Contents tagged with Personal
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Renewed as SharePoint Most Valuable Professional (MVP) for 2013
I just received the confirmation that I am renewed as SharePoint MVP (Microsoft Most Valuable Professional) for my fourth consecutive year. It’s an honor being chosen among all the professionals around the world, especially now when SharePoint is getting more and more widespread and is being adopted by more and more companies worldwide.
I’d like to take the opportunity to say thanks all my colleagues at Connecta, that put up with me, and all my friends around the world that I’ve learnt to know throughout these years. I’ll continue to write obscure blog posts and show up at conferences, and I will continue to organize the Swedish SharePoint User Group meetings.
Thank you all for the support!
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Summing up the year of 2012 and embracing 2013
Only one day and a few hours left of the year of 2012 and the time has come for me to make my (now traditional) summary post. I’ve done it now for six years (2011, 2010, 2009, 2008, 2007 and 2006) and it’s always fun to look back at what has happened during the last 12 months.
This year has been an interesting year to me and contained some really interesting milestones, happenings and events.
Writing
This year I’ve written basically the same amount of posts as in 2011, even though a new SharePoint version has been released. Basically it comes down to that I’ve been working a lot and haven’t had time to finish up some of the posts I’ve started and I’ve been busy with other commitments in the community. Anyways, I hope you enjoyed what I’ve written – I try to keep the quality up rather than the quantity.
What’s really cool is that I now on average have more that 1.300 daily subscribers to my blog, a 30% increase since last year. Thank you!
The most popular posts this year has been:
- How Claims encoding works in SharePoint 2010 – a post you should read IMO and still valid for SharePoint 2013
- Visual Guide to Azure Access Control Services authentication with SharePoint 2010 – part 1 – The first part of six posts in the series.
- SharePoint 2013 – Introduction to the Minimal Download Strategy – MDS – An MDS overview.
- SharePoint 2013 – Claims is the new black – the post title says it all
- SharePoint 2013 – A look at the hardware and software and other requirements – my pov on the hw and sw requirements
The most popular post (from all years) is still the “Fix the SharePoint DCOM 10016 error on Windows Server 2008 R2” post.
No books this year – done that once…
MVP again..
I was re-awarded the Microsoft Most Valuable Professional, MVP, award for SharePoint for the third consecutive year. I’m honored by still being a part of this group of community contributors.
Microsoft Certified Architect – MCA
What I’m most proud of this year is that I passed the Microsoft Certified Architect for SharePoint, MCA, certification. This is a certification, currently only held by five individuals worldwide, which proves that you can “architect” a business and technical solution based on SharePoint and related technologies. What I do like about this certification is that it is not just a test or a lab (you get those tests while doing the MCM/MCSM, which is a pre-requisite for the MCA) but instead it is a mix of interview, business case, portfolio, presentations and Q&A’s, where you really must show that you understand business requirements, budgets, time plans etc. You can read more about my take on the program here – What is a Microsoft Certified Architect?
Conferences and travels
I got my fair share of travelling this year as well, a bit less than last year – which my family appreciated though. I had the opportunity to speak at a couple of conferences – where the International SharePoint Conference 2012 was the highlight. This conference was something extraordinary for both the attendees and us speakers. I really enjoyed working together with the team on the dev-track building out our solution and sessions and it was so fun having the whole team on the front row supporting (and a little bit of heckling) each other during the three days. I will be back next year in London!
I also had a blast at the first SharePoint conference in Croatia, and I hope I’m invited again and as usual our local SharePoint and Exchange Forum – which just keeps growing!
Microsoft arranged the SharePoint Conference 2012 in Las Vegas to unveil the spanking brand new SharePoint version…well it turned out that the product was released a month ahead, so the conference didn’t have much new information. In my opinion this was a pretty bad conference – the depths of the sessions was to low, to many of the speakers should not have been allowed on stage, and what a total disaster when all Microsoft talked about was how good the cloud is and they had no Internet connectivity. I really hope that the conference team get their stuff together and rethink a lot of things for the next conference!
The Cloud
I can’t really write a summary post of 2012 without talking about the Cloud. Microsoft (and other vendors) really put all their money on the cloud this year – nothing new with this, it’s been going on for years, but this year it’s more clear than ever. Well, the cloud is nothing new – it’s just a new name for the Internet, Application Service Providers, etc etc, it’s more of a marketing term.
Since the release of Office 365 the transition of SharePoint to the cloud has started (BPOS was first but SharePoint wasn’t cloud ready at all at that time). With this new wave of SharePoint and 365 the SharePoint cloud offering is even more evident – and we don’t know now where it will end, I’m not sure even Microsoft knows that yet.
We’ve been running 365 for a year and a half now and we still suffer a lot from different strange issues (that could be a post on it’s own!). Hopefully once upgraded the service will be more stable and useful.I might sound a bit doubtful about the cloud – and I am. For the vast majority the cloud (read 365) is a great option instead of hosting and managing their own instances. But for large enterprises (the clients I’m normally working with) 365 is not even an option…
Only time will tell…
Predictions
This is the part I really enjoy writing and thinking about at this time of the year – looking back at my last years predictions and looking in the crystal ball for the upcoming year.
