Following the energizing MCT & Educator Virtual Summit in April, we are looking forward to our new virtual summit on November 17^th.  Most sessions and speakers are now confirmed and eager to get started. We will have great content on some of the latest technology trends at Microsoft, we will work on soft skills and of course we look forward to great community networking.

The virtual summit is complementary to all MCTs and registered academic Educators. Following feedback on our ‘three day non stop readiness marathon in April’, we have decided to run shorter summits and to run them more often.

To make sure you will not miss the event, add the event to your Outlook calendar here.

At the Microsoft Certified Career Conference on November 18, we will offer over 30 hours of content, including tips and tricks on how to get a job, opportunities to grow your technical skills, and valuable insights from subject matter experts. And, we will also have some old fashioned FUN, psychometrician style (because everyone knows that "psychometrician" and "fun" are synonymous) with our Career Quiz: Are You Careerable?

 

This interactive session will challenge you to test your knowledge of skills needed to be “careerable” in a game show format similar to “Are you Certifiable?” Questions will cover a wide range of topics related to the theme of the Career Conference, including the value of becoming certified, what it means to have a Microsoft certification, as well as the soft skills needed to interview successfully, build your own brand, and prepare for a career. And yes, of course, prizes will be awarded! Are you careerable? Find out!

 

This session will be presented by Microsoft Learning’s Psychometrician, Liberty Munson; she is an expert at building and analyzing exam questions so be assured this will be a fair test of your skills!

 

 

We’re excited to announce that Geoff Evelyn’s Managing and Implementing Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Projects (ISBN 0790145302328; 288 pages) is now available for purchase!   In today’s post, please enjoy an excerpt from Chapter 9, “SharePoint Governance.” SharePoint Governance What Is SharePoint Governance? harepoint governance is not a hardware, software, or people resource solution. It is an organizational strategy and methodology for documenting and implementing business rules and controls related to your client’s data. It brings cross-functional teams together to identify data issues impacting the company or organization. It works with business and technical interfacing teams to develop SharePoint solutions for data issues. And you do all of this through a Governance Committee made...

MCTs who are attending TechEd Berlin; have a look at the MCT Event Forum to find out more about these two not to miss community events:

On Sunday evening November 7, 2010, join fellow MCTs at the MCT Dinner in Berlin. The MCT Dinner is open to all MCTs and the event is a great opportunity to meet up with fellow MCTs before the event week starts.

On Tuesday, 9 November, at 21:00 (9:00 p.m.), join the Microsoft Learning Community Party - exclusively for Microsoft MVPs, Microsoft Certified Trainers, community members and guests. This event will be sponsored by Springboard Series and Office 2010 and is a great opportunity to network with industry peers and key Microsoft executives, learn about other communities, and enjoy an evening full of music, food, drinks, and fun-all compliments of Springboard Series, Office 2010 and Microsoft Learning.

Party attendance is limited, so be sure to register today to reserve your spot at TechEd's only community party! (registration details can be found in the MCT Forums)

We're excited to announce availability of ILT course 80240A: Using Microsoft SharePoint Technologies with Microsoft Dynamics GP 2010. This three-day course provides students with the knowledge and skills to set up and work with Microsoft SharePoint Technologies for Microsoft Dynamics GP 2010.

It's ready for you on the MCT Download Center.

Gang, we’re done! 24 chapters, about 1,000 pages. Congratulations to Charles, who has outdone himself! Speaking for Charles and for the Windows Phone 7 team, we hope that you will enjoy Programming Windows Phone 7 : You can download a PDF here (38.6 MB). And you can download the ebook’s sample code here (5.03 MB). To give you a sense of this offering, here is Charles’s Introduction—beneath that you’ll find the ebook’s full Table of Contents: Introduction This book is a gift from the Windows Phone 7 team at Microsoft to the programming community, and I am proud to have been a part of it. Within the pages that follow, I show you the basics of writing applications for Windows Phone 7 using the C# programming language with the Silverlight and XNA 2D frameworks. Yes, Programming Windows Phone 7...

As the Project Editor for the second edition of Steve McConnell’s classic book, Code Complete , you wouldn’t believe how many hours I spent, with Principal Desktop Publisher (layout whiz) Carl Diltz, making sure everything was right, especially the thousands of margin elements in the book. As Steve revised code, getting his marginal comments on the code (e.g., “To include the debugging code, use #define to define the symbol DEBUG . To exclude code, don’t define DEBUG .”) to point to the correct line or lines of code took numerous passes. And then there were the “Cross-Reference” notes and the “Further Reading” notes and the Key Point icons and the Coding Horror icons and the Hard Data icons and the short cross-references to cc2e.com. And...

Back in July we held a live training event called Windows Phone 7 Jump Start during which we had two lively presenters walk through building killer phone apps and games. We then released it as a series of videos and later followed it up with another live event in September that updated the content and covered even more advanced topics.

Now we're happy to announce that all this great training content is available online. There are 19 sessions/videos total (most are less than an hour long), and we've also posted all the course materials you'll need to follow along. Topics covered include Panorama & Pivots, Bing Maps, XNA, Planning & Optimizing for Performance, Design using Microsoft Blend, and many more. Plus, we recorded an "Ask the Experts" session, which was a live Q&A with lots of Windows Phone 7 Microsoft employees.

