Calling All IT Pros: thwack(R) Invites You to Share and Vote for Favorite "Tales From the Trenches"

AUSTIN, TX -- (Marketwire) -- 06/27/12 -- thwack, the SolarWinds® Inc. (NYSE: SWI) online community for IT professionals, today announced its "Tales From the Trenches" contest in recognition of the 13th annual System Administrator Appreciation Day on July 27, 2012.

"All IT Pros have at least one, must-share story where they've experienced a replace-user-and-try-again scenario. What's yours?" asked Denny LeCompte, VP of product management, SolarWinds. "Shock or even scare us with the strangest request you've ever gotten, the dumbest question a user ever asked or a critical moment where you had to think on your feet. We want to hear it all."

IT Pros can share their best original "tale from the trenches" on thwack now through July 27 for a chance to win an iPad, a ThinkGeek gift card or an original piece of artwork depicting their story.

Submissions will be evaluated by thwack's community members and by a panel of judges, including:

• Wesley David, a sysadmin that has been in many trenches with many of his own tales, but he can't tell any of them without weeping. Wesley blogs at The Nubby Admin.
• Ted Kekatos, the founder of System Administrator Appreciation Day, built his own computers and acoustic-coupled modem in the late '70's. He has enjoyed working in IT services for 20+ years, but still misses the sound of 9-track tape drives rewinding.
• Denny LeCompte, the VP of product management at SolarWinds. Denny believes that if a company understands its customers and the problems that they face every day, creating products that they can enjoy using becomes simple.
• Trevor Pott, a sysadmin and writer from Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, who built his first network at eight years old and hasn't stopped building them since. Trevor blogs at The Register on systems administration.
• Matt Simmons, a 10+ year sysadmin who is active in the League of Professional System Administrators (LOPSA) as well as other professional IT organizations and currently works for the College of Computer and Information Systems at Northeastern University in Boston. Matt blogs at Standalone Sysadmin.

The "tale" that is ranked the highest by the judges will win an iPad and the original art based on their story. Four additional winners will be chosen by the thwack community, and will each win a $50 gift card to ThinkGeek.

Members of the thwack community will select their favorites by voting for their favorite story using thwack's new Ideation platform -- technology that allows thwack members to vote up or vote down ideas and product feature requests.

View the complete contest rules.

thwack, an IT Management community