As some of you know I have written in the past about forums and the benefit of them. But, then out of nowhere Bryce Whitty from Technibble comes up with an amazing contest.

Simple contest, just answer some general questions and the winner(s) get:

And to makes things even better there was not just one winner but three.

Congrats to the winners and congrats to Bryce for putting on such a great contest.

If you are in the IT world then it is important to utilize forums. Not only can you find out answers to typical problems that you are encountering but you can also pick the brains of other business owners or technicians like yourself. Your best bet is to find a few forums and see what suites you or utilize them all.

Obviously there are a lot of forums out there to pick from. It is important to join a forum with a wide range of people from seasoned vets to new people that way you get answers from all types. Trust me answers will vary depending on experience.

Simple rule of forums is this “be professional”…Does not sound like a hard concept to follow but trust me you’d be amazed how many just can’t grasp the concept. If you join a forum then you are a “guest” of whoever owns the forum. You don’t own the forum, you don’t make the rule, you are just a “guest” utilizing the forum to the best of your abilities.

Couple of forums that I visit and recommend are TechNibble which is an invaluable resource of information and also the NACRBO forum which is still in it’s infant stages.

I belong to a few forums that cover computer repair, owning a computer business etc.. It’s a good thing to do a search and find any forum or even yahoo group that you can join in order to provide yourself with more insight into the business. Obviously you don’t want to join every single one otherwise you won’t get any work done all day…

It’s also important to know that once you join say a forum that you should review the “rules” of the site, each site is different and it is a quick read. Once you are done with that then you are ready to start posting questions and answering those that you can……

This is where the hesitation comes into play… typically new users seldom want to put a post for fear that it has already been asked (most of these sites do have a search function)..But, my attitude is…ask the question. Actually ask as many questions as you want. Everyone remembers the saying “there is no dumb question”…..

Now that we are past that part, the next occurance is you will find those on the forums with you are typically very pleasant and easy to get along with. But, there are also those that in their own eyes they are let’s say “better” for lack of another word then us….Those are the types of users that you can just ignore to make it easy for yourself. These are the users that typically have nothing nice to say nor are they really going to help anyone along the way. Most other users see this on the forum and have accepted it already.

Utilizing forums, groups, etc can be a great way to gain valuable information in order to help you become more successful in the field.  Just make sure you read as much as possible, and help others along the way.

Some forums/groups
www.onforce.com
www.technibble.com
www.theforcefiled.net
Yahoo Groups: computer business

Dan
www.ComputerRepairBusiness.net