Being Smart is all about Being Resourceful

The internet us the ability to not while keeping up the appearance that we do. Now that’s not to say that you should be a know it all, but you should definitely know how and where to get information if you need it. If you use a specific open source technology at work, then you need to know how to support (because odds are, it was written by a few interested people and doesn’t have a company behind it). So you should know where the forums are, where the documentation is, where the mailing lists and the mailing list archives are, etc. Do they have an IRC channel where you can talk to live users who might be able to help on a more immediate basis? Maybe there was an even a book written that you can get your hands on, a PDF, or even a screencast. If you lucky, you might write a Tweet about your frustration and one of the products creators will answer (which happened to me recently).

The best part about all this is the internet is the enabler. It’s searchable, indexed and provides you many methods of finding the answer to your (or other peoples) questions. Why am I telling you all this obvious information? Because its why I write my blog. People who need help need to be able to search for it. Most of the things I write about here are specific problems with answers that I figured out or aggregated from reading various things around the web. So be resourceful, use what’s out there and then document it. You may save yourself (and maybe me) a lot of time.