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PingBack from http://www.biosensorab.org/2008/02/12/certified-on-linkedin/

For those that have questioned the value of LinkedIn, it is about to receive a big boost - Microsoft

There is an Erwin working at Microsoft? Would you need another Erwin ;)

FYI, there is already an MCT group on LinkedIn, although I'm not sure if it's something that Microsoft sanctioned.

I would absolutely use an MCSE, MCSA group - I probably spend too much time on LinkedIn as it is...

Thanks for the update

...waiting anxiously for this :)

That would be nice!

I run a group on LinkedIn, but it only has about 200 members.  Aside from the cache of having the little icon that denotes a) the existence of said group, and b) one's membership of said group, the really only major feature of a LinkedIn group is the fact that you are able to directly contact EVERY single member of the group, and they can contact you as well.  This can be good and bad.  I mean LinkedIn is not MySpace, thankfully.  I typically only link with people who I actually know and have worked with, and have generally good feelings about.  LinkedIn is not a popularity contest, as in he who dies with the most contacts wins. It's more of a quality thing, not a quantity thing. And don't even get me started about the seizure inducing graphics (and noise) at MySpace.  If LinkedIn starts too far down that path, it will lose it's value for professionals.

Let's say Johnny gets his MCP.  Yay Johhny!  Put him in the MCP group...  population one zillion.  Maybe it looks cool, but what does it get Johnny?  You can't search for membership of a group, you can't even know of the existence of every possible group.  If I want to find a MCSE, I search on the text "MCSE". I can already find 267 MCSEs in my vicinity. If I search for MCP, I'll get at most 500 responses, because that's the cutoff for the search engine.  Maybe they'll be 500 of the closest (in rank, 1s first, then 2s, then 3s) MCPs to me, but I'm not sure. With a population one one zillion, how useful or even consistant is a sample of 500?  

Later, Johnny gets his MCSA.  Time to move Johnny from MCP group to MCSA group.  Then he gets MSCE, then MCSE-Security, then who know what.  That's a lot of movement for Johnny.  Somebody will have to move Johnny from group to group.  Should everybody be in the MCP group?  

Anybody can start a LinkedIn group.  If there already is a MCT group that is run independently from Microsoft, well, that sort of spells out the path here.  If there is some member of each of the various MCP communities with an interest, I say let them do it.  I don't see any value in it for Microsoft, or for the general MCP community, to be quite honest.

The only other sizable group that I'm aware of is the CISSP group, which is managed by an individual.  My guess is that there are 40,000 members in the group.  It is a very static entity.  Once you're in, you don't move around.  They recently broke into geographic groups, in that there is one just for the UK.  Unlike the current MCP credentials, the CISSP can expire after 3 years, however, so I don't know how that gets handled.

So, while I admit it looks cool, what does it really get you?  What am I missing?

Great idea

If done, better do it good. Nobody likes maintaining multiple "profile" pages (e.g. LinkedIn, MCP Profile, .. )

Any update on this excellent idea?

I emailed Erwin a couple of days ago and he responded that

"That idea is on hold.  Given that there is a new MCP program manager, I’ve transitioned the projects to that person, but they’re still sorting through the priorities."

That's a real shame :(

(I guess that's the same as Trika said)