See below for a description of each session. As always, feedback is welcome. Feel free to leave comments if you have any questions.

*Update* The first link above points to the 19 videos hosted on Channel 9. Alternatively, you can get all 19 videos by subscribing via Zune Marketplace or iTunes, or by watching them all on Zune.net.

Updated Topics

1.      Updated! Intro to the Windows Phone – 30 minutes, 17 seconds

This introductory session covers the Windows Phone 7 Overview, the Developer and the Windows Phone 7 Marketplace, options, how to become a developer, setting up your system, and an intro to creating Windows Phone applications. 

2.       Building a Silverlight  Application, Part 1 – 50 minutes, 4 seconds
This session is where the coding begins. Andy and Rob walk through building your first application with Microsoft Silverlight.  It includes responding to event controls, Windows themes and styles, and customizing text input.

3.       Building a Silverlight Application, Part 2 – 1 hour, 57 seconds
This video extends session two and begins with an introduction into Databinding with a dive into the Listbinding template. Rob and Andy follow by covering Page Navigation, handling the hardware Back key, and finally creating orientation-aware pages.

4.        Updated! The Application Bar – 17 minutes
This session covers how to instantiate the application bar, the Application Chrome, System Tray and the Application Bar in XAML.  It concludes with a demo using Expression Blend for enabling the application bar and including application icons and menu items. 

5.       Building XNA Games for the Windows Phone 7 Platform, Part 1 – 45 minutes, 20 seconds
This session goes deeper into XNA game programming for the phone.  Topics include display orientation, monitoring performance, using the Accelerometer, using touchscreen, advanced XNA sound playback, and controlling media playback with XNA.

6.        Building XNA Games for the Windows Phone 7 Platform, Part 2 – 50 minutes, 39 seconds
This session on building XNA for games covers managing voices and XNA sounds in Silverlight.  Rob and Andy then move on to Touch Input in XNA by covering the topics of getting inputs, iterating through inputs, and creating flicks.

7.       Updated! Isolated Storage – 23 minutes, 13 seconds
This session covers how to get your phone application to persist data so that you can avoid inappropriate tombstoning.  It covers topics such as loading and storing data, application settings and saving data in settings, serialization and threads all supported again with demos and scripts.

8.       Updated! The Application Lifecycle - 50 minutes, 50 seconds
This important session covers what you as a developer need to include in your application development process in order to get your application through the marketplace certification process.  It covers how applications work in the Windows Phone environment, the application lifecycle, lifecycle events and using Local Storage state object.  The goal is to help developers ensure that users have a good experience with the application.

9.       Updated! Launchers and Choosers – 33 minutes, 31 seconds
This sessions goes through the Windows Phone execution model in terms of Launchers and Choosers.  Learn how to effectively managing tombstoning with Launchers and Choosers.  We cover types of Launchers and Choosers as well as programming them.

10.   Updated! Push Notifications – 36 minutes, 52 seconds
This session covers server-initiated communications, enabling background scenarios, preserving battery life and the user experience, as well as learning how to prevent polling for updates.  Beginning with Start Tiles 101, you’ll work through types of notification, notification data flow, cloud service notifications, response messages and more. 

11.   Marketing Your Windows Phone Application – 53 minutes, 13 seconds
This session targets developers interested in marketing their games and applications.  Rob and Andy cover the Windows Phone 7 marketplace, registering as a developer, how you get paid for your applications, packaging your applications for the market and publishing them to the marketplace.  They finish up with how to use the Windows Phone for development.

12.   Working with Media – 53 minutes, 13 seconds

This session covers using media in your Windows Phone 7 applications and games.  Topics include media in XNA overview, displaying pictures, and playing music.

All New! Advanced Topics Sessions – ~ 6 1/2 Additional Training Hours!

These 7 new sessions are a more advanced look at Windows Phone 7 development.  It is assumed that developers already have some experience working on the Windows Phone.  New phone developers will want to view the previous 12 sessions prior to jumping into these new topics.

13.   Panorama and Pivots – 63 minutes, 28 seconds
This is the first of the new advanced Windows Phone 7 developer topics.  In this session, Andy and Rob will go through an overview of both the Pivot and Panorama controls using more real world examples, talk about Pivots and Panorama in Metro design, share when to use them and some cautions. 

14.   XNA Deep Dive, Part 1 – 32 minutes, 5 seconds
In this first session we’ll cover making a complete XNA game for the phone in terms of XNA specific to Windows Phone development.  It will not cover XNA programming.  We’ll look at XNA and the screen display, games and the Windows Phone operating system and launching other applications.

15.   XNA Deep Dive, Part 2 – 55 minutes, 46 seconds
This session picks up with the StartupMode property.  It covers the importance of event logging, the ‘gotchas’ of Tombstoning in XNA, persisting game data and storage, the Back button and the program genre.

16.   Location and Bing Maps – 82 minutes and 6 seconds
This is the longest of the 18 sessions but packed full of great information and code on Location Services and the Bing Map Control.  Rob and Andy start with a Location Services overview followed by GPS vs. WiFi, vs. Triangulation.  The final section provides coverage on the new Bing Map Control.

