Or red. Or whatever color is “in” right now. (My wife says I should stay far away from fashion analogies.)
Anyway:
You’ve probably noticed that virtualization is very hot topic right now (and given the economic events of the last couple of weeks, it’s probably getting hotter by the day). If you’re an IT Pro supporting Windows environments, I personally can’t think of a better skills investment right now than delving into our new and growing family of virtualization products and technologies, and proving your competency through certification.
We have a new series of MCTS credentials—with associated classroom training and free e-learning courses--ready and waiting that address our virtualization technologies:
We also have an associated MCITP credential under development for those of your responsible for the adoption and deployment of virtualization technologies. Look for it in mid-2009!
Want more info? Mark your calendars: you’re invited to attend a Live Meeting on October 15 to learn more about System Center and virtualization certifications. Register here.
For more information, and to view our full portfolio of virtualization-related offerings, visit our new Virtualization learning portal.
Posted by Krosen
Heads-up, SQL experts: the PASS Community Summit is coming up, here in Seattle from Nov 18-21.
But you knew that already, didn’t you?
After all, this is the single largest SQL Server community event of the year.
But—did you know this:
For the first time, the event will have a testing center at the event with 25% off all Microsoft certification exams.
Limited-time Bonus: If you’re one of the first 100 people to pre-register, PASS will pay for your exam. That’s right—free exams for the first 100 people to pre-register!
Bonus Bonus: Pass any exam during the summit and instantly receive a no-longer-available-not-even-on-ebay MCP lapel pin! (only while inventory lasts)
Got a friend or colleague interested in certification but unsure where to start? Send them to our Certification 101 session on Wednesday!
Frequently Anticipated Questions:
Am I limited to SQL Server exams only? Nope—you can take any MCP or Dynamics exam.
Do I have to go off-site, get up really early, or stay up really late? Nope—you can take your exam anytime between 10am and 6:30pm on Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday (Nov. 18-20)
I’m not sure if I’ll be ready—is help available? You bet! We’ll have MCTs on site to help you prepare for specific exams (see the draft schedule (subject to change) below).
Exam Coaching Sessions (Tentative as of 9/29)
Tuesday, November 18
70 432 TS: Microsoft SQL Server 2008, Installation and Maintenance
70 431 TS: Microsoft SQL Server 2005 - Implementation and Maintenance
70-447 UPGRADE: MCDBA Skills to MCITP DBA by Using Microsoft SQL Server 2005
Wednesday, November 19
70 448 TS: Microsoft SQL Server 2008, Business Intelligence Development and Maintenance
70 445 TS: Microsoft SQL Server 2005 - Business Intelligence
70 455 Upgrade: Transition your MCITP Business Intelligence Developer Skills to MCITP Business Intelligence Developer 2008
Cert 101
Thursday, November 20
70 432 TS: Microsoft SQL Server 2008, Installation and Maintenance (repeat)
70 450 PRO: Designing, Optimizing and Maintaining a Database Server Infrastructure using Microsoft SQL Server 2008
70 453 Upgrade: Transition your MCITP Database Administrator Skills to MCITP Database Administrator 08
Published Tuesday, September 30, 2008 2:13 PM by Krosen
Frequently Asked Questions during our first week
Q) How did all of those MCPs and MCTs get their blogs listed over there on the left? A) We swiped the list from Trika.
Q) What do I have to do get my blog added to the list of MCP/MCT blogs? A) Ask Trika. Kidding. All you have to do is ask—either leave a comment here, or e-mail me directly. It’d be really cool to see that list of links grow, and grow, and grow…
Frequently Anticipated Question for next week:
Q) I’d really like to be in your video, but I’m not going to be in Seattle any time soon. Any other option? A) For the commercial, no. But if the muse inspires you, create your own video and send it to us. We can certainly post it here, and maybe even… well, let’s just say I know someone. That’s all I’m sayin’…
Okay, all you Seattle-area passionate certification enthusiasts, here’s an opportunity to show your pride to a worldwide audience!
We’re shooting a video to support our upcoming “value of Microsoft certification” featuring real MCPs with real success stories. The video will get high visibility, appearing on microsoft.com, and made available to our Certified Partners for Learning Solutions worldwide for use in their classrooms.
