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Let me preface this by saying I am not really a “new” IT pro - I went to school years ago for Comp Sci and Mathematics but found myself without many opportunities a few years ago - I worked for Dell and was released in a mass termination, leaving me with no options but falling back on my high school profession - cooking.

For about five years I worked in fine dining and banquet cooking - all the while pining for the technical world I had left behind. Don’t get me wrong - I love to cook, the atristry and science is fascinating and I definitely excelled, but there was something missing. A year ago I fell back into the IT realm purely by chance - I answered the right Craigslist ad.

Now I’m playing catchup, and let me say SpiceWorks and SpiceWorld have both helped me to fall into step with all of the technologies I missed in my time away from the industry.

The community has floored me - I have been on Slashdot, MikesHardware, and many other forums for well over a decade. The Spiceworks community is by far my favorite now, I have put out many fires in a short time using forum guidance.

I hit the floor running with my IT resurgence, I am a Sys/Net Admin and responsible for all kinds of technologies that I understand in theory but not necessarily in practice.

What I was looking for, but missed a little, in the SpiceWorld conference were real, low-level practices and insights (with the exception of the Powershell 3.0 primer, though even that I felt was rudimentary). I missed the nitty gritty type discussion of some of the features, and really hoped to see more code and scripting than I did.

I can respect a well-built GUI as well as the next guy, but as a scientist (that’s what we all are, right?) I really want the nuts and bolts explanation sometimes.

Sooo, now to my point - did I just miss the in-depth low-level seminars or is this a common theme among attendees? I definitely appreciate the networking and overviews that were available, those and the direct vendor access were more than worth the cost of the ticket.

What of the real developer type content and discussions? Any suggestions for an agenda tweak that might stimulate my problem-solving brain a little more than what I experienced?

Any insight is greatly appreciated, or you can tell me I’m an ID10t and just attended the wrong classes.

16 Spice ups
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I don’t think you are alone here. While I’m not sure SpiceWorld is the right venue for heavy developer level classes (not in an hour), there could be a little more advanced content. Some of the Spiceworkds Deep dives, are most certainly not deep dives, but instead basic primers.

This is another area where SpiceCorp may help. Meeting locally and more often, you can have as many nitty gritty discussions as you wish! Just find an expert willing to teach, and coordinate with the Spice leader to make it happen.

http://community.spiceworks.com/spicecorps/news/find

6 Spice ups
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Thanks! One of the first things I did after attending the conference was to start following the Austin SpiceCorps, I will definitely be attending the meetings and I’m sure I stand to learn a lot with all of the SpiceHeads around.

1 Spice up
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I agree about wanting more in-depth sessions. There were a few that stood out, including the PowerShell class you mentioned. I also attended an inventory deep dive that went a little “deeper,” and there was a decent SQL class. But, like you said, I felt that even these classes were tailored more for those who knew little or nothing about the subject matter than those who were familiar with it. The SQL class was more about how to build a query than how you can use SQL as a tool with Spiceworks.

Hopefully there were more than a few people who felt this way and said as much in their surveys - I know I did. This isn’t to say at all that I wasn’t impressed with SpiceWorld or that I didn’t appreciate everybody’s efforts! I just felt like there could have been some more substance to the sessions.

2 Spice ups
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Ditto there - my main takeaway is that the sessions serve as a great springboard towards more in-depth answers that might be addressed in the forums, but as is often the case with low-level stuff you really would benefit more from a live instructor to help with the more technical issues.

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Thanks for the feedback and kind words! We definitely had more in our original PowerShell sessions but the 45 minute time frame really limited what we could cover. As it was we ran to an hour!

As you mentioned, the only way to go deeper is to have longer sessions. But then you start missing more and more of the rest of the conference so that’s a tough problem to solve! Maybe on the pre-event day have a few tracks… instead of just Spiceworks deep dives/training also have some others?

That said, if Spiceworks let’s us, Rob and I have some ideas about a second PowerShell session for next year :wink:

2 Spice ups
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So what is needed is a longer Spiceworld so there can be more tracks? Having not been to one yet sigh, so I can’t speak with any experience, but it sounds like being able to have two levels in some of these areas would be really helpful. Have a beginner class on day X and then an advanced class on day Y. Just a thought.

1 Spice up
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I think you are definitely barking up the right tree here. Technology specific half day or full day tracks could really be something special.

1 Spice up
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I have said this after each Spiceworld, but hey, I began using Spiceworks in 2006 when the co-founders were the only employees so I have been at it a while. I agree with all the remarks above and wish there was an Advanced ITPro track.

1 Spice up
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Actually, I think that Spiceworld is now “old enough” with enough return attendees that it could easily fill sessions that are more advanced. I said this exact thing in my reviews of the sessions I went to in 2012 and that is why I skipped all of those sessions in 2013. Well I did not intend to skip the Powershell session, but work got me there…

There is absolutely nothing wrong with the current sessions, but there is little reason for me to go to one again.

1 Spice up
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the 45 minute tme frame is really, really limiting. This is the second year in a row that we did a session on SQL in Spiceworks and both times I felt bombarded by questions, and somewhat bombarded to the point that I felt we weren’t allowed to do our presentation. It’s unfortunate that we only have so much time because I’d love to answer all of those questions and we just can’t. Maybe enough of us can complain and then next year we get 3 days of Spiceworld, more vendors, more attendees and more time for sessions, or the ability to do some sessions twice so that there’s less overlap with the sessions that people feel are more important to attend.

1 Spice up
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Yeah, I seem to remember somebody being offered large quantities of beer to be quiet. Unfortunately, most of the session had been consumed by questions that didn’t pertain to 97% of the audience by then. Not sure what can be done about that…if there had been more time, I think there just would have been a thousand more questions.

Regardless, I think longer “advanced” sessions would be a very valuable addition!

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We need more session rooms and more breakout sessions.