17.   Optimizing for Performance – 44 minutes, 46 seconds
In this session, Rob and Andy look at specific requirements for application performance.   They cover concepts that enable better performance starting with the concepts of the Windows Phone 7 architecture, application start up, understanding how Silverlight for Windows Phone 7 renders, and steps to consider when planning your application (e.g., optimizing Silverlight to utilize GPU).

18.   Designing Applications for Windows Phone 7 Using Expression Blend and Metro – 49 minutes, 43 seconds
In this session, Sr. Product Manager for Expression Blend, John Harris and Sr. Design Program Manager of the Metro language, walk you through the changes to Expression Blend and the new exciting Metro style for Windows Phone 7. 

19.   Ask the Experts podcast (Audio Only) – 40 minutes, 17 seconds
This audio only session is a must for everyone.  Yochay Kiriaty, Sr. Technical Evangelist for Windows Phone facilitates this panel of experts in responding to questions raised during the Live training.  The Expert panel includes:  Yochay Kiriaty, Peter Torr (Principle Program Manager, WPC) , Andy Wigley (MS Press Author and MVP), Rob S. Miles (MS Press Author and MVP), Jeff Wilcox (Sr. Software Design Engineer, Client Platform), Larry Lieberman (Sr. Product Manager, MCB Dev Programs), Randy Ramig (Sr. Software Design Engineer, WPC), Rohan Thakkar (Program Manager, Client Platform), Mike Harsh (Principle Program Manager, Client Platform), Anil Dhawan (Program Manager, WPC), Abolade Gbadegesin (Partner Software Design Engineer, WPC)  and Jon Harris (Sr. Product Manager,  Expression Blend)

Don’t worry if you didn’t make it in person to PDC this year. You can check out all of the great sessions online. You won’t want to miss presentations from Mark Russinovich, author of Windows Internals, 5th Ed , and Vittorio Bertocci, author of Programming Windows Identity Foundation . We also want to give a special shout out to our former coworker at Microsoft Learning, Glenn Block. o Inside Windows Azure Presenter: Mark Russinovich 10/29/2010, 11:30 AM, Live Join Mark Russinovich, now working on Windows Azure, for an under the hood tour of the internals of Microsoft’s new cloud OS. Topics will include datacenter architecture, cloud OS architecture, and what goes on behind the scenes when you deploy a service, a machine fails or comes online and a role fails. o Identity and Access Control...

We’re excited to announce that Craig Zacker and Orin Thomas’s MCITP Self-Paced Training Kit (Exam 70-686): Windows 7 Enterprise Desktop Administrator (ISBN 9780735627178; 592 pages) is now available for purchase!   You can find the book’s Contents at a Glance and as excerpt form the introduction in this previous post . In today’s post, please enjoy an excerpt from Chapter 2, “Designing a Client Life Cycle.”   CH A P T E R 2 Designing a Client Life Cycle When you are designing a client life cycle, you should ensure that your plan reduces the amount of time you have to spend maintaining parts of that life cycle. Your aims can include reducing the amount of time you spend managing operating system activation, configuring the operating system so that the installation is easily transferrable...

We're still adding some last sessions following comments here on Born to Learn and on Facebook. A fantastic idea was sent in last week, several people suggested we should offer more detailed information on where the job opportunities are and what kind of compensation to expect. We're excited to announce John Reed from Robert Half Technology will present key findings from the IT salary survey at the Microsoft Certified Career Conference! 

This is a great opportunity for technology managers and employees to find out what's in store for the IT profession in 2011. Based on research from the 2011 Robert Half Technology Salary Guide, this presentation offers insight into the IT hiring landscape and compensation trends for the coming year. Learn why it's still difficult for hiring managers to recruit top talent, which skills are most in demand among CIOs and learn about starting salaries for a variety of IT jobs. Find out which areas CIOs plan to invest in, the benefits of flexible staffing and tips to avoid burnout. Also featured: the Robert Half Salary Center and Salary Calculator.

Thanks for this great idea Brent and Christopher (who sent it in on Facebook), we loved it when we saw it and we were thrilled to find a speaker this quickly. Mileage may vary and we are nearly 'fully booked', please keep those comments coming though! Even though we have now nearly filled our three simultaneous tracks for the 24 hours that we will be live, we can still work on adding content that you would really like to have!

The 'career conference team' took a moment today to celebrate 1100 registrations :-) THANK YOU for your trust in us, we will make sure you will have a great conference!

We were excited to see Ken Rosen (you may have read Ken's career story earlier this week) on Edge TV today. If you're just back from holiday and you had not heard about the event until now, watch the interview with Ken on Adam Carter's blog on Edge TV here. Adam Carter by the way, is a specialist on Microsoft Business Productivity Online Suite. Adam will be joining the Certified Career Conference as a speaker and he will go into what 'BPOS' is and what BPOS' impact could be on your productivity and your career.

