W in F r ie n d s & In f lu e n c e
P e o p le in t h e
S pTolstoshev r k s C o m m u n i t y
Nic
    ic e w o
Community Manager
What does a Community Manager do?
What is the
Community?
Four Stories

 •   Save the Day
 •   Make Connections
 •   Help your Career
 •   Change the World
Save the Day
beta had a question about licensing
First reply came in 10 minutes
Chris from Microsoft jumps in
Chris stays for followup Q&A
Follow vendor pages & partners
Stay Up To Date
Ask Questions
Pay it forward
Make
Connections
Previously at Indianapolis SpiceCorps
New event: The SpiceCup
Indianapolis won the first cup
SpiceCorps meeting discussion leads to...
Current SpiceCup: Spiceworks 6 Beta
Get involved in a SpiceCorps
SpiceCorps are lots of fun
Help Your
Career
John2851 was about to be let go

 “...what advice
 can anyone
 offer on just
 staying
 motivated...”
Responses covered the gamut
John gets a boost




  “Thanks for all the suggestions!!! I feel better
  already...”
He puts advice into action...
...and gets his job put back into the budget




“my wages are now included in the budget for fiscal year 12-13”
But still keeps his options open
Get recognition for what you know
Show off your expertise
Change The
World
Dealing with Bloatware
Priscilla from HP responds
HP Responds with Premier Image
SpiceHeads like the changes
“Person on the Inside”
Gaining momentum
Keeping IT Fun
Return of the Cable Closet Contest



–Originally ran in 2008
–Most successful contest to
date with 270 photos
submitted
Most in Need of Help
Most Organized
Most Improved
Most Dangerous
Yes, that
is a piece
of wood
Is the sink
for
washing
the
cables?
Vendors joining the fun
Shout out!
Q u e s t io n s ?
FPO (Main Header is Century Gothic, 32 pt.)

 • FPO Text
    – Maintain bullets, indentations, font size, etc.
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       • Translated as: Don’t let the main header line drop into two
         lines. Keep it simple and succinct.
    – Put additional material, pieces of information into notes
      below
FPO (Main Header is Century Gothic, 32 pt.)

 • FPO Text
    – Maintain bullets, indentations, font size, etc.
    – Choose fewer blocks of text, fewer words
       • Translated as: Don’t let the main header line drop into two
         lines. Keep it simple and succinct.
    – Put additional material, pieces of information into notes
      below
FPO (Main Header is Century Gothic, 32 pt.)

 • FPO Text, Image or                 • FPO Text, Image or
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Get Advice, Solve Problems, Influence IT-ers in the Spiceworks Community