We don’t have the logistics set just yet, but we’re looking for folks in the Redmond/Seattle vicinity (all filming locations are local to Seattle) who are over 21, well-spoken, and of course Microsoft certified.
Filming will require between two to four hours. Lunch is provided, but otherwise this is an uncompensated opportunity.
If you’re interested in participating, please let me know—and please be sure to include a picture, your current job position, and a brief description of your positive experience with Microsoft certification—and I’ll forward it to our Production Coordinator (he’s really a PC!)
Wow—thanks for all of the feedback you sent--and are still sending (one just came in as I type)—about our MCP and MCT benefits. Most of you are providing great, detailed suggestions… and you’re also illustrating the challenge we face in reaching community consensus:
Peter, William, and Tony asked for better quality certificates; while Michael and Lukas would rather see them purely on-line. Lapel pins are even more polarizing.
One area where there does seem to be agreement:
Many of you thought MSDN and Technet discounts or freebies would be outstanding additions to the benefits package, and so do we. We’ve had discussions with both teams at various times over the years, and the cost of goods (COGs) combined with the size of our community always proved to be tough obstacles to overcome. As many of you know first-hand, however, we’ve periodically been able to include MSDN/Technet subscriptions as limited-time incentives or rewards, so the door has never been fully closed. We’re still optimistic that we’ll find an arrangement that makes these products more accessible to you in the near future, but not necessarily as a straight giveaway…
Rob had a very interesting suggestion:
Here is an other idea, How about a loyalty program, some nice give-a-way you get if you are certified for 5 or 10 years and that is repeated after each lustrum or decade, but only if you keep your certification up to date with the currently mainstream supported products.
You’re approaching our wavelength, Rob! We’ve been scoping out a loyalty/rewards program for several months now (Sarah is locked away in a meeting room as I type this, meeting with the vendor who will provide the fulfillment infrastructure for it), and it will likely be the centerpiece of our new benefits program.
Once we have confidence that we can get it built, deployed and supported within our budget, Sarah will share the details with you guys.
Keep the cards and letters coming!
Hi all,
My name is Tjeerd, that s a strange name even in The Netherlands where I m from and pronounced as Cheered , and I just earned the dubious Last to join the blog team Award...
I work on the Microsoft Certified Trainer (MCT) program and work closely with Bill who you may already have seen on this blog. 13.000 Trainers all over the world are training hundreds of thousands on Microsoft Technology! It is really cool to see that happening in all kinds of countries, inside all kinds of cultures and surroundings, and wherever you go you sense that strong passion for technology!
Right now we are working to organize a series of events known as the MCT Summits. Conferences where trainers from all over the world gather to hear about new technology so that they can train people on new technology at a very early stage, sometimes before the product is actually released! We ll be blogging over the next three months as we set these events up, we intend to run a large number of them and there is never a dull moment. Also, if you are considering becoming an MCT, you may want to look out for one of these events near you as we also offer a bootcamp by which we prepare you for a fast entry into the program. The event will live on www.mctsummit2009.com and we will be adding information on that site over the next few months. The event is really meant for MCTs or people who want to become one, if you re interested in the MCT program, check out www.microsoft.com/mct.
And, totally unrelated to any of the above, if you want to see something really cool that shows you more about our training and certification tracks, check out this cool online catalogue that was developed by our team in Europe: http://www.microsoft.com/learning/mcp/momentumemea
Enjoy the day!
Tjeerd
Today (Wed Sep 24) at 9am Pacific time (yes, that’s only one hour from when I post this)
Not strictly certification-related, but a hugely valuable opportunity for those of you who focus on Windows Vista nonetheless: the latest in a series of virtual roundtables from Windows Vista Springboard.
Join Mark Russinovich and a panel of Microsoft MVPs and real customer IT pros as they discuss “top of mind” performance issues, common “misconfigurations,” and tips on how to optimize Windows Vista and improve overall system performance.
Topics include boot times, applets, disk performance, battery life, changes in SP1, creating a baseline, tools and resources.
Speaking as someone who has been certified on every version of Windows client since 1993, I sure do wish I had these kinds of resources available to me when I was an IT Pro in the field!
Join the event here!
So let’s talk about those lapel pins, because, well, you already are. And not just here—lapel pins come up pretty frequently when we talk to you guys about what you’d like to see offered as part of our certification benefits.