 

We’re excited to announce that Marco Russo and Alberto Ferrari’s Microsoft PowerPivot for Excel® 2010: Give Your Data Meaning (ISBN 99780735640580; 416 pages) is now available for purchase!   You can find the book’s Contents at a Glance and an excerpt from the Introduction this previous post. In today’s post, please take a look at Chapter 2, “PowerPivot at Work.”   Chapter 2   PowerPivot at Work   We are now going to introduce some of the most interesting features of Microsoft SQL Server PowerPivot for Excel. The goal of this chapter is to show the most frequently used PowerPivot features for transforming a simple Excel workbook into a complex report that helps you perform analysis on data. This is not yet the place for more advanced topics, such as the DAX programming...

Curious about SQL Server? Would you like to learn more, take a few 'chunks' from a Microsoft Official Course perhaps?

Join the Microsoft Official Course session on course 6232: "Implementing a Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Database". This course covers a range of topics crucial to implementing a SQL Server Database. You will learn lots of basic concepts to help you get started including topics such as how to create a database and tables. But you also get a chance to discover more advanced features like stored procedures and functions. We will also dive into database snapshots, after which we'll look at how to use partitioned tables for better performance. Sure we'll walk through the table of contents so you know what the course covers, but there is only one way to really show you what it's like: and that is for Susan Ibach to teach it! Susan will go through some 'chunks' of the actual course material so while you are learning about the course itself you'll get to learn something cool at the same time! This is a 2 hour session, join us at the Microsoft Certified Career Conference to learn more about Implementing a Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Database.

Now available for your viewing pleasure:  Colin Lyth explains the Microsoft Certification family for developer technologies, shares upcoming plans for developer training and talks about the growth in developer certification.

Watch Now

Visit the IT Manager portal to view the upcoming schedule, download the slide presentations, and to view other Live Meetings for Managers on demand.

I still remember what we did last Summer -)! Well over 100 MCTs from all over the world traveled to York for a three day MCT Readiness Summit. Designed for MCTs and fully run by MCTs. This was a true Labor of Love, organzing MCTs Andrew Bettany and Daniel Sorlov did a fantastic job and they put together an extremly valuable and energizing event. Hats off for contributing to the MCT Community this way Andrew and Daniel, you have set new standards!

Not all MCTs were able to attend and with three simultaneous tracks, not even MCTs that did attend could attend all sessions. So we recorded all 34 sessions and they are now available to MCTs and Educators on our Readiness site. MCTs and Educators, have a look at the great new content here.(go to the 'event recordings' tab for a full overview)

This week, the Certification team will host three events during PDC hours to give developers the opportunity to see what’s new in certification at Microsoft and help shape our program. All events will take place on Thursday, October 28, in Building 40, Classroom 3 on Microsoft Main Campus in Redmond. If you’ve already signed up to a take the new beta exams for Designing and Developing Windows Azure Applications (Exam 70-583) or Developing Microsoft Silverlight 4 Applications (Exam 70-506) at the Certification Test Center at PDC, stop by and say hello!

If you’re interested in attending any of the events, please RSVP by emailing me (sfilkins@microsoft.com) with “Certification Events” in the subject line. Note: The Innovative Item Type event is limited to 10 participants. An NDA is required of all participants in the Innovative Item Type and Certification Program Enhancements events.

Can’t make it? We’ll post a summary on the Born to Learn website following the events.

To arrange transportation between Building 40 and Building 33 (Conference Center): Inform the receptionist at Building 33 that you would like a "red route" shuttle to Building 40. Wait time for the shuttle is about 5 minutes. When you are ready to leave Building 40, inform the receptionist that you'd like a shuttle back to Building 33.

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Innovative Item Types: Conditional Questioning

Join Microsoft Certification product planner Gerry O’Brien in a group exercise that explores the possibility of creating exam items based on different approaches to a single scenario. We’ll use content from Designing and Developing Web Applications Using .NET Framework 4 (Exam 70-519) as our starting point.

Note: This event is limited to 10 participants with skills in .NET Framework 4 web application design and development; an NDA is required of all participants. Participants will be selected on a first come, first served basis by email response. To participate, please email sfilkins@microsoft.com with “Certification Events” in the subject line.

When: 12:30-2:00 PM
Where: Building 40, Classroom 3, Microsoft Main Campus (Redmond)

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Influencing Developer Certification Exams: Join the community of item contributors

Learn about Microsoft’s new community authoring initiative for developer exams and find out how you can participate. Don Tanedo, a Content Development Manager with Microsoft Certification, will discuss the role of subject matter experts in the development of certification exams, methods of assessing skills in Microsoft certification exams, and the value of communities in shaping the direction and focus of developer certifications.

When: 3:00-4:00 PM
Where: Building 40, Classroom 3, Microsoft Main Campus (Redmond)

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Certification Program Enhancements: What Do You Think?

Help shape the future of the developer certification program! We'd like to get your feedback on a couple of ideas. Stop by building 40 between 10:00 and 4:00 PM to share your opinions. Event format will be an informal discussion with Krista Wall, Certification Product Manager. Note: An NDA is required of all participants.

When: Drop in between 10:00 AM and 4:00 PM
Where: Building 40, Classroom 3, Microsoft Main Campus (Redmond)

Exam 70-523 is now finally available in Prometric testing centers! This exam is intended for candidates who hold an MCPD Web Application Developer 3.5 certification to upgrade to MCPD Web Applications Developer 4.