Editor's Notes

  • #2 Introduce myself Throw plush SpiceRexes into crowd Time for questions at the end.
  • #3 Basically, we’re the guardians of the internet But that is not all I do Help share the community spirit and get more people involved. Tell stories like I’m doing now.
  • #4 Community is designed by the users Someone put a barrier on this road People made their own paths Tell story about MS campus Examples: group creation, new features - KnowledgeBase, Comparison Tables
  • #5 Tell four stories about things going on in the community
  • #7 Here’s a situation that happens every day on the community MS Licensing is complex Throwing Virtualization into the mix means you have new questions
  • #8 Only took 10 minutes to get a reply 97% of questions on the community get at least one reply Most get an answer within hours, at most the next day
  • #9 Chris is Cayenne pepper & has been a longtime Spiceworks Partner Is the man when it comes to Licensing issues
  • #10 Chris sticks around for the next week answering 7 followup questions He’s dropping knowledge bombs all over the place Basically conducting a virtual seminar on licensing and virtualization This sort of thing goes on all day every day on the community
  • #11 How can you stay up to date with what is going on? Follow green guys and vendors pages See everything on your homepage feed
  • #12 Whatever you are following shows on your homepage feed See activity from who you follow See subscribed topics with recent posts See suggestions for who to follow
  • #13 How to get help? Post a question But now you can also ask on the vendor page discussion wall Use this when you have question directly for the vendor Community is friendly and welcoming to newbies How to find the right group - search, group directory, difference between question and discussion
  • #14 The reason the community exists is because people want to help Magic of people helping complete strangers If you get help. do your part to pay it forward Go to the unanswered questions section of the community and see if you can answer
  • #15 This is SpiceRex making friends at SXSW with some chipmunks
  • #16 What is a SpiceCorps? At SpiceWorld 2011 I told the story of our last visit to the Indianapolis SpiceCorps They made us a nice banner, we signed theirs, they signed ours
  • #17 The SpiceCup is a quarterly contest for SpiceCorps engagement, and the tasks vary each quarter Not only do you get the cup and bragging rights, but you get $$ towards meetings, as well as visits from Spiceworks employees
  • #18 As part of the prize, David & Jason went back to visit Indianapolis again Here’s Richard Wright accepting the SpiceCup It travels around to the winner
  • #20 As part of the discussion during the visit David got the idea for his SpiceWars project, which was to enable capturing and posting video & images directly to a discussion topic to facilitate troubleshooting Look for those features to show up in the community sometime this year.
  • #21 This SpiceCup is ongoing and it is anyone’s game still
  • #22 If there isn’t one in your area, start one Show up to the one nearest you
  • #23 It isn’t all seriousness, lots of fun, (responsible) drinking and traveling pepper suit
  • #24 Taking training classes can help your career Can’t tell from the photo if he is wearing pants or not.
  • #25 John got notified that his position was being eliminated He still had work to do, but was succumbing to “what’s the point?” syndrome Natural inclination, but he knew that he needed help.
  • #26 Sympathy, booze, advice, jokes
  • #27 All the sympathy and encouragement helps John to stay motivated
  • #28 Following some good advice from the community, John continues to work hard and levels with his boss Outcome - they realize they need to keep him on and try to figure out a way to make it happen
  • #29 After ongoing talks with his managers they decided to keep his job
  • #30 He still has his options open and is interviewing to see what else is out there Here is a new topic asking for advice on staying motivated while job hunting
  • #31 Spotlight on IT series - PM Eric P if you are interested Chance to show what you know Tell a story about how you learned something in the trenches Based on the In the Trenches forum You don’t have to be a great writer, we have help Get a badge
  • #32 Show off your skills so that people know what you know
  • #33 UK Unplugged event with Microsoft
  • #34 Several user complained about bloatware issues with their new HP systems
  • #35 Priscilla gathers everyone’s info and feedback, and takes it to the product managers at HP Over the time she’s been on the community she has been invaluable in helping SpiceHeads navigate issues within HP and making sure they get to the right person.
  • #36 Priscilla gave all the feedback to the product managers and they decided to change the way they did their images
  • #37 Good response and further feedback and refinements in the comments
  • #38 Priscilla’s whole job at HP is to respond to feedback and get help for people in Spiceworks and other avenues - follow Note that she is already Chipotle after one year on the community 400 contributions, 20 best answers & 33 helpful posts 59 followers She is in the community every day helping out We’re getting more and more vendors increasing their presence to the level that HP is doing This helps make sure that your voice is being heard.
  • #39 This isn’t an isolated example - last year I talked about registration free whitepapers, and now when updating this story I had several good examples of this direct feedback loop.
  • #41 Ran back in 2008 David Scammell & Jonathan Grubbs both submitted the same photo not knowing that the other did as well
  • #42 Return of the Cable Closet contest - over 270 photos posted, our most successful contest to date
  • #43 Return of the Cable Closet contest - over 270 photos posted, our most successful contest to date iomega StorCenter
  • #44 Return of the Cable Closet contest - over 270 photos posted, our most successful contest to date
  • #45 Return of the Cable Closet contest - over 270 photos posted, our most successful contest to date Won a Veri-NAC 5220 from Black Box
  • #48 Lots of vendors are coming up with fun contests to keep your day entertaining. Above are some of the fun ones we’ve seen, but there are plenty more in the contests group Some contests are US only - we’re working on it There are issues with this Talk to your UK vendors to be in Spiceworks and run UK contests
  • #49 Big shout out to all the Thai & Datil and up peppers who help out so much on the community Thanks to everyone who makes the community great and keeps me in a job Have all the Thai and up stand up Talk to how they help - remove spam, trolls - now do your part, mention time zone
  • #50 Introduce myself Throw plush SpiceRexes into crowd Show jacket decal