Human BrainHow many times have you come across a technical problem and have no idea where to even begin to start with it?  My favorite is when you get an error that usually has some vague text and then a sentence that says “Please contact your System Administrator for further help.”  I always chuckle since I am the System Administrator and I’m usually as perplexed as the typical end-user.

98% of the time, spending a few minutes applying deductive reasoning, googling or shooting an instant message out to my fellow nerds I usually get an answer or at least have come up with a few paths to explore.  But what happens when the issue is very vague?  Or if it is intermittent?  Or worse yet, you’ve exhausted all leads and are still striking out?

One of the biggest changes for me moving from the consulting arena to an industry position was my support network.  In the consulting world I was part of a collective group of hundreds of individuals who were subject matter experts on one topic or another.  We had an intranet of consultants profiles we could search through to find someone who had the skills needed.  Moving to a small trucking IT shop, I was now without the collective backing my efforts.

Experts ExchangeGoogling I always came across cached pages from a site called Experts Exchange.  It is an online community of tech-friendly users who post and comment on questions of a technical nature.  Their membership base is around two million.

To encourage community involvement, they have setup a point system for posting questions.  You assign a point level to a question based on difficulty or urgency.  As people respond to your post, if one or more of the responses answer your question, you award those points to the associated user(s).  If your post is answered, it is stored in a knowledgebase which is then able to be queried and the solutions used by others.

The catch to all of this is that in order for you to post questions or see the solutions to questions, you must subscribe.  A subscription costs $100 a year.   I will tell you, if you are in an IT shop, this is the best $100 you will ever spend. 

I started posting questions and started finally getting answers.  Responses usually start flowing in within the first 1-2 hours and usually from multiple people.  Technical challenges that I had fooled around with for days or weeks started getting resolved! 

My investment was recouped instantly.  Actually if you take all the time I struggled trying to find solutions before and break it down by my salary and then compare that to the time it takes the Experts Exchange community to find solutions for me, the ROI is off the charts!

The way the community thrives is by having a two way street of participation.  While posting my question, I may spot another users question which I may know the answer or can at least point them in the right direction, so I post and start accumulating points myself. 

What’s the point of the points?  You don’t get paid for your points, but you can get a free subscription after a certain number of points are accumulated. 

The point system is mostly a pride and ego thing.  All over the site users points are displayed.  They have a hall of fame and each subject area you can see the top point leaders. 

They also recognize monthly contributors in an email newsletter to the community.  There are a number of users with some ridiculous quantities of points amassed.  I’ve always wondered what makes someone an “expert,” I think it is safe to call these individuals experts!

You can search the Experts Exchange database much like you search Google, you just need to have a subscription to see the chain of answers to that question.  I’d suggest looking through what technical issues you’ve been challenged on and query their database, you’ll likely find, you’re not the first to come across whatever mystery you’re trying to solve.  It’s worth spending a few minutes checking this resource out if you’re not already familiar with it!

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