Tuesday, January 1, 2002

Need help with Visual Basic? Check out my VB Experts Page

Need help with Visual Basic?

Check out my VB Experts page.

Some of you have heard about this, but to many of you it's a new idea.

I get tons of email questions (100+ a day) about VB. I also gets lots of emails from people asking me how they can become better VB programmers.

Most times I ask the people asking the questions to post them to my Yahoo helpwithvb group.

Recently I decided we could kill two birds with one stone by creating a web page with identified experts in certain areas of VB, that people could access to either read an article on click on an email link to an expert.

That's where you come in.

You may be thinking "I'm hardly an expert, how can I help?"

The answer is I want to narrow the expert focus so that everyone---even a beginner new to Visual Basic---can chip in and help out.

For instance, you may not be a VB expert, but could you be my identified expert for the Listbox Control?

If not the Listbox Control, how about the Text property of the Listbox control?

If you check VB Help, you'll see that there are only 3 paragraphs or so written about the Text property--could you be the expert just on that portion of VB?

Here's the link to my new VB Experts page

http://www.johnsmiley.com/vbexperts.htm

You'll notice that the page is entirely blank--for now anyway.

That means there's a spot for you to help out and be the recognized expert. The benefits can be tremendous---not only will you be a recognized expert at something, you'll gain confidence and experience (and learn something) in the process.

Teaching and helping others is a great way to get really good at something--are you willing to try?

How will this work?

Based on the feedback you give me, I'll create a topic tree, along with your name and a link to your email address. Someone who needs help will be directed to the Experts page, and if they see a topic with an expert, they'll click on it to send you an email. The help you provide them will then be up to you.

You can choose to give them help for free or name a price for your services (Keen.com is a great way to do this)If you are willing to try, please send an email to

becomeanexpert@johnsmiley.com

Include your name, your email address, and the topic for which you wish to be the identified expert.

If you have a support web site, include that also.As time goes on, you can grow your expertise in any way you desire---you'll be able to write articles about your expertise, or get paid for it if you desire by setting up a paid link to Keen.com.

You may even be able to host your own minicamp!

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