Helmers Blog

Back in the 90-ties you received a one-year TechNet Plus Single User subscription when you achieved the MCSE ‘status’. I think I was one of the last ones who received this reward back in 1999. From 2000 you didn’t receive any reward (besides the MCP Wallet card and a certificate) at all…..until now!

A few years ago I already attended a Live Meeting Session about the MCP Award idea’s Trika and Georgeo had back in 2007! I’m not sure why it had to take until 2010 before the ideas finally grew into something now is known as the Learning Rewards Program. Too bad the program isn’t available to MCP’s (yet), but I received an e-mail earlier today which invited me to register for a pilot (if I’m fast enough on April 21st because there are only 10.000 spots available).

So if I’m right (and the pilot end successfully) we all (besides the 10k pilot MCP’s) can collect (?) our rewards!

If you did not receive the e-mail, please don’t e-mail me for the instructions to register for the pilot program because I won’t give you the how-to

Registration starts at April 21, 2010 at 8:00AM (PDT) (What time is this in my region?) so you have to be quick!

Robbert Verbeek pointed me to the latest Microsoft Credential : Microsoft Certified Non-Professional. To achieve this credential you have to pass both the 70-401 (SCCM,Configuring) and the 70-656 (MDOP, Configuring). I’m not sure why Microsoft should name it Non-Professional, but as you can see below…it does exist!  

I already forwarded this screenshot to the guys over at @MSLearning, when I receive a respsonse I’ll let you know

ps. Back in September 2009 Eric Denekamp also received the ‘Non-Professional’ Certification

The environment is a hot issue nowadays and everybody is doing what they can (are they?) to reduce their carbon footprint. Microsoft Learning is doing the same. Because of that the MCP Certification Welcome Kits will only be available the digital way from June 30, 2009.

It is still possible to order a paper certificate (available again from July 7th) trough the MCP Member web site, but you have pay a shipping and handling fee to receive them.

To download your MCP Digital certificates (even the ‘oldies’ are digitally available from June 30th) just visit the MCP Digital Cert homepage.

Source: MCP Flash (June 2009) / BornToLearn Blog

You maybe have read about it, but yesterday (April 27) was the day you could register for the Windows 7, Configuring Beta exam (71-680). Somebody compared the exam with the concert of a famous pop star : All seats booked in an hour!

Because the exam was so popular and almost everybody from Europe and America were unable to register, Microsoft chose to open up the registration again and (I quote JSeymour on the Beta Exams blog) ‘I then *quadrupled* the number of beta slots we normally have and you still burned through those in several hours.’

Still a lot of peers were unable to register for the beta exam, but Microsoft is now expecting more data then they can crunch before the release. So all you guys/girls that are attending the exam, of course you’re all giving a lot of comments on the exam, but do me a favor. Please (just to do Krista W. a favor ) place a ‘Helmer says hi to Krista W.’ text in one of your comments….thanks in advance!! Of course I do expect that all the other comments are of the serious kind!

(Let’s see how many of my readers are attending the exam )

The credits go to Koen Wijnstok for blogging about this game in Dutch at the Dutch Microsoft IT Pro Community blog.

At http://www.areyoucertifiable.com you can find a nice game with 400 questions about Windows Server 2003, 2008, Exchange 2007, Window Vista, etc. You can even ask your colleagues to join you. You can add your friends to a Friends Score-list so you can easily see who is the brightest!