Frankly, I’m kind of nonplussed.
It’s not that I don’t get the appeal of the Microsoft Certified lapel pin… I sported one for years myself (on my backpack, though, because it’s been more than a decade since I’ve worn anything with a lapel). I understand how gratifying it is to catch the look of recognition and instant respect when someone sees that pin… and not just in IT environments… the MCP lapel pin is reported to pay dividends when dining out, or even dating.
All of that, I grok.
What’s puzzling is that the lapel pins never showed up on the “benefits we really like” radar until they went away.
Tangent/Flashback: 1997
If you were an MCSE circa 1994-1997, you received a benefits package that—apart from the certificate—bears little resemblance to what we provide today. Yes, there was the lapel pin, but there was also a free one-year subscription to Technet, along with some free product support incidents, usable on any Microsoft product.
In early 1997, we examined the utilization rate of the various benefits and found that the product support benefit had a ridiculously low usage rate—pretty much no one was using their incidents. That was bad news for the certification team, because we were purchasing those vouchers from Product Support (yes, we did and still do transfer a lot of money around the company) and weren’t getting any value from it.
Or so we thought.
Believing the benefit wasn’t valued, we removed it altogether. And then the cards and letters started pouring in from upset MCPs. We got it wrong, they told us: the value of the product support benefit didn’t come from using it, it came from knowing that you could use it if you needed to. In other words, the product support benefit was an “in case of emergency, break glass” thing… you might never use it, but you’re sure glad it’s there nonetheless.
So we briefly entertained the notion of adding it back when we revamped the benefits package in 1999, but by then the community had moved on: MCP Magazine ran a survey asking for input on benefits to add or enhance, and product support was pretty far down the list.
So we scratched our collective head over that one for a few moments and moved on, having learned a valuable lesson: don’t rely on benefits usage data as an indicator of perceived value—especially when we can ask you guys directly, which we started to immediately thereafter in our annual (sometimes twice-annual) MCP satisfaction survey.
Fast forward about five years:
Preparing to introduce our new generation of certifications, we revisited our benefits package yet again, this time with years of satisfaction data in hand. As it turned out, the lapel pins consistently performed poorly when we asked you to rate their value as a benefit.
Frankly, we were really glad to hear that. Here’s a secret: while as a customer I dig the lapel pin—and while as an evangelist I really dig the idea of MCPs around the world wearing them—from a fulfillment perspective, we hated the lapel pins. They were responsible for an appalling amount of damaged shipments—the adhesive would often rip off, or the pin backing would dent the certificate. The costs of the pins themselves wasn’t such a big deal—but the cost of all the replacement welcome kits was, especially when our customers were telling us they really didn’t care about the pins anyway.
So we removed them.
And for a while, we could hear the crickets chirp… but slowly, steadily, and with increasing volume: the choir began to sing.
Back to the present:
Yeah, everyone seems to be talking about the lapel pins these days, and even those who don’t want them back focus mainly on the clumsiness of the form factor rather than on the concept of a way to subtly display their credentials.
So back to my original question—why the resurgence of interest? I’d like to hear your thoughts, but I’ll offer my hypothesis at the outset: the last few years have seen a resurgence for Microsoft certifications. Empirically true in volumes, but also, our studies and surveys show, in the perceived value of our certifications. And with increased value comes increased pride, and I think people enjoy having a way to show off their accomplishments. Am I on the right track? Let us know.
Moving forward: as Sarah mentioned the other day, we are indeed revamping the MCP benefits package—and this time, it’s a big revamp.
Some of the existing benefits will go away, like the little-used member directory and partner knowledge base (we’re actually forced to remove them, as the internal team that built and supported those tools are retiring them).
As for what’s going to be added, Sarah will have that discussion with you guys over the next few months.
To set the stage for her, though, let me offer one factoid for you to ponder:
With over 2.3 million MCPs worldwide, it costs us more than million dollars just to send you an empty envelope in the mail, let alone actually putting something in the envelope.
Even by Microsoft budget standards, a million dollars is a really big number. So in revisiting our benefits package, we’re focusing on the following principles in order to provide the most value in return for your investment:
Even with regard to lapel pins, I’ve asked my team to keep these principles in mind.