When you pass Exam 70-523: Upgrade: Transition your MCPD .NET Framework 3.5 Web Developer Skills to MCPD .NET Framework 4 Web Developer, you complete the requirements for the following certification(s):

MCTS: .NET Framework 4, Web Applications
MCTS: .NET Framework 4, Service Communication Applications
MCTS: .NET Framework 4, Data Access
MCPD: Web Developer 4

To schedule your exam, visit Prometric’s Web site.

We’re excited to announce that Johnathan Lightfoot and Chris Beckett’s Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Plain & Simple (ISBN 99780735642287; 256 pages) is now available for purchase!   You can find the book’s chapter-level table of contents and some colorful examples of this easy-to-use, beginner-focused guide to Microsoft SharePoint in this previous post . In today’s post, please enjoy a closer look at section 10, “Using SharePoint with Office 2010.” Read More...

In January 1993, I was 24 years old, ten months into my marriage and four months away from fatherhood. My history degree collected dust while I spent my days as an administrative assistant, typing and filing for a staff of architects and engineers only a few years older than me; my wife was still in college during the day and waited tables by night. Beth and I lived in a one-bedroom apartment in northeast Philadelphia, around the corner from her parents, and their standing dinner and laundry invitations made it possible for us to just get by. At least when it was just the two of us.

With a baby on the way, I knew I had to find a way to earn a decent living so we could stand on our own, but three years post-college I still didn’t know what I wanted to do when I grew up. And I was about to become as grown-up as one gets.

I surveyed my skills: I was a pretty good writer and had dreams of becoming a journalist or author one day, but neither path was going to provide me the financial support I needed right then. I was good with computers, too, having spent the better part of my adolescence in front of a VIC-20, Commodore 64, Apple II, and Macintosh, but my coding skills stopped with Apple Pascal and 6502 assembly language, neither of which were currently in demand. All that time in front of computers turned me into a pretty darn fast typist, though, so inevitably I kept coming back to secretarial and clerical jobs where my ability to quickly pick up new versions of WordPerfect made me a pretty easy (if overqualified) hire.

The company I worked for upgraded their software regularly but never trained their staff on the new versions, so I occasionally held lunchtime training sessions to teach my secretarial colleagues how to improve their productivity, and after one of those sessions a friend suggested that I look into doing that for a living. Until that moment, I don’t think I even knew there was such a thing as technical training—I thought that teaching computers required advanced college degrees and a post at a university. But it turned out that a company just a few blocks away from where I worked was delivering software application training and was looking for part-time instructors, and after an interview and audition, I was hired to deliver some evening classes on WordPerfect and Paradox.

The extra money made a big difference, and when a full-time position opened up in March, I made the move. A few weeks into my new job, my manager informed me that our company had just signed an agreement with Microsoft to become one of their first official training partners and that she needed me to fly to Seattle to take a class and get certified so that I could teach the Microsoft courses.

I wasn’t crazy about the idea for a number of reasons: 1) my daughter was due a few weeks before the class was scheduled, and I didn’t like the idea of being so far away from my new family; 2) the class was about something called Windows NT, and I did not like Windows (I was strictly a DOS snob, GUIs were for wimps who couldn’t deal with command lines); and 3) the prospect of having to pass certification exams was pretty scary: what if I failed and my company had to fire me? But I went, despite my qualms, and after attending the class and passing my first two MCP exams, I joined the MCP and MCT communities.

At the time, the trainers at that class pretty much were the MCT community—we were only the second group of trainers Microsoft had certified, and the Excel spreadsheet in the classroom identified me as MCT #17 (today we have more than 18,000). MCPs, by contrast, had been around for a while—more than 5,000 preceded me---but at the time I couldn’t have predicted what both certifications would come to mean to me.

All I knew for the next year or two was that my certifications made me very important at my company, and as demand for Windows NT accelerated, I found myself teaching week in and week out, spending my evenings and weekends studying updates and trying to figure out how to get answers for questions not answered in the courseware. At some point, I stumbled upon a Microsoft Certification forum on CompuServe, which at the time was the dominant on-line network, and I discovered a small but active community of people that shared my interests and my challenges. Now able to bounce ideas and questions off of my peers, my training delivery grew noticeably stronger and more confident.

I discovered that I loved training (and grudgingly respected Windows)—even though those early classes typically consisted of grizzled UNIX sysadmins and Novell engineers who more often than not resented their employers’ decisions to migrate to (actually at the time, it was more like interoperate with) Windows NT. I was much younger than most of my students, and my job satisfaction largely derived from reluctant concessions from students that Windows NT was a pretty good network OS.

But gradually, a new dynamic introduced itself in my classrooms: I still had plenty of private corporate classes, but more and more of my classes consisted of career changers as word began to spread that the IT industry was growing faster than the IT community could keep up with. Every week, a new class brought new success stories, and helping people find their on-ramp to an exciting career and a better life became a drug that I’ve never lost my addiction to.

I became one of those stories myself, capitalizing on my early right-place/right-time luck by investing in myself at every opportunity: I deepened and diversified my MCP certifications, attended every class I could afford, gave back to the MCT community (by this point on the original MSN network), and took gigs writing and reviewing Microsoft courseware.

