Call for assistance–Powershell Notes From The Field (NFTF)

I am currently hard at work writing a book on PowerShell to be published this autumn. I’m extremely fortunate to have three very talented and skilled co-authors Karl Mitchke, Mark Schill and Tome Tanasovski and a good editor in Marco Shaw. These names should be familiar to many on the PowerShell community – we are all MVPs, some of us have been around since the very beginning of the journey!).  I can’t say too much more about the book just yet, but watch this space for more details. It should prove to be a pretty good book!

The final chapter of this book is Notes From The Field. This is my chapter, and what I want to is to showcase some of the great, interesting and fun things you’ve all done with PowerShell. The chapter is aimed at showing PowerShell’s incredible awesomeness. I’m look for anything, including gotchas, that you find noteworthy. What I’d like is something like 10-15 separate stories each 400-500 preferably with samples or examples I can either include (if they are not too long) or point to  a URL for a longer script which might be appropriate in some cases).

To give you an idea, I’ve already written one NFTF example – which is my use of PowerShell to manage my collection of over 2000 Grateful Dead And Jerry Garcia live show recordings. Not everyone’s cup of tea, perhaps, but PowerShell has sure helped me to manage this vast collection – and I’ve written several simple one-liners to do specific things with the collection as well as longer scripts to do richer things.

‘What does this pay’, I hear you ask. Well, given the state of book publishing, I can’t offer very much – a beverage of your choice (and more if you submit several suggestions!) the next time we meet. If the publisher is amenable, I can possibly even get you a copy of the final book (but I can’t guarantee how generous the publisher will be so this may not be possible – I’m not even sure how many copies I am getting!).

I can certainly offer you any Grateful Dead or Jerry Garcia Band show of your choice from my collection – send me a memorable date in the time period 1965-1995 and if Jerry or the Boys played that day, I can send you the show in a format of your choice. Did you ever go a Dead/Jerry show and enjoy yourself - if so, I can provide a copy of it assuming I've got it!!I can certainly put your name in print and ensure I think you in the preface!!

If you are interested, then I’ll need your piece by 1 May 2011, and preferably earlier. Once I get it, I’ll run it through the template, and doing some minor updates to ensure style consistency. Once I’ve completed an edit pass, I’ll send you back what I have for your approval. I’ve got to complete this by the beginning of June, so time is of the essence.  

Please contact me at DoctorDns {at} Gmail {dot} com. I’d be most appreciative of a response!