Alexander’s Blog

Presentations for developers, IT Pros, SQL, Office, and Personal Development will be given by fellow MCTs and presenters from Microsoft.  This year’s MCT Summit will include sessions to prepare MCTs for teaching Microsoft’s Cloud computing classes.  Another feature of this year’s MCT Summit will be half-day hands on labs.

A Train the Trainer (TTT) session will occur on Tuesday Oct 18. If you are an MCP aspiring to become an MCT, attend the MCT Summit’s TTT session and become a MCT upon successful completion. To learn more about the MCT Certification requirements, visit Microsoft Learning’s MCT Certification page.  You can find more details here.  Fee for the Train the Trainer session is $700 which includes the Train the Trainer class,  MCT Summit conference fee, and your first years MCT fee to Microsoft.

Please Note: This year’s MCT NA Summit is the work of several dedicated MCTs with assistance from Microsoft, sponsors, and the IT professional association Pacific IT Professionals.  The MCT Summit is being offered by MCTs for MCTs; it is not a Microsoft event.

More details are available here.

Microsoft offers some really nice technical diagrams for SharePoint Server 2010. Many of these resources are visual representations of recommended solutions. They include poster-sized documents available in formats including Microsoft Office Visio 2007 or Microsoft Visio 2010 files (.vsd), PDF files, and XPS files.

Models are 34-by-44-inch posters that detail a specific technical area. These models are intended to be used with corresponding articles on TechNet. These models are created by using Office Visio 2007. You can modify the Visio files to illustrate how you plan to incorporate Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Products in your own environment.

The technical diagrams include the following. I have included links to the PDF files but as I mentioned above, you can also get these posters in Visio and XPS formats.

1. Design Sample: Corporate Portal with Classic Authentication
2. Design Sample: Corporate Portal with Claims-based Authentication
3. SharePoint 2010 Products Deployment
4. Services in SharePoint 2010 Products
5. Cross-farm Services in SharePoint 2010 Products
6. Topologies for SharePoint Server 2010
7. Extranet Topologies for SharePoint 2010 Products
8. Hosting Environments in SharePoint 2010 Products
9. Search Technologies for SharePoint 2010 Products
10. Search Environment Planning for Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010
11. Search Architectures for Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010
12. Design Search Architectures for Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010
13. Business Connectivity Services Model
14. Content Deployment in SharePoint Server 2010
15. Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 Upgrade Planning
16. Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 Upgrade Approaches
17. Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 — Test Your Upgrade Process
18. Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 — Services Upgrade
19. Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 — Upgrading Parent and Child Farms
20. Getting started with Business Intelligence in SharePoint Server 2010
21. Databases That Support SharePoint 2010 Products
22. SharePoint 2010 Products: Virtualization Process
23. Governance for SharePoint Server 2010

If you are interested in Visio or XPS formats of these technical drawings then click here.

SharePoint is a huge product and this latest video series, created by SharePoint expert and Microsoft Certified Trainer (MCT) Sharee English will teach you some of the most important aspects of SharePoint planning, installation and configuration.

SharePoint technology is really broken down into two separate administrators, the Server Administrator and the Site Collection Administrator. The video series from TrainingSpot.com covers the planning, installation, and configuration of SharePoint. Sharee will walk you through the installation choices and provide best practices on how to install SharePoint in various environments. She will show you how configure your farm for basic needs and dive into the Central Administration application in full detail. Finally, she will wrap up with configuration of the Shared Services Provider.

Total Time: 5 Hour 39 Minutes

Video Tutorials: 36

Series Author: Sharee English

If you are looking for additional SharePoint resources, you might want to check out Sharee’s blog.

The Silverlight 4 Training Course includes a white paper that explains all of the new Silverlight 4 features, several hands-on-labs that explain the features, and a 8 unit course for building business applications with Silverlight 4. The business applications course includes 8 modules with extensive hands on labs as well as 25 accompanying videos that walk you through key aspects of building a business application with Silverlight. Key aspects in this course are working with numerous sandboxed and elevated out of browser features, the new RichTextBox control, implicit styling, webcam, drag and drop, multi touch, validation, authentication, MEF, WCF RIA Services, right mouse click, and much more!

Audience Prerequisites:
Knowledge and experience with previous versions of Silverlight.

I am glad someone is looking out for Site Administrators. There is a lot of focus on resources for Network and SharePoint Administrators, for obvious reasons, but it’s important to also keep the Site Administrators in mind. I’ve noticed that my colleague Sharee English is often talking and blogging about Site Administrators. She recently posted a blog that lists training resources for SharePoint Site Administrators. Here’s a quote from her blog.

“Site Administrators have the largest burden when it comes to SharePoint. They are responsible for managing permissions, creating lists and libraries, and maintaining metadata. Most site administrators have never done any of these things before and may not even know what some of these things mean. Luckily there are so many resources available.”

Click here for more details and links to the resources that she has listed.