By this time, I was making pretty good money as a consultant and trainer, and I was able to move my family to the Pacific Northwest, an area of the country we’d fallen in love with when we first visited on our honeymoon. I was 27, enjoying a standard of living I’d never thought possible growing up in inner-city Philadelphia, and was absolutely in love with my job. It was pure joy and profoundly rewarding in every way—and I realized for the first time that my calling in life was to help people realize their potential.

And that’s what I did, week after week, balancing my classroom engagements with my writing assignments for Microsoft. At least once a year I’d get a job offer from Microsoft, but I could never envision giving up show business—I couldn’t imagine Microsoft offering anything as exhilarating as the high I got from switching on the light bulbs above my students heads. But in 1997, my soon-to-be manager figured out the words to reel me in, and I remember them better than any other words ever spoken to me by anyone. When I politely declined Microsoft’s third job offer, he said “You’ll never help as many people spending your entire career in the classroom as you’ll be able to in one year at Microsoft. When you help our trainers, you’re helping their students, too.”

I became a Microsoft employee the very next week.

In the 13+ years since, I’ve held nine different jobs, none of which ever again approached the sheer fun factor of being a trainer or provided the visceral affirmation of students discovering their potential, but I learned to replace those things with the satisfaction that I was helping entire communities of trainers, IT Pros, and developers have a much greater collective impact than I was ever able to do on my own. In those 13+ years, I never left the Microsoft Learning group, even though I know my career trajectory would have probably been much steeper if I had.

I promised myself that I would stay as long as it took to pay forward the debt of gratitude I still feel today for the opportunity that’s been afforded to me.

I promised I would stay as long as IT remained an on-ramp for anyone looking for a challenging and rewarding career, and as long as I could keeping finding new ways to help people take that on-ramp.

That’s why I’m here, and I’m not alone—I know more people at Microsoft with stories like mine than I can count. I’m not here to change the world (I leave that to my more technical colleagues)—I’m here to enable you to change your world.

That’s why I’m so excited about our upcoming Microsoft Certified Career Conference, and why I’m so proud to work for a company that cares as much about your long-term career success as it does about mine.

Looking back to that mid-nineties recession, I can’t imagine what would have happened to that scared, directionless, newlywed father-to-be if he hadn’t pursued that first Microsoft certification. But every morning, I wake up thinking about him, and every morning as I kiss my girls goodbye, I thank him for taking that first step.

That’s my story.

What’s yours?

This is a 'big fat update' on the Microsoft Certified Career Conference, let me share the latest information and let me address questions and comments you may have. I apologize for the size of this blog post, I wanted to summarize as much as I could in one single place. I hope this gives you a better idea of what the conference looks like and that we can share some of our thinking this way. That goes both ways, as we would love to hear yours!

It has been a while since we first announced the Microsoft Certified Career Conference. Since then, we have scheduled 34 sessions and over 900 people from over 100 countries have registered. The event has attracted nearly 6000 'likes' on Facebook. I cannot tell you how thrilled our team is with these results, THANK YOU! Thank you also for your comments, thank you for your questions and thank you for your great suggestions. In fact, following some of your suggestions, today I would like to do a full recap and I will try to answer as many of your questions as I can. Why are we running this event, where is the event, how did we select the content, why do we charge a fee, what does the career fair look like, who is speaking and who is attending and what will the event look like. A lot of valid questions, we love answering them and hence the 'big fat' blog post :-)

Why would Microsoft run a Career Conference?

Well, through our partners and Microsoft Certified Trainers, we train and certify thousands of people each month. We have always believed that skilled people have better odds. Even in today's tough economy, where companies hire less people, they still hire the best people. And that's where we feel we can help, and it is where we feel we should help; i.e. helping you be better equiped to start or expand your IT career.

Where is the event and how do I join?

This is a virtual event, so you can join at home, at the office, anywhere where you have internet connectivity. The conference will run for 24 hours so anyone in any time zone will be able to join in. During these 24 hours, there will be three simultaneous tracks. Obviously there is no way you could join all of the sessions live and we will record the sessions and make them available for download to all attendees, for 90 days following the event. The event is at a fee of $55 USD, there are discounts for students, MCPs and MCTs and you can register here.

How did we select the conference content (tracks, sessions and speakers)? 

Great question! Once we decided that we wanted to help people start or expand their IT careers, what would be the best way of doing that? At Microsoft Learning we are all about technical skills and so we quickly came up with some tracks where you can grow your technical skills. We redesigned the way we normally work and came up with formats that we think will work really well at this virtual conference. But to start or expand your IT career you also need great job-hunting skills, especially today. So we also added 'soft skills' tracks that can help you be successful at 'landing the right job'.

Technical tracks:

• The 'Super Cert Me' Track: expert MCTs help you prepare for Microsoft Certification exams at Super Cert Me speed
• The '60 minute Rock Star' Track: high speed learning that makes you stand out in a crowd
• The Microsoft Official Courses Track: taking you through some of our official courses and learning as much as we can in just 2 hours

 Soft Skills tracks:

• Career Essentials: soft skills like 'searching for the right job', 'writing letters that stand out in the crowd', 'preparing for the job interview' etc. etc.
• A Day in the Life: first person accounts on what job roles are really like
• Opportunity Knocks: the opportunities new technology can bring for you and how to grasp them
• People and Technology: the impact of new technology on your career and on your team

Why charge a fee?