Tomorrow begins two solid days of meetings to start hashing out the model, so this would be an excellent time to provide your input!
We’re listening.
in Beautiful Riverview Florida.
I know my last post was a bit of a short one, but Ken was offering treats for the first post and who doesn t like treats, especially caffeinated ones.
So as The Ken mentioned in his post about who we are, I am in charge of MCT Readiness, which is probably the most tightly focused role on our team. The others get to deal with broad community issues, I get to focus on the things that get MCTs ready to stand in the classroom or on whatever stage that they take. Just as a bit of background, I am both an MCP and MCT for over 12 years. I was actually a MCT before I was an MCP because back in those days you needed an operating systems exam to be an MCP. I was a developer so I was able to be an MCT on the developer courses with out having to pass a Operating systems course. Just one of the weird oddities in my checkered history. I spent the better part of twelve years actively teaching and working with MCTs and the CPLS partners(or CTECs, or ATECs (not that I don t use nearly as many parentheses as The Ken)) it takes years to build that kind of parentheses addiction.
Currently I am in the process of rolling out a new tool for the MCTs to prep on our course ware with, to make it easier for them to build the skills and knowledges that will allow them to deliver the best classes in the industry. In the course of my years as a trainer I was lucky enough to witness trainers for all sorts of products and I can honestly say i like watching MCTs teach the best. I am also working with my buddy Tjeerd (who apparently is not ready to step out of the hiding place from posting yet) to get ready for a big summit tour around the world to reach out to the MCT community coming up just after the New Year. If you have ever thought about going from the MCP status to the MCT status we are planning on offering some options so that you can do that at the summits and get introduced to the community at the same time.
Well I am going to get back to work here in MSL South, as I am spending the next couple of weeks just outside of Tampa.
Bill
(To quote the bard)
Heads up, team! Looks like Trika outed us: we’ve got readers, and better yet—we’ve got vocal ones (my favorite flavor)!
It’s time to open all the windows and doors so our friends can keep us company while we work. Ready? Great!
Ahem.
Hi! Come on in… it’s great to have you here with us. We’re the Microsoft Learning Communities and Evangelism team, and pretty much everything we do is on your behalf, for your benefit, with your participation, and/or in your presence. (Exception: sometimes we have lattes in the Starbucks in our cafeteria. That’s pretty much just for us. (Although actually, the caffeine makes us more productive, so maybe there’s a community benefit after all (I’m fond of parentheses, you’ll notice))).
I digress. (I’m fond of digressing (and parentheses (did I say that already? (I am, at times, short-term-memory-challenged)))).
Where was I?
Ah. I was about to wonder: do you know what Community Leads (Sarah and Tjeerd (Tjeerd, get up here—we have company!)) and Evangelists (Dana and Joanne) do?
I thought I might explain, since I’ve been doing a lot of that for my colleagues lately (we are a very new team for Microsoft Learning):
My team is responsible for the relationship that we (Microsoft) have with you (you) as a result of your Microsoft certification. There are other groups in Microsoft who plan and develop the actual exams, courseware and certification programs—that’s not us. My team is responsible for answering the question you ask when you pass your exam and attain your certification, and that question is: “now what?”
Let’s back up, and establish some important background information:
You, my friend, are a very important person.
At Microsoft, we know this. We know it because—assuming that you are here either because you are certified or interested in becoming certified—we have lots of quantitative and qualitative data collected over a decade-and-a-half that consistently tells us:
So for us to issue you a certificate and send you off into the world and never speak to you again would be a HUGE strategic error on our part—you are far, far too important and influential for us not to take advantage of that (hey, I’m being completely candid here). Just like a good university, we want our relationship to go on post-graduation. Just like a university, we want to offer continuing education and degree opportunities; just like a university, we would love your help in recruiting new customers; just like a university, we would love your help in evangelizing the value of your credential… but unlike a university, we won’t ask you for outright cash donations! How cool is that?
Hence my team:
Our Community Leads, Sarah (MCP) and Tjeerd (MCT) are responsible for facilitating and growing vibrant communities. To extend the university analogy, think of Sarah as the director of our alumni association, and Tjeerd as our dean of faculty. Both Sarah and Tjeerd are responsible for ensuring that we extend a valuable set of benefits to you, generating opportunities for you based on your accomplishments, keeping you informed of news we think you’ll want to hear, providing opportunities and avenues to connect with your peers and with Microsoft… all towards an ulterior motive: if we have your attention and involvement on a regular basis, it’ll be easier for us to get your attention when we really need it.
