Got a note in may inbox over the weekend announcing some developer training happening in Darwin. I see Dave's beaten me to it , but I'll repeat here because I reckon it's worthwhile encouraging these kinds of things especially in our more … regional … locations. There are four courses being run, some...

I had a great response from the certification vouchers I gave out three months ago . Unfortunately I don’t have any more of those to give away, but Microsoft Learning have announced an offer that’s almost as good. If you’re a MCP and you got your last certification before July 1 2007, you can get a voucher...

I know, getting training budget is hard at the moment, but you really want to make yourself as employable as possible. Help is at hand (in fact, it’s only a mouse click away). There are, of course, a whole bunch of Virtual Labs you can do (for developers and for infrastructure people ). There’s also...

Update – Sorry folks. All these vouchers are gone. I’ll post again if I can get any more. First, Happy New Year to all! Community , Certification , News , Static News , Database Editorial , Smart Client Editorial , Web Development Editorial Anyone who's followed this blog for any length of time knows...

As some of you know, I'm a big fan of the certification system . Well, there are only 11 days left of MS Learning's great offer to give you a free exam voucher for each MCP/MCTS credential you get before 31 May. You'll need to prove you passed by sharing your MCP transcript . Here's the skinny (for all...

Still catching up on my blogging, so this one's a little old. The irrepressible Trika blogged about the VS2008 series of certifications and included a bunch of different paths through the tracks based on your current certification status. There's also a link to a Live Meeting webcast about all this stuff...

I got this note from Tania Netterfield, our partner manager for CPLS and the local MS Press representative. Hello all, I’m delighted to advise you that our press distributor Woodslane in conjunction with MS has developed an Microsoft Online Press Store which is now LIVE! www.mspress.com.au To help...

I was in a meeting today with Tania Netterfield and she shared some certification plans with me that I'm itching to announce ... but I have to wait. In the mean time, Trika's announced that they've rescheduled the SQL Server 2008 Certification live meeting. The second meeting listed below is at Midday...

Via the irrepressible Trika : Microsoft Certification for Developers Join the Microsoft Certification team to find out what is new, and what you need to know, for your next step in developer certification. In this meeting, we will introduce our plans for Visual Studio 2008 training and certification...

Call me unusual, but I like doing the MS Certification exams . First, some history. My first exam was way back in 1999, when I participated in the beta program for the (then) new Visual FoxPro exams, 70-155 (Designing and Implementing Distributed Applications with Microsoft® Visual FoxPro® 6.0) and 70...

David Williams has been talking about certification, and he links to " this entertaining blog by Trika Harms zum Spreckel ". Trika will be coming to Tech.Ed on the Gold Coast in August. We'll also have some great deals on certification taken at Tech.Ed, as well as some fun activities around the certification...

One of my colleagues pinged me yesterday asking how someone could prove to their employer that they were an MCP (or, conversely, how the employer could check such a claim). I pointed him to the MCP Transcript Sharing Tool. The MCP can provide the employer with a MCP Transcript Sharing Code, for example...

TechEd 2007 is happening in Australia (on the Gold Coast) August 8-10 and in New Zealand (in Auckland) August 13-15. As Chuck said some weeks ago, I'm the guy on point for content in Australia and have been thinking about content and delivery for the last few weeks. Here are some initial thoughts about...

Developer Cabana Sessions Following on from my previous post , there has been a great response to the Developer Cabana sessions - so much so that they're already fully booked! I've increased the room capacity slightly, so it'll be standing room only at the back, but it looks like this one is a winner...

Looks like Mitch is studying for 71–536 as well. I’m signed up to do it AFTER the Ready Launch – on Dec 20. For 71–528 , we had a study group chat . Mitch has taken a different tack, doing individual blog posts on each of the skills being measured as he looks at them. So far...

Another meeting this evening where we kind of covered off some of what was left after the first three sessions. Transcript Skills being measured

We got "together" again last night for our third study group session . Once again, I've posted the transcript . This is also linked from our Skills Being Measured page. I’d have to say we didn’t get nearly as far as we might have this evening. I’m not sure whether this was due to...

As part of my study group homework, I promised to bone up on the AdRotator class in ASP.NET2.0 and report back to the group. Turns out this lead to another cool thing that I needed to report back on - dynamic image generation. The source code I’ll refer to throughout this post is available for download...

Update – Fixed the transcript link We got "together" again last night for our second study group session . Once again, I've posted the transcript . This is also linked from our Skills Being Measured page.

We didn’t get as far through the 71–528 skills as I’d hoped, but we had a good chat about some of the first section. I’ve posted the unedited transcript . Thanks again to Tatham for hosting the chat. Please join us on Wednesday for the next installment of the study group.

Updated : Fixed some spelling and added a transcript link. The Study Chats for 71-528 start this evening. I've broken up the " skills to be measured " matrix into four parts and left a couple of nights as revision and feedback (as some people will have already taken the exam by the time it gets around...

Ironically, for a ASP.NET certification, I've set up a couple of static HTM pages to serve as a home for the 71-528 study group . The main page is here . There’s a list of the skills being measured here . And a calendar reminder in ics format here .

A bunch of us (keen, or is that masochistic, local developers) have signed up for the beta version of the 70-528 exam — TS: Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 - Web-based Client Development (called 71-528 while it's in Beta). Exam 70-528, is one of two exams required for the "Microsoft Certified Technology...

I was chatting with Rob Farley at TechEd and he casually mentioned that he’d signed up for a couple of the Free MCP exams we had on offer. He went on to say that he’d finished the first one in such quick time on day 1 (and passed), that he asked the proctor whether he could sit the second...

I only found out today (yes, maybe I have been living under a rock) that you’ll be able to do Free MCP exams at TechEd Australia . I’d suggest the approach I took a couple of weeks ago at our internal training conference in Seattle, TechReady. Sign up now (with the attitude “well, it costs nothing...