The conference fee is $55 USD, there are discounts for students, MCPs, MCTs and this weekend (Oct 23rd/24th) is a great weekend to visit us on Facebook. We are not making money on this event, fees will be reinvested in future conferences and activities. It is a way for us to do more of these events in the near future.

What does the Career Fair look like?

We have invited companies to run a virtual booth at the Career Fair; a place where you can meet potential future employers, chat with them to find out what kind of people they are looking for, find out how they look at people and jobs, upload your resume etc. Companies you can meet with at the Career Fair include Avanade, Dell, Monster, New Horizons, Levi Ray Schoup, Microsoft, Quickstart, Fevaworks Technology and we will also have a booth where students can meet and get advice. More to come and if your company, or other companies you know are hiring, are interested, please let us know or share this link with them.

Who is speaking and who is attending?

Let's start with 'who is attending': we're excited to have received over 900 registrations from over 100 countries. And you will not be bored: this week we scheduled most sessions and speakers, we will have well over 40 hours of exciting content for you! We still expect some changes and additions, so the agenda below is still a DRAFT agenda. Times on this draft agenda are PST agenda; add 8 hours for London time zone, add 16 hours for Singapore.

We will have a full agenda in downloadable pdf later next week, but for now the below gives a good first impression (click here or on the visual to be redirected to a place where this is easier to read:-). Check out our event blog for details on specific sessions, more details to follow soon!

What will the event look like?

We're working on a new virtual conference platform right now. We want to make sure you can enjoy the sessions, chat with others, share files and 'friend' people you meet. This event is about skills, it is also about personal networking, so we are working on both. Below a draft screenshot to give you an idea of the options you will have at the conference.

 

PHEW, that is indeed a big fat lengthy blog post, I hope it answered some of your questions and that you now have more information on the event. Please keep asking questions and please keep sending in ideas. We love hearing them! 

We’re excited to announce that Mike Halsey’s Troubleshooting Windows 7 Inside Out (ISBN 9780735645202; 500 pages) is now available for purchase!   In today’s post, please enjoy an excerpt from Chapter 13, “Identifying the Source of a Problem.” Why Problems Occur with Windows So many things can go wrong with Windows because every single PC is unique . It is highly unlikely, especially outside of a business space, that another PC exists with exactly the same hardware, installed software specification, and updates as yours . Your PC will contain a unique mix of software and hardware components, and there would be no way for any person or any company to ever test all of the possible combinations for stability . There are logo certification programs for Windows hardware and software, and...

Do you use Word or Excel 2007 intensively? Already MOS certified in Word or Excel 2007? We need your help. The Word 2007 Expert and Excel 2007 Expert betas are now open and need participants.

Why Office 2007 and not 2010, you ask? Based on clear customer feedback, we've decided to update MOS 2007 to include an Expert level exam for the two core Office applications, Word and Excel. This will bring MOS 2007 in line with the same offerings for MOS 2003 and MOS 2010.

The beta is open starting today (October 22^nd) through November 19th or until the betas have enough entries. Below are some of the participating test centers, and new test centers sign up daily. Interested but don't see a nearby test center? Please email Certiport's beta coordinator, Stacey Tilley, at betacoordinator@certiport.com.

*Please note the beta exam is in English only.

Testing Center	Location	Contact	Contact Email
Prodigy - ATC	Ireland	Andrew Flood	andrew.flood@prodigysolutions.com
Lasalle Computer Learning Center	Tampa, Florida	Suzanne Ricci	suzanne@lasallecomputer.com
Advantage Caribbean Institute Ltd.	Barbados	Bentley Beckles	bbeckles@caribsurf.com
AAA PCITS2	Lawrenceville, GA	Pamelia Evans	pamiliaevans@peoplepc.com
Innovative Training & Database Solutions	Bridgetown, Barbados	Michelle Carter	InnovativeTDS@caribsurf.com
Post and Telecom of Kosova, Training and Development Centre	Europe, Republic of Kosova, Prishtina	Besnik Skenderi	Besnik.Skenderi@ptkonline.com
Time Saving Solutions, LLC	Redmond, WA	Lynn Landry	lynn.landry@tssredmond.com
Cherokee High School	Georgia	Anna Green	Anna.Green@cherokee.k12.ga.us
Dre' Von Software Training	Jonesboro, GA	LeAndra Jordan	ljordan@d-vonline.com
Toronto Training Center For Information Technology and Business Accounting	Missassauga, ON, CA	Mousa Hamdan	musah_jo@hotmail.com
North Shore Senior High School	Castlegory, TX	Cheryl E. Green-sandle	cgreen@galenaparkisd.com
NR Computer Learning Center	Orange, CA	Vazi Okhandiar	vazi@nrclc.com
Crestview High School - Okaloosa	Florida	Yolanda Porter	PorterY@mail.okaloosa.k12.fl.us
Northwestern State University Department of Mathematics (NSU, 401V Kyser Hall)	Natchitoches, LA	Mary Beth Tarver	tarverm@nsula.edu
Chesterfield Technical Center	Chesterfield, VA	Rebecca Taylor	Rebecca_Taylor@ccpsnet.net
Dunbar High School - Lee	Florida	Denise Spence	DeniseCS@LeeSchools.Net
Atlanta Urban League	Georgia	Stacey Chapman	clstacey@earthlink.net
Berry College	Mount Berry, GA	Dan Sandberg	dsandberg@berry.edu
Bossier Parish Community College	Louisiana	Debra Harmon	dharmon@bpcc.edu
Bellevue College	Bellevue, WA		bcproctor@bellevuecollege.edu
New York Business Institute	NY, New York	Ginny Mei	gmei@nybi.org
The Turn Around Agenda/Technology and Education Center	Dallas, TX	Vonetta Pelts	vpelts@ocbfchurch.org
Career & Technical Education - Houston ISD	Houston, TX	Kenneth Ta	kta@houstonisd.org
John I Leonard - Palm	Palm Beach, FL	Fran Thew	ThewF@palmbeach.k12.fl.us
S&G Training Ltd	United Kingdom	Nicola Joyce	nicola@sandg.co.uk

