or less objective way to establish the amount of function points, we need a way to guess the cost of a function point. Social science teaches us that a group of people is good at that, but now we have to find a way to assemble a group of people that are willing and able to do the guessing in a joint effort. That’s where Wiki enters the picture. Wikis may just be the very best way to assemble experts on a given topic (divided across companies around the world) and may just be your very best bet on getting a grip on project size estimation. For me, my main focus lies on SharePoint technology, so I had to try and see if some accomplishments could be made in this area. Here’s (as is always the case with Wiki) the result so far: http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/10590.sharepoint-2010-best-practices-to-estimating-and-benchmarking-project-efforts.aspx

Welcome to our Saturday blog post, Top 10 Wiki Ninjas of the week!

Fernando and I have already been featured, so today we're featuring Richard Mueller. Here's Richard's Avatar/Cat:

Richard's Profile

His biography: "I worked for an electric utility where I was responsible for IT services at 10 power plants and 3 office locations. I do consulting and work with a partner on an application that tracks school lunches."

Richard is a Directory Services Development MVP. Richard's MVP Profile. With 38,000+ Recognition Points, he's also very well known in forums like Directory Services, PowerShell, scripting, Windows Server, and Forum Issues.

For some reason, I'm only seeing this MVP profile image when I refresh the page (leave a comment below to let me know what your experience is, whether you see it or have to refresh the page to see it):

On TNWiki, this week Richard has been helping us clean up and maintain the forums with spam and with tags to help track international articles and languages.

Thank you for your help, Richard!

And thank you also to Fernando, Margriet, Tim, Yottun, Yagmoth, Heslacher, Patris, and Luigi! Congratulations to you all!

Come on in! The Wiki is warm!

 - Ninja Ed

What is the story on Microsoft's Integration Stack and how important is the role of the TechNet Wiki? Over the years the Microsoft integration stack has grown from on-premise technologies and products like BizTalk Server, WCF Services, SQL Server Integration Services, Host Integration Server, Windows Server AppFabric, Line of Business (LOB) Adapters, to cloud technologies like Windows Azure Service Bus, Message Queues and Topics, and Windows Azure Service Bus EAI/EDI Labs. All these Microsoft technologies and products can play a part when it comes to creating integration solutions. You can develop solution that connect with a mainframe, Line of Business systems (SAP, Oracle eBusiness Suite), WCF services, cloud applications and so on.

For integration architects, developers and consultants the number of choices increases with the cloud and Microsoft adaption through Windows Azure. Now one can design, create and advice on-premise, cloud and hybrid integration solutions using a wide range of technologies of Microsoft's Integration stack. Guidance can be found through MSDN, books, blogs, article and the TechNet Wiki. On wiki you will find numerous articles concerning the Microsoft Integration Stack:

• BizTalk Server resources on TechNet Wiki
• Hybrid Cloud Solutions With Windows Azure AppFabric Middleware
• Best Practices for Leveraging Windows Azure Service Bus Brokered Messaging
• Windows Azure AppFabric Service Bus Content Map
• Windows Azure Service Bus EAI and EDI Labs - Introduction
• SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS)
• Host Integration Server 2010: Survival Guide
• Windows Server AppFabric Links and Resources

The above links are just a few of many resources you can find on TechNet Wiki. There is so much you can find on integration through the TechNet wiki that it plays an essential role for finding information. I myself and I believe many others benefit from the wealth of information found in wiki article concerning integration. The articles are contributed and edited by people from community and Microsoft, which makes them a high quality resource. Since the TechNet Wiki is a strong platform for knowledge sharing through collaboration of people sharing common interest. In this context it is integration. In future we will see more articles as integration stack of Microsoft keeps evolving.

Now I like to end this story with following popular phrase: "Go check out all the wonder, and dive in! The Wiki's warm".

- Ninja Steef-Jan (Blog, Wiki, Twitter, Profile)

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