Power to the People: The Benefits of Joining Online IT Pro Communities

Featured article by Jon Peters, Community Director, SolarWinds

Whether seeking solutions to pressing problems, networking with like-minded professionals or researching products, professionals across nearly all industries benefit from participating in communities every day. For IT professionals specifically, online communities can be a goldmine of resources to help keep up with the constantly changing enterprise technology landscape.

Today, it’s BYO-everything and cloud, and who knows what new IT challenges the technology trends of tomorrow will bring. So, actively engaging in online IT communities can make all the difference by enabling connections with other IT pros who are encountering similar issues, providing educational content, offering insights from experts and providing a channel to share valuable feedback.

Here’s a deep dive into some of the specific benefits you, as an IT pro, can get out of participating in online communities.

Peer-to-Peer Collaboration

There’s power in numbers. With access to a wide network of IT pros, members of online IT communities can source diverse feedback on creative ideas, engage in productive discussions and obtain insights for problem-solving. Troubleshooting technical problems is an everyday demand that can range from simple fixes to unique, never-before-seen issues, at least at the individual level—by participating in an online IT community, you may find your “unique” problem is actually more common than originally thought with plenty of insight from others who have already solved it.

For example, posting questions to Reddit often generates reams of answers from users who have experienced similar problems or are able to recommend resources to fix the issue, thereby leaving no community member alone to solve his or her problem. Reddit also features up-voting and down-voting on replies, making it easy to identify trusted answers from top-ranked users.

This sort of organic, peer-to-peer collaboration can help you solve problems quickly and with the confidence of having your answers come from trusted sources—professionals just like you from a wide variety of backgrounds and with vast ranges of expertise.

Direct Line to Vendors

Online communities can also serve as a direct line to connect with the vendors whose products you rely on to get your job done. As you become more involved in certain communities, a close relationship between vendor and end-user can develop, which allows you to transition from solely an information-seeker to an information-provider. This is especially true for vendor-hosted communities, as community members are often empowered to become the gatekeepers of unique end user insights and product feedback.

For example, the highly engaged end users that participate in SolarWinds’ more than 130,000 member strong IT community, thwack, have influenced product directions and even go-to-market strategy based on their direct feedback and general discussion of industry trends and the company’s products. For example, several key product features now found in the company’s DameWare Remote Support, Server & Application Monitor and Network Performance Monitor are the direct result of thwack members participating in the community.

Such collaboration provides benefits for the vendor, but especially for you, the IT pro, as it allows your voice to be heard and actually influence vendors’ product development decisions to ensure your needs are met.

Career Development

Online IT communities also enable education that lends itself to career development. For example, many consider the SpiceWorks How-tos forum a reliable place to develop IT skills and learn about the industry. Forums such as this and those found on thwack provide a venue for community members to learn best practices, get access to advice from experts in various fields and research developing trends that could impact your career in an environment where you have the option to ask questions and engage in conversations.

Involvement in IT communities can sometimes have even more direct impact on career development. For example, one IT pro in particular recently joined thwack to prepare for a job interview with a company that uses SolarWinds’ IT performance management products. Not only was the individual able to familiarize himself with SolarWinds’ products, but he was also able to engage with existing users, chat with product managers and develop an understanding of the how his prospective employer could take management of their infrastructure to the next level, earning him a leg up over other candidates during the interview process.

The Power of the Masses at Your Finger Tips

In summary, the access to a wide audience of peers that online IT communities provide can be invaluable to you as an IT pro. Membership and active participation within such communities can provide quick answers to problems, foster collaboration to ensure vendors are creating products that meet your needs and create new opportunities for your career development.