I’m watching this week’s episode of Glee again while writing this post, and the “I Love New York/New York, New York” mashup really inspired this title. I have to give a shoutout to my dad in the title, as while he isn’t technologically inclined, he taught me the value of networking and establishing relationships. He was a union leader for the city’s emergency response service for many years, and in those years, I watched as he networked with people in his line of work and those who impacted his line of work – councilpeople, mayors, senators, and the like. Watching him, I learned how to network and how to participate in communities.
Up until this point, Matt and I have been talking about scripts and code in PowerShell, but there’s more than just that. If the language didn’t have a community behind it, it would fall flat and not continue on like it has been. So let’s do a shoutout to some of those in the PowerShell community!
Hey, Scripting Guy!, the Scripting Games, and the Scripting Wife!
Ed Wilson is also known as the Scripting Guy over at Microsoft. He answers languages on various scripting technologies, with PowerShell being the focus nowadays. Whether he’s answering questions in the Hey, Scripting Guy! blog, posting on Twitter as @scriptingguys, speaking at various events throughout the world, or writing books, Ed is a great community resource when it comes to PowerShell! One of the events that he promotes on his blog are the Scripting Games, and the 2011 Scripting Games were no exception! This is a great contest for testing your scripting chops against other PowerShell scripters, competing in either a beginner or advanced level. What made it even neater to follow this year was that Scripting Wife joined the games. While I didn’t have time to participate this year due to other timing conflicts, I did enjoy reading the journeys of Scripting Wife as she learned working with PowerShell. Check out the Hey, Scripting Guy blog, as Ed covers some of the topics that you’ve probably wondered about.
PowerScripting Podcast
Hosted by Hal Rottenberg and Jonathan Walz, the PowerScripting podcast is recorded live on UStream every Thursday night at 9:30pm Eastern Daylight Time (GMT -4). They feature various people in the PowerShell community – including talking with Jeffrey Snover (father of PowerShell), the directors of PowerShellCommunity.org, PowerShell MVPs, people on the PowerShell team, vendors of PowerShell products, and even those on product group teams whose products can benefit from PowerShell. While recording, they’ll take questions from the audience via the chat channel. I was able to catch the show on PowerShellCommunity.org, and it was neat to see how they record the podcast. After recording the show, the hosts play music while wrapping up the show – always great to rock out with these guys! Matt and I will be on PowerScripting tonight talking about our book and our love of PowerShell!
PowerShellCommunity.org
Run by the community for the community, PowerShellCommunity.org features news, forums, learning resources, steps for forming a PowerShell user group, and a poshcode.org-powered script repository. Special thanks to the sponsors of the site who provide financial support to enable the online community presence and support local PowerShell user groups – including Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2, Quest Software, SAPIEN Technologies, Inc., Compellent, Idera, and Pragma Systems.
PowerShell.com
PowerShell.com is another community for PowerShell scripts, tips & tricks, webcasts, blogs, and other resources. Once again, Idera and Compellent are sponsoring another community resource (in addition to PowerShellCommunity.org). Concentrated Technology and nSoftware also sponsor PowerShell.com. This site also features the Master-PowerShell eBook written by Dr. Tobias Weltner. Yet another great resource for PowerShell scripters!
PowerGUI.org
Quest Software, Inc. runs PowerGUI.org, a free community for PowerGUI users. PowerGUI is a script editor and administrative console based on PowerShell. Their community site includes tutorials, PowerPacks, forums, wikis, demos, and other goodies related to PowerGUI. If you’re using PowerGUI, then this site is a must-have resource!
#powershell on irc.freenode.net
If you’re an IRC user, definitely check out the #powershell channel on irc.freenode.net. Don’t have an IRC client? mIRC, xChat, and others are out there. Of course, freenode is awesome and has a webchat available!
Others?
These are just a few of the PowerShell resources and communities out there. Got any you want to recommend that I haven’t mentioned here? Leave me a comment!