Hello and welcome everybody to our Wednesday - Wiki Life post. Before I start: That is my first post in 2013 and with that I wish you all a happy new year. I hope you had a nice Christmas and a good start into the new year.
But lets get back to topic: How do you learn new technologies? Do you invest in a book? Do you look for a tutorial on the web? Do you grab your buddy and ask him for hours?
Recently I found a wiki article, which made me think about how I usually get myself started on a new technology. Like you already know: I'm a bookworm, but most of what I have learned came from the web with something I can put my hands on. What is the best place for a tutorial on the web? Is it a blog? Is it on YouTube? That was also a question I'd asked myself, because I use both to publish new content. This article I'm talking about reminded me how I started publishing tutorials before I had a blog or a YouTube account. It was on the ASP.NET wiki (of course, later I switched to the TN Wiki ;-)).
That is the reason why I want to bring some attention to existing tutorials we have on TN Wiki and also I like to encourage you to publish tutorials on it. But wait! Which article are you referring to? It is the Windows Azure and SQL Database Tutorial series started by Jonathan Gao. It is a four-part (actually it is a five-part) wiki article series which mostly covers Windows Azure Storage. That was the starting point and I searched for more tutorials on TNWiki and I have to admit: I'd been horrified. In my last Wiki Life post I mentioned how great TNWiki has grown. I only found 16 tutorial articles (which were marked with the "Tutorial" tag) and six of them are part of the series from Jonathan. So, what I like to do is to encourage you to write your own tutorials on TNWiki.
Just hold on for a second! Are you writing tutorials yourself? Yes, like mentioned above I try to do so, but unfortunately I have not the time to write as many tutorials as I like. Is that a problem for TNWiki? Not really, like mentioned TNWiki is a growing community. At the end of last year we had more than 3,500 people, who are contributing to TNWiki. If 50% percent of them write a short tutorial in the future we have more than 1,700 new articles which help others to get started with real hands on. Wouldn't that be amazing?
It is time for the closing words: If you like technology like I do (and I'm sure you do) grab your favorite technology and make a little "Get started" for it on TNWiki and, if you like, post the link to the tutorial in the comments section of this post.
- German Ninja Jan (Twitter, Blog, Profile)