Alexander's Blog » Training

MCT 2011 NA Summit in San Francisco Oct 19-21 (W-F)

Zubair Alexander — Sun, 28 Aug 2011 01:58:49 +0000

Microsoft is assisting MCTs in North America to offer 3 days of training for MCTs on the latest Microsoft products and technologies.The summit will be held at Microsoft’s Northwest District office in San Francisco (835 Market Street, Suite 700 San Francisco, CA 94103), Oct 19-21 (W and Th 9-5, F 9-noon). The cost is $350.

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.

SharePoint Server 2010 Poster-Size Technical Diagrams

Zubair Alexander — Fri, 26 Nov 2010 18:58:39 +0000

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.

Tips for Printing Posters

If you have a plotter, you can print these posters in their full size. If you don’t have plotter, use the following steps to print on smaller paper.

Print posters on smaller paper

Open the poster in Visio.
On the File menu, click Page Setup.
On the Print Setup tab, in the Printer paper section, select the size of paper you want to print on.
On the Print Setup tab, in the Print zoom section, click Fit to, and then enter 1 sheet across by 1 sheet down.
On the Page Size tab, click Size to fit drawing contents, and then click OK.
On the File menu, click Print.

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

Videos: SharePoint Setup and Admin Basics

Zubair Alexander — Sat, 22 May 2010 15:28:18 +0000

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.

Free Silverlight 4 Training Course

Zubair Alexander — Sun, 25 Apr 2010 18:54:55 +0000

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.

Common Prerequisites

Silverlight 4 Training Kit

You can either watch the videos online, or you can download the Silverlight Training Kit, which is about 86MB.

System Requirements

Supported Operating Systems: Windows 7; Windows Vista

Silverlight 4 Tools and SDK Microsoft Visual Studio 2010

Links

Silverlight 4 Training Course
Silverlight 4 Downloadable Training Kit

Additional Training Resources for Site Administrators

Zubair Alexander — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 18:34:56 +0000

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.