Bill works closely with Tjeerd: Bill is our MCT Readiness Manager, and it’s his job to ensure that our faculty of over 13,000 MCTs worldwide have the tools, information, and resources they need—when they need it—in order for them to provide you with the outstanding instructor-led training you expect from our MCTs and from our CPLS channel.
Our Evangelists, Dana and Joanne, spend part of their time on the hunt for those among you who are as passionate about Microsoft training and certification as we are—and they spend the rest of their time creating new programs for those of you who claim the title of “evangelist” too.
What kind of programs? Well, I don’t want my team to accuse me of spilling spoilers, so I’ll let them share their plans themselves. But I will say that we have over a dozen projects in flight right now, so we will have a LOT of questions for you as we seek to build in your input. (my favorite project? three words: Virtual. Lapel. Pins.)
So once again: welcome! Please subscribe and visit often—the more we hear from you, the better we’ll do. We are truly all about you.
Ken
I love the "I am a PC" ad! :D After seeing the two previous ads with BillG and Seinfeld, this ad makes me smile. It s simple, lively and right to the point - Microsoft is connected to millions of people in the world. I am proud to be a PC~~
In the one year that I have worked in Microsoft, I have really become proud to work here. People are fun, smart, and they work hard, and I love working with the communites and share ideas and thought with people around the world. I am working on a couple of the programs to engage with our communities, like the Microsoft Press book review. There are a couple more programs for the MCT/MCPs that I am excited to roll out this year. I will get you guys more update soon. So... stay tune to learn more!
A bit about me - two things that make me very happy: travel & good food. If only I can find a way to combine what I do now with those two... :-)
See you soon.
Joanne
PS: my favorite PC move. Do you have a PC story? Share it here.
Hi
I was going to ask you today to help me shape the next look and feel of the MCP Welcome Kits through a survey, yet, alas, it will have to wait a few days. To rewind -- for those who may not know, let s talk about why we are changing the certificates. Well, it was actually based upon your feedback last month. It was felt that we needed to go to a credential kit for all the next gen certifications. They will come with a easily visible color coding so as you work from the TS to the PRO/DEV designations (and even through to the Master plaques), so it can be visually seen the level of credential you earned. They will, of course, be of high quality, but also, < drum roll please > we are vetting out bringing back lapel pins! I know, sometimes, we get a bit crazy here on Friday afternoons.
So, still looking for feedback - I just will have to see what Monday brings.
Take care~
I m a PC named Sarah and I don t sell fish.
Just got a preview of the new “I’m a PC” commercials at the company meeting today… I still don’t understand why we had to run the Seinfeld commercials first, but I have to say: these new ads deliver the goods. Check them out on TV tonight, or here tomorrow.
I’m a PC!
Today is Company Meeting day!
I love Company Meeting day--no scarasm at all here: what s not to love about 90,000 geeks assembled in a baseball stadium (or gathered around their LiveMeeting screens)?
Yeah, we ll be sitting in uncomfortable Safeco Field seats for about eight hours (we never, ever, start or end on time). Yeah, it s gonna be cold, and the only food we ll have is box lunches. Yeah, traffic is gonna absolutely suck in both directions.
But it s the company meeting! We ll get to hear all kinds of exciting news and executive insight about what the next year holds for us, like:
We ll get to see all sorts of products under development that I ll really want to tell you about but won t be able to.
We ll see really funny parody videos which we ll be unable to share but will undoubtedly be on youtube by tonight regardless.
Oh, and the meeting is hosted by Rainn Wilson, so there should be some intentional humor this year too.
But most of all, I get a morale boost that lasts for months... it s so cool to see just how many amazing world-changing things this company is working on!
Anyway, all of this is to explain why you won t see any updates from my team today, except for maybe Dana, who is based in Atlanta (we miss you, Dana!)
Gotta go!
