Unofficial Spiceworks

The UK BootCamp is off to a good start, its a bit tight for space but seems like it will go well.

Make sure you follow our flickr for pictures of the event.

If you are currently at the event you can join in the chat on the community, if any starts.

• 9:20 – Just started, Tabrez is introducing the day.
• Tabrez is introducing Spiceworks, where is the best place to install it and what browser to use.
• Just did a raise of hands about how Spiceworks is used by the SpiceHeads here, about 50/50 new users and intermediate users and around 15/20 are still on 4.0
• Spiceworks 5.1 is on the way the SW team have it as a internal build
• David has just started talking about how the inventory works and how the clientless scanner works.
• Surprised by the number of people here who haven’t yet installed Spiceworks but kudos to them for turning up
• Just had a nice break sponsored by VMware and now listening to a great talk about how VMware can help your SMB.
• Checkout http://www.spiceworks.com/resources/apps/vmware/virtualization_webinar/index.php for how VMware can help you, Spiceworks are also recording the talk to put on Spiceworks TV soon.
• Back to talks from Spiceworks about how the scanners works and how to get the most out of it.
• Uploading custom group icons is on the way
• Tabrez is talking about monitoring your network with reports and the built in monitoring.
• David is talking about how the network config backup tool in Spiceworks 5.0 will help prevent that 2am call saying its all broken.

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The ups and downs of working with social media my experiences with Spiceworks

First off… This isn’t really all Spiceworks related but just had the idea for a post along these lines and Spiceworks-News is about the only place I could put it. It is however all based on my experience with Spiceworks.

So everyone knows what social media is now days? And that big buzz word of “web 2.0” and companies like Spiceworks are starting to exploit it to market there products and IT conferences like Spiceworld. Places like Skype, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Flickr, Digg and Ustream are regularly used.

So what do I think are the advantages and disadvantages of Social media and networking…

The ups (Advantages)

There are many pro’s to social media and well they do outweigh the downs.

A great example of this was at Spiceworld 2009 Austin, I (akp982) was about to receive a Spicies award when Justin Dorfman (from Frugal IT) had the idea of using Skype to allow me to give my acceptance speech. I ran around and got a microphone ready and he ran off to the Spiceworks Staff to hand him his laptop which got pushed onto stage. This was great, I was watching the live stream though Ustream and also talking live to the presenters. It was a very weird feeling I was in the UK and talking and watching people in the US. Without the Ustream chat to get me on skype with Justin and without skype for allowing us to make a “call” it would not have been possible. It was organised so quick the presenters were shocked to hear that I was ready to talk to them.

Social media mainly things like twitter can really help promote your products very quickly by telling lots of people instantly. When Spiceworks 4.1 was released it was mentioned by over 100 people on twitter and Spiceworks are expecting more people to spread 4.5 when it comes out. From this people will quickly write reviews to jump on the back off this and give their blog or website a boost in traffic and hope for some regular readers. Frugal IT is and example of a site that did well at this with there Spiceworld 2009 coverage (http://fr.ugal.it/spiceworld-2009) they were able to get multiple people to tweet, blog and just share their link. With this link spread all over the world, people would then visit the site pickup on the ads and information around the Spiceworld page and may then come back in the future. I know we (Spiceworks-News) jump on even the oddest of things. We often pickup on blog posts about or mentioning Spiceworks and re post the first paragraph in hope for a ping back. Posts like (Getting IT spicey at your church) got a ping backs out there and we may have got another 1/2 visitors (they all add up over time to now around 300 people looking at Spiceworks-News on a daily basis according to Google analytics… if only some of them posted comments).

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Its coming, its going to be big. Its Spiceworld London, it all kicks off in:

Spiceworks-News will be there!

Will you?

Lets make Spiceworks want to come back to London by making it a great event for everyone. Lets big it up on twitter lets get it up on google and spread it though the globe with facebook.

We can do this!

We can make Spiceworld London famous world wide.

Get your ticket and read more here

I know a bit tacky but hay… Got a better countdown we could use? Use the contact form to get in contact with us. I don’t have a great deal of Spare time so using something like above was quick and easy

It was great to watch the live stream and even take part over skype, thanks to all the Spiceworks team and attendees that turned up.

So many names to mention. It was also great to see some vendors there and the talks they gave were great.

Have fun on the unofficial piss up

Time to get the plans ready for Spiceworld London

http://it.tmcnet.com has posted about Spiceworks 4.0

Jun 18, 2009 (Close-Up Media via COMTEX) — Spiceworks, which provides what it called the first free social IT management application for small and medium businesses, announced the release of the Spiceworks IT Desktop version 4.0.

Spiceworks stated that the new version has several enhancements that make it easier for small and midsize businesses to manage “Everything IT.” They include the ability to visually map a company’s IT network and the addition of 3rd party management plug-ins from Microsoft, LiveOffice, Intel and Trend Micro. In addition, Spiceworks now integrates with Twitter and allows users to turn Windows events into social media alerts for collaborative problem-solving and to share real-time SMB IT trends with the world’s largest network of IT professionals.

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Fredric Paul on http://www.bmighty.com posted about

The latest version of the popular free IT management tool for SMBs adds the ability to visually map your company’s IT network, Twitter integration, and 3rd-party management plug-ins from Microsoft, LiveOffice, Intel, and Trend Micro.

bMighty has long been a fan of Spiceworks. The company sponsored the first bMighty SMB Theater and Pavilion at Interop in New York last year, and I moderated a couple panels at the inaugural SpiceWorld user conference in Austin, Texas last fall.

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Bob Tarzey, Service Director, Quocirca has posted up on http://www.it-analysis.com/ about Spiceworks and the social media size.

Can social networking actually be useful? There are plenty of claims made about Twitter’s usefulness for getting concise messages to a broad audience or using LinkedIn to track down old colleagues who may be able make an introduction to a new prospect. But what about direct benefits—such as finding quick solutions to problems or getting better deals on products?

It seems that the lesson from systems management vendor Spiceworks is—yes it can. Spiceworks has a business model that sounds very bubble 2.0. It provides a set of systems management tools for free and makes its cash by other means. But can Spiceworks actually return a profit where Facebook, Twitter and many others have not? Spiceworks is a private company with VC backing and does not disclose its profitability, but having gone through two rounds of capital raising, it says it has no need for a third.

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Its the morning after the community update and seem seemed to go well (the community is working at least)

We are still awaiting a full list of things that have changed but here are the things I have spotted so far:

Spiceworks News

All the latest Spiceworks news is now shown on the My Community Page to help make sure you don’t miss anything

Points System

Due to the outburst of point cheating the points system has changed.

You can now get points for windows even comments.

Insted of getting 10 points for every post you now one get one point per new topic you talk in, meaning it is more contribution based.

If you fill out all of your profile you automatically get 100 points.

Channels

There are now channels in the community but i have yet to find a full list of them, the networking one is http://community.spiceworks.com/channel/show/3-networking

Channels are aimed to help organise groups, If you visit the Networking channel you’ll see all the topics from groups like Cisco, DNS, etc.

Share-It

At the bottom of all topics there are now social media buttons so you can share something from the community on Facebook, Twitter, Digg, Linked In, and Reddit.

So hopefully Tabrez will post up a list of everything that has changed soon and I can do a full write up, but I think I got most of them.