Would you like to shape the future of Microsoft Learning’s Certification program? Here’s your chance! Take a few minutes to complete a brief survey and help us improve the value of our certifications. Not only will you have an opportunity to provide your feedback on the future of the program, you may also win one of four X-Box 360s.
Complete contest rules can be found here, but the most important rule is that sweepstakes is only open to legal residents of the United States. If you are not a U.S. resident, we’d still love your input, but you can’t be entered into the sweepstakes for one of the X-Box 360s because of Microsoft’s rules around this particular contest. (I didn’t design this particular contest or its rules, but feel free to shoot the messenger…I’ll lay down on my sword for all of you who live outside the U.S. I hope a few of you will participate anyway because I’d love worldwide input.)
To complete the survey, visit: http://www.microsoft.com/learning/TechEd2010Survey
The survey will be open until June 30, so if you’re interested in shaping the future of the program, you should act now!
Closing the internet explorer when the survey is done? Not really whati expected ;-)
Maurice
It worked fine for me on Chrome, and left my browser open when I was done.
Hey,
I consider this survey to be a great idea but I would like to know will there be a similar survey based on the MSBC certification? From I could make out this one was quite IT Pro oriented.
Cheers
Worked here, Win7-IE8.
Interesting survey.
Survey hints that MS want to make some changes in certification- either to discontinue MCSE, make some analogue of MCSE for 2008(which will be great) or to make certification more periodical, or to require MS courses before certification...
Really? I took it to mean that they were looking at ways to make the certs more valuable and those were some suggestions that they had.
MCSE is dead anyway, or will be when Server 2003 hits EOL. No worries there.
There does need to be something more difficult than the MCITP, but not as extreme as the MCM.
Recertification is something that they desperately need and tried to implement with the new gen certs, but there was too much complaining for lazy MCPs.
Requiring courses would just be a money grab, much like it is for the vmWare VCP certification. If you know the material and can pass the exam you shouldn't be forced to shell out $3000 or more to get the cert. For example, I have three MCITP certs (Server Administrator, Enterprise Administrator, and Virtualization Administrator). How much money would it have cost me to earn that cert if I needed to take a $3000 class before each exam? (Answer: $18,000). I work for an MS Gold Partner, so having these certs are critical for our business, but most companies won't spend that kind of money on training. Heck, a company with a training spend that considered "good" probably spends no more than $5000/year on each employee, and even that is a stretch.
Apparently I am not certified in basic math. It wouldn't be $18,000, it would be $27,000. Ouch.
I do not like the idea of compulsory training one bit! I would however, welcome the idea of FREE online virtual labs as a prerequsite for the exams.
A huge THANKS goes out to everyone who took time to complete the survey that I blogged about several
Darn, I missed this post until too late to be able to fill out the survey. I wish there'd been an email about this, don't think I saw it in any of the MCP Flash things.
OtherKevin is correct, the $5000/year max per employee that his company is willing to spend on training is definitely good. Far too many of us are stuck in positions with less training funds than that available, and far too many with NO training funds.