Unofficial Spiceworks

Yesterday SpiceHead Scott Alan Miller reached Pure Capsaicin the highest Spiceworks SpiceLevel, he is the second person to ever make it after akp982 earlier this year.

Well done Scott on a great achievement, it is well deserved you are a great asset to the community.

Scott managed to get there with a mixture of gaining points in the community:

As well as running 4 SpiceCorps throughout the US.

Congratulations again Scott, enjoy your new black SpiceLevel.

Checkout other peoples comments on the community Congratulations to Scott Alan Miller for reaching Pure Capsaicin!

Spiceworks last night announced the agenda for the SpiceWorld 2010 in Austin Texas, this year is set to be bigger and better than last year with some cool new ideas being tried out as well as the removal of the Spiceworks basic’s sessions.

The Spiceworks basics sessions have been taken out of the SpiceWorld and moved “Spiceworks Boot Camps” like the one in Austin as well as free online training sessions though webinars. This is so that the real event can be filled with more stuff that you want to see and hear things like new features in 5.0, to Virtualization talks from Spiceworks Partners.

They have kept in one of the great things from last year getting some of the SpiceHeads and “Community Rockstars” like Scott Alan Miller to take to the stage and present some topics like “Security Essentials for the SMB IT Network (on a Shoestring Budget!)”.

It looks like an action packed couple of days, you can checkout the full agenda on the Spiceworks website here.

Need help finding the budget? Checkout the topic need help getting approval/budget to go to SpiceWorld? on the Spiceworks community, lots of people shared ideas last year.

Don’t forget there are only 200 places and around half of them have already gone. So make sure you register before its too late!

Checkout our posts about SpiceWorld 2009 and of course Unofficial Spiceworks will be updating you as we get more as well as providing you all the gossip from the event well from the live stream at least.

With over 400 votes, the contest was a close one. Thank you to everyone who participated in the contest and to all of the folks who voted. Without further ado, here are the winners:

Read the original post here

So as you may have seen in the last Spiceworks News email I (akp982) got a mention for being one a “Spread Spiceworks Superstar” along with Scott Alan Miller one of the links in the email was to the Spread Spiceworks group which was recently updated to allow you to do more.

The other link was to a post I made back in December 2009 about how you can get referrals, I currently have 336 giving me 84,000 SpicePoints so here’s how you can do it to:

• You must have used your referral link – This can be found on http://community.spiceworks.com/spread_spiceworks in orange, since in the last community update you have been able to use either your username or your full unique ID which you can get from http://community.spiceworks.com/profile/get_badge hunt down the bit that looks like http://community.spiceworks.com/referral/2013d80a8e2845338a5e615bc70567ff and make sure you get the whole URL – I have missed the second f off at times… – You could then convert this to a tiny URL or similar that is easier to hand out over email or messenger. Using the one with your username is much easier but if you have a space in it, it may not work correctly.
• The user must - download, install and sign up the community from your link before you get the referral points. – I do not know how Spiceworks tracks the referrals but try to make sure they download and install straight after clicking the link – This is away of making sure that people do use Spiceworks before you get the points. Once the user clicks one of your links you will get a click. I have found (but Spiceworks have not confirmed) that some clicks have a delay in showing up in your profile.
• Spiceworks does some smart checks - Its a referral system with points so for that reason Spiceworks will check things about the new user, like if there IP has signed up before, or if there email address is on there database. It will also watch for people who have been referred by different people say one from me and one from you, i have no idea would / if anyone would get the points. I have also heard it will check for dodgy data so if the user signs up with just a a a or 1 2 3 4. There is no cheating the system.
• If you know you have done the above and having problems make a new topic and nudge me ill pop over check you have all the info you need then get Spiceworks over to see why it wasn’t added.

Hopefully see more more people with referral points soon

The community have started up a new feature called “Contributor of the Week”, this week it was Trivious, for posting 5 How-tos in one week!

I’m not going to repeat what the “Contributor of the Week” is every week but thought I would give an insight into what its about. I managed to digg up some information about this new feature which hasn’t been released.

