Microsoft Virtual Academy – Rock your skills!

MVA - Know it. Prove it.
MVA – Know it. Prove it.

If you’re not already familiar with the Microsoft Virtual Academy (MVA) then this is a great opportunity to get familiar with this incredible resource!

Best of all is, any courses you already completed on MVA will count towards this challenge! 🙂

Personally I will be following the SharePoint track out of curiosity.
It will take me less than an hour every day, so it is very manageable.
These are the covered topics, well worth the time as you can see!

  • Manage SharePoint Online Documents and Lists
  • Support Corner: Configure SharePoint Outbound Hybrid Search
  • Office Guides: SharePoint Online Overview for IT Pros
  • Office Guides: Apps for Office and SharePoint
  • Tuning SQL Server 2012 for SharePoint 2013 Jump Start
  • Developing Microsoft SharePoint Server 2013 Core Solutions
  • Developing SharePoint Server Advanced Solutions Jump Start

MVA – The good

MVA basically is the free Microsoft version of Pluralsight/CBT Nuggets/Udemy/..
If you’re looking to learn a new skill, get a deeper understanding or even get certified in a Microsoft technology, this is the place to be!

MVA – The not so good

I’ve found that not all courses contain the content you expect them to contain. Especially not if you want to get certified.
To offset this you should learn to visit (and love) Technet often.

Technet, love it!

A great example of Technet usage is the Books Online feature.
Want to get familiar with SQL Server Data Quality Services (DQS) data cleansing? You got it!
Just looking for an overview of what you can learn about SQL Server? Sure, that’s possible!

 

So, this happened…

Cartoon describing how most blogs start and then fail
Welcome to blogging!

At the moment this blog in general will be about all things awesomely (and sometimes less awesomely) Microsoft.
However my focus will mainly be on 4 topics.

  • SQL Server
  • Azure
  • Business Intelligence
  • Certification

So how does one create a blog?

  1. Promise that you will start blogging
  2. Do other stuff for 3 weeks, some examples
  3. Think of a good domain and blog name
    • Settle with your own name
    • Tell yourself you’ll think of a good name later on
  4. Register the domain and get some hosting
    • Set domain name up to point to hosting
  5. Search for blogging software
    • Settle with WordPress as it seems popular enough
  6. Remember you read a blog from some SQL dude stating he recently changed his comment system
    • Research WordPress comment systems
    • Settle for the free “Jetpack by WordPress.com” plugin
    • Notice it’s not yet working and requires tinkering
  7. Look for a theme
    • Notice there are a TON of (free and paid) themes
    • Decide this is a task for Future-Jan
  8. Create your first post on your vanilla WordPress site, because why not!
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