Today's interview is with Ike Ugochuku, winner of several guru medals. Here is Ike's profile: Ike Ugochuku.
He is the winner of 5 medals including 2 gold medals. Here are some of Ike's Wiki articles:
- FIM 2010 R2: Creating a custom Metaverse object deletion rule using c#
- FIM 2010 R2: WAAD connector- managing the SourceAnchor field in a multi-forest Exchange organization
- FIM 2010 R2: How to make a connection to Oracle Database 11g
- FIM 2010 R2: Using FIM to synchronize user data with HP server manager 9 (SM9)
Now let's get to the interview!
Who are you, where are you, and what do you do? What are your specialty technologies?
I am Ike Ugochuku, I live in Pennsylvania, USA. I grew up in Nigeria, read Engineering and came over to the USA to do my Masters in Business Administration. Been in the USA over 20 years. I am married to my wife Tola with 3 children. I like cycling, cricket, squash and soccer. While I like technology very much, I have always been multi-skilled and I have business ventures in a variety of fields like retail sales, finance and publications. I have my own company with a name not unrelated to a Star ship Enterprise, see the company website. My specialty technology is Identity and Access Management (IDAM). I started in technology with Messaging (Exchange) but in the last 8 years I have been focused on IDAM using the Microsoft products, from MMS to MIIS to ILM to FIM 2010. It’s an exciting field since identity determines who a user is, what they can do or where they can go in the organization’s network.
What are your big projects right now?
My focus in the last year has been on the fragmented corporate user identity and how to establish a “well-formed identity” for a corporate user. I have a published a paper on this topic. I am currently working on a very exciting and challenging project, where I have the opportunity to build a well formed identity from scratch. There project involves a fragmented user identity and I am tasked with defining the strategic identity roadmap on how the firm gets to a well formed corporate identity, managing the project, architecting and deploying the solution. It’s been exciting, the opportunity to meet people from across the globe, different cultures and to define policies and procedures that meets regional requirements. It is a change from the ground up not from top down, so there is a lot of solution selling involved and I have the task of getting the community engaged. I am also working on a children’s comic book, I have just published a children’s folktale book. That is also exciting as I have the opportunity to make a positive impact on the lives of children so that we can build a solid foundation for the future of the community.
What is TechNet Wiki for? Who is it for?
TechNet Wiki is a way to give back to the community. I have always believed in writing down ideas and experience and sharing with someone else. This way mankind as a whole increases in knowledge and grows. Your ideas can ignite other ideas or can be improved on or can help someone else finish a job in half the time, to do this you have to write the ideas and share with a community. TechNet Wiki provides an environment to do this. It’s for IT professionals to share their ideas and experiences, it’s also for non-IT professionals to find out more about the technology community.
What do you do with TechNet Wiki, and how does that fit into the rest of your job?
I use TechNet Wiki to find out about new developments in the Microsoft product line, and new and better ways of doing things. In my job whenever I encounter a technical challenge, my first question is “has someone else done this before?” I don’t believe one should re-invent the wheel. If it’s been done before, then I can pick it up from there. I go to TechNet Wiki to find out who has done it before.
On what Wiki articles do you spend most of your time?
I spend most of my time on FIM related articles. There are some topics that the product group does not touch, because it is “unsupported” but it gets the results done. TechNet Wiki has some of these kind of good ideas from authors. I look at these ideas as innovative. As an entrepreneur, I have learned to be creative when one gets in a seemingly impossible challenge, so kudos to these FIM authors.
What are your favorite Wiki articles you’ve contributed?
The favorite article that I have contributed is FIM 2010 R2: Using FIM to Synchronize User Data with HP Service Manager 9 (SM9). There was no information in the TechNet Wiki community or in any other place on the web on this topic. I wanted to document my project experience and share my knowledge with the TechNet Wiki community so that the next person faced with a similar challenge is not starting from the running blocks but is already a few yards away. I have received a number of queries on this article from community members.
What could we do differently on TechNet Wiki?
Many mature IT professionals will tell you that the biggest challenge is not the technical aspect of a project or solution but the non-technical part. Your ability to communicate your ideas and solutions to the business community, manage competing groups and driving change in the organization is important to the success of your projects and career growth. I would like to see a section called the “Non-Techie Soapbox” where people can post articles with tips and tricks on dealing with these non-techie issues.
Do you have any tips for new Wiki authors?
When writing your articles remember that the target audience is not some super developer or techie. There are different skill levels for IT professionals that come to TechNet Wiki to research information. Some Architects, some IT Operations staff. The Architect wants to see the planning and thought behind the solution, the Operations person wants to see if your solution is simple, clear and supportable. So as you write your article, find that balance so that your article will educate a large section of the TechNet Wiki community not just those who already know the technical insight of the product you are writing on.
Thanks to Ike for all of his contributions to the TechNet community!
Wiki Ninja Payman