The “Contributor of the Week” is not there to recognise people like me or Scott Alan Miller who week in week out get the top poster or top amount of BA’s its there to notice people like Trivious who spent a larger than normal amount of time on the community in one week writing up things in this case “how-to’s”.

Things that are set to be looked at include reviews, windows events comments and plugins (when/if someone released more than 2 in a week).

I would expect in the future weeks to see people like Yasaf Burshan who is doing a GREAT job and beating me to answers to be mentioned not people like Craig M or Scott Alan Miller. So show you can contribute well in areas like windows events or reviews and see your name up in “Spiceworks News”

Its to help recognise the people who put a lot of effect in to help them come back.

akp982

I wanted to find out…

I was sat posting on the community and mucking about in the Totally random thread – “almost” anything goes thread and I had a thought.

During my time on the community and using Spiceworks I have sent a lot of people thought to the support guys at Spiceworks when they get an application error or a problem in which the community can’t fix.

I then suddenly thought, HANG ON, how good is the support? Are people actually being helped? How long does it take?

Not having heard any complaints about the support I thought I would give it ago and see where I ended up.

The Test

To make this a fair test I setup a new account, you may have seen him on the totally random thread. Fish Out Of Water. His name is Graham Drummond; he’s not a real person and has a @live.co.uk address. Fish out of water was just something random I thought off when making the email address. Seemed to work. He even managed to get ready for Christmas with a little red hat.

This way Spiceworks wouldn’t know it was me and would react as normal, thus making it a fair test

Now I had to make an error, bugger, how do I break an application in which I have never had any issues with? HMMM… After trying many different things I decided to change the DB… oh deary me, application error, what a surprise.

So I posted up in the community to see if anyone came along to help, boy that akp982 is quick. Ok yes I posted on my “own” topic, mainly to help try and throw Spiceworks. I mean who would reply to their own problem?

Then Leo came along and mentioned it worked fine for him on windows 7 64bit, I waited a while, checked out the community for anything else about application errors, a lot answered by me already just saying send your logs to Spiceworks.

So I did, this morning around 5am Spiceworks time…

Read More…

• Spiceworks Hero goes to David Scammell
• Spiceworks Innovator goes to Scott Alan Miller
• Spiceworks Champion goes to Andy Phelps (me )

Well done guys

So what are the awards for?

• The Spiceworks Hero: It’s a bird, IT’s a plane, no, IT’s the Spiceworks Hero! Amidworking tirelessly to come to the rescue of their own users, the Spiceworks Hero uses their super powers (and raw I.Q!) to help other IT pros like you by sharing their expertise and answering your most pressing questions & concerns in the Community.
• The Spiceworks Champion: “The Spice Must Flow!” is the rally cry of the inspiring Spiceworks Champion! A unique mix of commitment, creativity and charisma, the Spiceworks Champion relentlessly promotes the Spiceworks “free IT” cause among new IT pros everywhere – all the while keeping their own network running like a true champ!
• The Spiceworks Innovator: Pure genuis & generousity characterize the Innovator. A never-ending source of insights and ideas for the betterment of all IT-kind, the Innovator’s prolific product feedback and feature suggestions help the Spiceworks team evolvie the product so that IT just keeps getting better (and making your day easier)!

Personal Thanks

I would like to personally thank Jdorfman for getting me on Skype for my crude acceptance speech.

More information on the Spicies

• Who won last year
• The Spicies community group

Im sure we will soon see the full presentation pop up on the community and well make sure we share it with our readers! Make sure you keep up to date with Spiceworks news thanks to Spiceworks-News

P.S. couldn’t find a 2009 Spicies logo…

Scott Alan Miller or SAM as he is known on the community recently got to spend time at the Spiceworks Head office in Austin, Texas.

I was not sure how to find the SpiceWorks building in the complex that they are in.  Finding the complex was super simple but finding their building was a bit tough.  I lucked out, though, that I parked and immediately as I got out of the car with the intention of wondering around and just looking for the building and saw someone walk right by me wearing a SpiceWorks t-shirt!  I grabbed them and they recognized me after a minute and then took me right in to the offices – which it turned out I had parked directly at.

Read his post http://www.sheepguardingllama.com/?p=4364