 

SharePoint MCMs and MVPs will be fielding questions during the monthly SharePoint MVP expert chat on MSDN next week. You can join us on Wednesday, October 27th between 9:00 AM and 10:00 AM PDT ! Learn more and add these chats to your calendar by visiting the MSDN event page: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/chats/default.aspx . For more information, see the announcement on the MVP blog. Read More...

This is the first in a series of blog posts authored by members of the IT Manager Advisory Council. We've asked them to share their insights and opinions on topics they are passionate about related to hiring & managing employees, and maintaining skills on their teams.  If you agree or disagree and have a different perspective - chime in and contribute your views.

"The only thing worse than training your staff and having them leave, is not training them and having them stay." Someone wrote this comment to a blog entry a little while back – and there's a lot of truth in it. And it made me think about the larger question: how do we retain our best employees? As the economy shows signs of renewed life, this is the perfect time to think about strategies for keeping valuable staff motivated and engaged. 

 My name is Suzanne George and I'm the Senior SharePoint Engineer at Silicon Labs in Austin, Texas. In our company, we pride ourselves on "hiring the best" – it's one of 5 mottos written on the wall of each conference room, so no one forgets that they are respected and valued. Here are some of the things that we try to do to ensure we have staff that not only has pride in their own individual work and contributions, but also in the company.

·         Keep the sand from shifting. Many managers feel that managing software engineers is like herding cats. The best way to manage engineers (not cats) is to keep them focused.  By giving people time to finish Project A before Project B, they're more likely to feel that they can make an impact – and feel successful.  

·         Know your staff. Knowing the likes and dislikes of your staff can help keep their morale high. One staff person may prefer projects where he or she can perform project management roles and attend meetings; while another would prefer there were never any meetings. If half of your team does their best work around 2 AM, try to avoid 8 AM staff meetings. It will greatly improve their attitudes and abilities to respond in a coherent manner. 

·         Encourage staff bonding.  This is a great way to ensure your team is functioning as a "team" and will band together when it is required. Our 2 PM "walk around" is one of the tactics I use and I'd like to hear what's worked in your shop.   

·         Keep the projects interesting. One of the best ways to retain staff is to ensure individual contributors feel challenged, even between exciting large-scale migration or technology upgrade projects.  Projects such as hardware upgrades, performance improvements, and consolidation to a Virtual Infrastructure are complex and thought provoking, and can keep IT workers enthused.

·         Get them to take time off. Sometimes engineers are so intense about their work, that they resist taking time off; but they need to, to keep fresh and avoid burnout. Get them to take their vacations. Give them time, at home or in the office, to do a webinar on a topic that interests them.  The next day, they can send around an email to the team: "top 5 things I learned from the Windows Server webinar."  I found that attending a webinar at home with my refrigerator can be motivating! Watching a webinar at home also gives people time to reflect on what they've learned and how they can apply it.  

·         Use training as a perk. In my office, we offer training or certification at least once a year. A typical manager will advise “if we are able to successfully complete projects A, B, and C, you're going to get to go to that SharePoint conference." However, if the engineer offers suggestions on what they would like to attend, a manager can say, "Here's the price range. You pick." What's really important is that they get to go to something – even if it's the free Microsoft SharePoint Saturday. Encouraging staff to participate in training helps them feel they are not ‘stuck in a dead-end job’.

·         Organize your group to keep going. Preparing for staff turnover or the sudden absence of an employee is like writing good code: make sure you don't have a single point of failure. By promoting cross training, department standards (both coding and operational), and team unity, you can both provide staff development and be better prepared for an unexpected crisis.  

Sometimes turnover is unavoidable, but as you know, it's almost always disruptive and costly. Losing an employee or an unexpected absence can punch a pretty big hole in a schedule.

I'd like to hear from you about some of the things you've tried (or thought about trying, or wondered if anyone else had tried) to keep employees happy and motivated on the job.