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On the " Be the Next Microsoft Employee " show, we talked a great deal about how to engage you, dear reader, in the process. We're trying to show two things: How cool it is to work here How important training (and certifications) are to your professional career I think we've...

Ahhh, I'm very happy to be back home, and back to normal life again. While the whole experience during the BTN project was fun, it was very intense. It's definitely one of those things that I'm glad I did and of course in the end it was SO worth it because I'm actually working for Microsoft...

I wanted to share with you some things I learned, or observed, about “The Guys” during our time together in the contest. I, at least, hope they enjoy, and maybe even chuckle, when they see themselves through my eyes: Alex – The youngest one of us. He was born in Mexico City, son...

The proof lies before you now. I can't believe that it was only two months ago when I posted my initial blog regarding Be the Next Microsoft Employee, asking you to decide whether we at Microsoft are really serious about the value of getting trained and certified to validate your skills. I hope...

WOW! What an amazing time this has been. I can’t say “Thank You” enough to Microsoft and all the generous sponsors. The laptops are amazing. Thank you so much, HP. To a person, we’ve all said how awesome they are. Back to Microsoft, you put on an amazing show. I am honored to...

So we're down to the wire on the Play@Home contest on "Be The Next Microsoft Employee". First, let's see who won last week's challenge: Joseph Hagan Ryan Roper Timothy Corey Congratulations! Great Job! You'll get those free books as a prize that we've been...

It is time to go home and get back to our normal lives and use what we learned to tackle big problems at work and cherish all the memories from being on the show. A big thank you to everyone who made this show possible and all the folks involved from the person applying make up to the producer of the...

I busted my ass on that presentation! (Deep breath and exhale.) Okay, I had to get that off my chest. Thank you for listening. I’m okay. No, really, I am. I’m just disappointed, but, hey, I’ve been disappointed before. It doesn’t mean I’m going to give up. I just keep...

I’m not sure where the fourth challenge ended and the fifth challenge began – especially the social experiment side of them both. Buck just blasts in the dining room. I should have known something was up. He hadn’t stuck around for any other challenge. I should have known when he didn’t...

This is the best challenge of all and one that I will never forget because of time it took us to complete it. By now we all have won a challenge and winning this challenge means that someone would have won more than one challenge and anyone was capable of pulling a win. Mike won the challenge and again...

WOW - Today was a roller-coaster of emotions. Let me start by saying I cannot believe that I actually won the show. I'm so excited to be getting a job at MS, it's a dream come true. I'll try to recap the day as it occurred so you get a full array of my emotions. First, we all stayed up...

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...

This week’s challenge was both fun and disappointing. It was fun in that it was a group collaboration challenge, but disappointing in that we lost as a group. We were provided an error message and needed to come up with what we, as a group, thought the answer was. I suggested an answer that was...

For this week’s challenge we took a beautiful ferry ride across the Seattle harbor to Bainbridge Island. The views were great - the Olympic range on one side and the Cascades on the other. Rainer stood off in the distance like a lone sentinel. Seattle is awesome! The ride over was easily the best...

What an awesome day, and what a beautiful part of our Country. We went for a trip on the ferry! I think it was the Bainbridge Ferry. The weather was simply amazing. If you have ever spent a summer in Texas, then you know what the heat is like. The fact that I actually got cold during the month of July...

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...

I am very happy that I was able to contribute to the team and give the solution that the judges were looking for. The whole team was very focused on today’s collaboration challenge and we all had fun on the ferry sharing ideas on how to do things in SQL Server. I am enjoying every minute of the...

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...

This is what I call a “Woulda, shoulda, coulda.” I was close, so very, very close! I woulda used the colored markers if there were a couple of more colors. I shoulda not have mentioned my solution was in production somewhere. Yes, I know one cannot use solutions like cookie cutters. My proposed...

This challenge was fun to do and I focused on learning from previous challenges to do better each time. My strategy was to show my knowledge of BI and this challenge was perfect for it. I really thought I had a good plan because I expanded on the different phases of a data warehouse implementation. One...

Phew! This week’s challenge went well…I didn’t win, but I also didn’t make any glaring mistakes. Congratulations to Chris for the win! He got a sweet prize which I’m totally jealous about – a new Xbox with Kinect. The challenge itself was really fun but hard. There...

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...