Thoughtsofanidlemind's Blog

Category: Training

  • European Collaboration Summit 2018

    European Collaboration Summit 2018

    Experiences from the European Collaboration Summit 2018, held in Mainz, Germany, May 28-30 2018.

  • Thoughts about Microsoft’s unified technology conference

    As expected, Microsoft’s announcement that they would run an uber-conference focused on the enterprise to replace TechEd and the individual Exchange, Lync, SharePoint, Project, and MMS conferences did not receive universal approval. The new conference takes place in Chicago next May and, if TechEd is anything to go by, should…

  • A warmed-over MCSE program is no pinnacle

    Apparently the head of certifications at Microsoft (Tim Sneath) has said that Microsoft is going to make the MCSE exams “harder for everyone” by introducing new types of questions for which answers are harder to memorize. In other words, they want to eliminate the “certification by rote learning”, brain dumps, and…

  • Exchange 2013 training in Malaysia

    This past week I was in Kuala Lumpur, helping to teach an Exchange 2013 course for HP. It’s been quite a while since I was last in KL when I spoke at Microsoft’s APJ launch of Exchange 5.0 in 1997. Fifteen years, two massive corporate mergers (Digital-Compaq and Compaq-HP), and…

  • Exchange 2013 Training

    I always find training people about the technical details of Exchange to be an interesting but time-consuming (and draining) activity. Right now I’m in the middle of a set of Exchange 2013 training events where fellow MVP Brian Desmond (more famous for Active Directory but also highly capable around Exchange)…

  • Would a boycott influence Microsoft Learning?

    Microsoft Learning’s (MSL) recent decision to cancel the Microsoft Certified Master (MCM) and Microsoft Certified Architect (MCA) programs has spawned a fair amount of commentary and debate. Regretfully, in some cases the discussion barely scratches the surface, probably due to the unfamiliarity of the writer with the details of these high-level technical certifications.…

  • First Exchange 2013 training course appears

    December update: Now that Exchange 2013 is generally available, I want to make it quite clear that I neither endorse nor recommend the training mentioned below. This entry was posted to demonstrate the foolishness of launching a training course for a product some six months before it was actually available. If you…

  • RWC ends and I’m off to Greenwich and Vegas

    This coming week I’m travelling from Dublin to Greenwich, CT for the last in the current series of Exchange 2010 Maestro training events where I’ll be joining up again with fellow MVPs Paul Robichaux and Brian Desmond to deliver around twenty hours of lectures between Wednesday and Friday. The lectures are…

  • Thoughts on Microsoft Certified Master accreditation

    On May 16, Microsoft announced that the exams that lead to accreditation as a Microsoft Certified Master (MCM) for Exchange 2010 will be available in centers worldwide. This development, similar to the announcement about MCM for SQL made in late 2010, interests me from multiple perspectives – as a commentator…

  • San Diego Maestro

    We’ve just wrapped up the Exchange 2010 Maestro seminar in San Diego and everyone is making their way home after a pretty exhausting three days. Wednesday was particularly tough with an early start at 8am finishing up with a presentation from Binary Tree, one of our sponsors, at 6:10pm before…