Thwack Top Ten leaderboard positions can be achieved!

I'm 611th best Solarwinds infrastructure monitoring engineer in the world for a little while anyway....

I've only used SolarWinds products for about 5 years and like you the first 2 or three I didn't spend much time on Thwack. Once I got my head around the value I began to spend a lot more time here. In the last year I've climbed up the ladder. The community is the best part, but the points keep you challenged as a reminder to stay active.

I have been using Solarwinds Products since 1999.  Over the years, it was just as a user and the Toolset.  In 2008, when the STIGs came a requirement, I wanted to get out of having to sit with the Audit team for 3 weeks every 4 months.  I had other duties to attend to and mission to complete.  So I looked for a better solution. 

I came back to Solarwinds and thier new product at the time; Cirrus.  There was a compliance piece but rudimentary and light weight.  I generated up some templates and some checks to help me out.  Over the next year I, gradually showed the Audit team my success and usage.  They came around and started to rely on my templates.  It brought their work time with me from 3 weeks to 3 days.

Then one day in the fall 2010 Christine Bensen from Solarwinds called me.  She had heard about what I was doing with the Compliance piece in Solarwinds and wanted to know if I would be able to contribute and share.  I agreed and published the first set of the DISA STIG templates in the Fall of 2010.  I would make update every few months and slowly add to the Solarwinds STIG Template offering with Solarwinds.

Then in the Spring of 2013, a coworker was asking me about my STIGs and how they worked.  I went to Solarwinds and searched on STIGs to show him.  I noticed that I had to login so I did to get the data, not realizing I was logging into Thwack.  My coworker was looking at my account and noticed that I had 45,000 Thwack Points.  I did not even know what they were or meant.  From then, I started looking around on the meaning of Thwack points, accumulation, and Thwack itself.

Over the next few years, I provided the STIG Templates for various vendors, developed content to help find tips & tricks quickly, Lists, Polls, Missions upon Missions, participating in Thwack and Solarwinds development events, and SWUGs.  I simply looks for things to make my life easier using Solarwinds.

I want to say that rschroeder​ is absolutely correct in saying that the Top 10 can be achieved by anyone.  If you are willing to participate, share, and help others you will be there.

See you there,

CourtesyIT

3 years in and 100K points...

Tips/tricks and the blogs help me tremendously in doing my job.

rschroeder​ congrats for top 10 status...

Nicely said, Eric.  And thanks for sharing some of the history.  I'll go out on a limb and say most of us know very little about Solarwinds as a company, its history, and its challenges and failures--but I think we DO know some of its successes!

As you can see from the date of my original post (May of 2017), in six months (it's October of 2017 now) it's possible to add 90,000 points to your score--simply by participating and helping others.

I bet by this time next year you'll have over 150,000 points.  Maybe more!

I just made the 300K club, I am the 11th member which is really cool.   I need to put more thought in to my posts so I can contribute more.   I may never catch the top ten, but its cool to be in rare air if even for a while.   Really enjoy this community.   It probably gives more to me and my organization that i put back, but I will keep trying.

Congratulations on breaking 300,000 points!  That's no mean feat, given the time it and effort it takes.

It's crazy to think that a person has to have MORE than 300K to be in the Top 10, but perhaps it's merely a function of time.  When I started with Thwack in 2004, I never imagined being able to reach par with folks like you & Radioteacher​, much less temporarily sneaking in front of a Head Geek like adatole.

You're only 2K away from position 10, and 5K from position 9.  A UX session and a Beta install or two and you're going to be jockeying for 8th place easily.  And if you hosted a SWUG with enough people, we'd be neighbors in the snap of a finger.

Compared to you experts, I'm just a verbose poser.  I think the cool folks in Texas have a great edge for getting in points at the root level, and I wish I were at least wintering there so I could visit & sit in the audience, or even participate onsite at Solarwinds.

Welcome to the 3K Club, Jeremy!

Oops--make that "300K Club"!

Welcome to the top ten!  Great job!  And you are so right....It is very hard to stay here.  You have to be really active.  Everyone is now gunning for your spot.  If you continue to do what you do, you will remain here, or at least close.  I have been in the community for 5 years now and it took a few years to get up here.  I like how active the community is.  I just continue to post and answer problems and post comments and the points continue to come.  I don't really try for points anymore.  I do betas, RCs, and UXs.  Those add up!  The crazy thing for me now is that I am no longer doing them for points.  I genuinely want to help others and improve the products that we use everyday.