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!
My feed back on this advice is - this is a good idea- not because I have MCSD, MCP and MCTS with me - because this idea is quite good and appealing for all people who are motivating towards certification - if loyalty program could turn into inviting people to write a blog on a famous blogsite like borntolearn, technetone etc would be more appealing.
I mean if someone is associated with Microsoft Lead Certification since long so he/she could be invited to write a blog like other people are writing their own blog on borntolearn.
This was my chunk on this idea and sorry for reading late :)
You know this is internet anything can happen anything.
Preaching Microsoft Technology at a free blog
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