<Got your attention! And the wit ends promptly now.>
First of all, as you can see, Ken is a fabulous writer! Enjoy reading his posts. They are surely going to be colorful. I know I will come back to read J. However, this is my post. I am more flat per say, so this introduction is a bit (understatement!) more abbreviated than his! I am new to the MCP community, but have been within Microsoft Certifications, just in a different program –Microsoft Dynamics, for the previous 7 years before joining ‘Ken’s Gang’ approx 6 weeks ago. Let me tell you it has already been a whirlwind of activity (ooh – can you sense a change in seasons? Hint hint) with benefits, communications, changes, welcome kits, and I already need your help. I need your voice. I need your expertise, because you are an MCP or an inspiring MCP in the making. You are what makes this whole thing work.
I completely and fully want to stress Ken’s ask for comments+ (side note: the wonderful world of Web 2.0 rocks!). With your help in sharing what works, what doesn’t, your influence can make the benefits and community strong on the next versions of everything and all things MCP. You count.
Short post today – but guess what folks? I ALREADY have some things in the pipeline to get your opinion on. Just need to set up a survey (or two or three or four). Look for it on Friday.
Sarah
This is Bill Chapman
MCT Readiness
New guy on the team
I will add more as it happens.
Rught now the big thing is Tjeerd and myself getting the MCT Summits 2009 up and rolling. More on this really really soon, like watch for the MCT Flash tomorrow.
Also launching the OneNote Trainer Preparation packages for the MCTs. Realize this may not be important to everyone initially but if your trainers are wepp prepared, as MCPs you get better training.
ps. Ken did I win the card?
Published Wednesday, September 17, 2008 11:21 PM by BillChapman
Couldn t ask for a more ringing endorsement to kick things off! (Best of luck, Trika--we miss you already!)
So:
Hi.
If you re a Microsoft Certified Trainer, we probably know each other already, since I ve been an active member of that community since 1993 and its custodian (in multiple senses of the word) from 2003 through earlier this year. And when I say "active," I tend to understate: most of my friends are MCTs (or MCT alumni), I ve lived next door to MCTs, my kids godparents are MCTs. I d have big gaping holes in my social life without MCTs. (Yes, I realize I need to expand my social circles a bit (says my wife, who is friends with the spouses of MCTs, including one I don t even know).
If you re not an MCT, but you hold another Microsoft certification, we might still know each other: I used to be the product manager for the Windows Server 2003 MCSA/MCSE certifications and related training and books, and back around that time I used to make the community rounds the public MCP newsgroups, MCP Magazine s forums, and a few other active certification sites.
And if you a *real* old-timer, maybe we ran into each other at TechEd anytime between 1995 and today--I ve been a regular at that event since before I joined Microsoft... don t think I ever missed an MCP party! (and there are incriminating photos you can goog--*whack!* (ow!) um, Live Search for to prove it)
(Part 1 of a Continuing Series: Ways in Which Ken is Different from Trika: #1) Ken doesn t avoid cameras. #2) Ken isn t nearly as photogenic)
Most of my community interaction for the last several years has been in the private MCT newsgroups, which on a good day is like a United Nations version of a "Cheers" episode (and on a bad day is like a United Nations version of an "All in the Family" episode). Had a blog for a while, but ended up just repeating what I was posting in the newsgroups.
But these days, my scope is a lot broader: my team manages our learning/certification-related communities (most notably MCT and MCP, but also our engagement with user groups, authors, readers, pretty much anyone interested in learning or certification on Microsoft technologies). We re a new team--chartered earlier this year but only fully staffed since July--and we re pretty jazzed by the slate of new benefits, opportunities, and programs we ll be bringing your way over the next year.
Unlike Trika s blog, this one s a team effort: you ll see all of us participating here, sharing the things we re working on, looking for some input and feedback from you guys, sharing the cool resources we come across, and spotlighting the great people we meet in our communities. You ll find us here, in our newsgroups and forums, at events, on Facebook, and occasionally even in our offices.
Here s our starting line-up--I ll let them introduce themselves in more detail as they post:
...and I m sure we ll cajole invite a few of our distinguished colleagues to guest-blog along the way as well.
We d like to hear from you, too! Not just your comments on our posts--we d love to hear about stuff you guys are doing in our communities. If you manage or participate in web forums, user groups, social networks, or any other venue where learning and certification on Microsoft technologies is a frequent topic, we d love to know, and we d love to share the spotlight!
Looking forward to some great conversations!