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Well, it’s hard to believe the final challenge is finally here. http://www.microsoft.com/learning/en/us/certification/bethenext.aspx By now you’ve probably watched, and we’ve announced that we did in fact make an offer to a contestant… but wait, you still have a chance at this...

Be the Next judges have proven to be a colorful lot. The guest judges for Be the Next finale are no exceptions. There are in fact two guest judges next week—it is the finale after all! Karen Lopez, aka Data Chick , and Pete Harris, aka SQL Pete . Aside from the obvious—she’s...

I’ve always been a big fan of challenges and competition, in the years that led up to becoming a Microsoft Employee, I worked together with several consultants in a strong competitive database world. It’s with that intake that I gladly agreed to be a guest judge on Be the Next Microsoft Employee...

The fourth challenge is live! Watch it here: http://www.microsoft.com/learning/en/us/certification/bethenext.aspx Read on to find out more about the technical side of the challenge, and how you can enter to win free books and be entered to win a new laptop! This week I was joined this week by Dandy...

You may know him as Dandy Weyn, or ‘The Belgian’, or as @ilikesql . Or perhaps as a Sr. Technical Product Marketing Manager for SQL Product Marketing and that he writes the blog, I Like SQL . For any of you who have attended TechED or PASS Summit, he’s the guy behind the content for...

It was an awesome honor to be asked to be a guest judge for Be The Next Microsoft Employee. As noted in previous blogs on Be The Next , this is a great way to show the type of questions and problems we regularly face as Microsoft employees. For more information, check out the show’s website or...

The third challenge is live! Watch it here: http://www.microsoft.com/learning/en/us/certification/bethenext.aspx Read on to find out more about the technical side of the challenge, and how you can enter to win free books and possibly even a brand-new laptop! As I mentioned, in each challenge we’re...

Denny Lee works with some of the largest enterprise BI/Big Data systems, including Yahoo!'s 24TB cubes. He also built the first ever Analysis Services cube. He’s been building websites for as long as websites have been built. His big data chops garnered him the nickname, Big Data Daddy. ...

Buck Woody and I set out to provide our contestants with a challenging, real world security scenario. With security being foremost on everyone’s mind these days, we felt that this was a very key scenario for which our contestants needed to demonstrate mastery not only of the basics, but some more...

The second challenge is live! Mike won the first one, and Stacy, Alex and Chris have weighed in on what they did wrong. Let’s see if they learned from their mistakes this week: http://www.microsoft.com/learning/en/us/certification/bethenext.aspx You know, this thing might just take off. KOMO...

I hadn’t really thought much about the show or the first challenge prior to showing up on campus last week, but when I showed up at the bike shop to meet the contestants for the first time and to connect with Buck and Tobias to discuss the first challenge – I got nervous! This is a picture...

It’s tough to succinctly describe this week’s guest judge—he’s a man of way too many talents. boB “The Toolman” Taylor is a magician, a mentalist, a distance runner, and the brains behind all of the MCSD.NET certification exams. He’s passed 28 certification...

Wow, this “ Be The Next Microsoft Employee ” thing is the real deal! Real contestants, nervous contestants, eager contestants, this should be interesting! Turns out at least this week’s was :-). As Buck mentioned in his earlier post , the challenge we gave the contestants can seem simple...

Here we go! It’s the first challenge of the contest! http://www.microsoft.com/learning/en/us/certification/bethenext.aspx Well, technically that’s not true… We brought the contestants out to Seattle and put them up in a really nice house on the shoreline, with a view of Mount...

When asked how he got into tech, guest judge Tobias Ternström responds, “Head first.” Kinda like how they’re going to throw Be the Next contestants into tomorrow’s challenge. Funny that. Tobias is a Lead Program Manager for the SQL Server product group. His team...

Have you ever wanted to work at Microsoft? A few weeks ago I was approached to help with a very fun project – something you might not see at other tech companies. The idea was a reality show that brought together four contestants for a very unique set of challenges, that I would help design...

I like working here. I’ve worked a lot of places, and lots of kinds of places, from small startups to huge organizations, the military, at the Kennedy Space Center, medical companies, manufacturing, and service industries. I’ve been in a technical role, but I’ve been a manager a...

His official title is Senior HR Manager for Microsoft IT. But Tim DiMarco’s unofficial title is ‘The Hiring Ninja’ because he’s freaky good at finding and hiring the right people for the job. Tim can spot a future Microsoft rock star from a mile way. And he can grill them...

Buck Woody is all data, all the time. He’s a Senior Technical Specialist at Microsoft, an instructor at the University of Washington where he teaches about (you guessed it) databases, and he writes the Carpe Datum blog. Dude knows data. He can now add ‘Judge’ to his already impressive...