Last years predictions wasn’t that good – Silverlight is till not dead (someone hooked it up to a CPR machine) and all the browser vendors seems to be on some kind of honeymoon. My wish that 2012 was a bit less cloudy failed miserably! The only thing I think I got right was that Windows Phone would have momentum and by looking at some stats there’s some truth in that.
So what do I think about next year?
- Cloud, cloud and cloud! The cloud marketing will continue, it will be shoved down our throats, we’ll be so sick of it by the end of 2013. But this will be the way forward. It will be really interesting to see what will happen to traditional “on-premises” products – will they vanish? Just take a look at how Microsoft has discontinued a lot of products this year!
- Identities, certificates, federation! I think one of the most important things for next year and the years following are having a good identity infrastructure and identity management in place. This should be a priority for all companies and architects working in our business. It’s also the basic requirement to get any cloud services to work properly.
- Apps, devices and integration! For the cloud, hosted services etc to work the integration story must be better. We’ve seen a good start with Windows 8 (RT), Windows Phone 8, Office 2013 etc – but it’s not fully there yet. I think that this is what will be improved over the next 12 months and that might also be the key differentiator between the three large “ecosystems” – Windows, Linux/Android and the fruit camp.
- SharePoint community! The SharePoint community has grown really large and it has reached some kind of “critical mass”. I’m not saying it’s to big or anything but I see the community being more divided than ever splitting up in different directions with different specializations, aspects, mind-sets etc. The number of conferences, user group is ever increasing. This year the community will change (due/thanks to the cloud) – we will see a big change in focus, we will see SharePoint professionals being Azure, Windows 8/Phone, JavaScript professionals.
What do you think?
Thank you and a happy new year!
With that I would like to wish you all a Happy New Year and say thank you for 2012. I‘ve been having my doubts about 2013, but now I ‘m really looking forward to it. I have some cool events and travels planned, I know that my work at Connecta will contain some interesting opportunities and I know that the demand for SharePoint is ever increasing…
See you on the other side!
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Contact
How to contact Wictor Wilén.
Twitter
Wictor is using the @wictor handle on Twitter - follow him at http://twitter.com/wictor
E-mail
To e-mail Wictor use the following e-mail address wictor (a) wictorwilen.se
Forums
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Now running on Azure Web Sites and Orchard
YES! I'm finally alive with a new hosting provider - this time it's Microsoft (who could have guessed that!). Thanks to the just released Azure Web Sites I have now moved my blog from my old custom blog implementation (that has been a fun project though), to running Orchard on Azure Web Sites using SQL Azure. This finalizes my cloud migrations - last year I moved e-mail and everything but the site to Office 365 and started with a hosted service for this site, but for running this little blog that was a bit to expensive (you're not clicking the ads enough).You have to bare with me for a little while until I get everything spinning. I apologize for any inconveniences with updated posts in your blog readers and other physical or mental illness caused from this. All blog posts should have been migrated fine (I know some stuff haven't got correctly through) keeping the old URL's and everything. I built a quick Orchard theme and haven't tried it in obscure browsers yet. Also Azure Web Sites is only in preview, so I expect it not to work 24/7 (my previous hosting provider didn't have that either though...).
If you do find something peculiar, don't hesitate to comment on it...
[Update] There seems to be an issue with Azure Web Sites/Orchard when I'm updating or adding modules, which makes the site go down for a couple of minutes. Hopefully I won't do this as often though...
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About Wictor Wilén
Wictor Wilén is a senior SharePoint Specialist working at Connecta AB. Wictor has achieved the Microsoft Certified Architect (MCA) - SharePoint 2010, Microsoft Certified Solutions Master (MCSM) - SharePoint and Microsoft Certified Master (MCM) - SharePoint 2010 certifications. He has also been awarded Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) for three consecutive years.Wictor is specialised in SharePoint Solution Architecture and has been involved in the SharePoint industry since the birth of SharePoint. He is also heavily involved in the SharePoint commnuity and is co-founder of the Swedush SharePoint User Group, SSUG.
Career history
2009 - Director at Connecta AB
(2012 - Virtual Technical Solutions Professional, V-TSP, at Microsoft)2007-2009 Architect at Pdb DataSystem AB
2000-2007 Co-Founder/Architect at iBizkit AB
1998-2000 SystemsDeveloper/Architect at Netsolutions/Framtidsfabriken/Framfab
Awards and Certifications
2012 Microsoft Certified Architect - SharePoint 2010 (MCA)
2011 Microsoft Certified Master - SharePoint 2010 (MCM)
2010 Connecta Specialist of the year
2010-2012 Microsoft Most Valuable Professional SharePoint Server (MVP)
2009-2012 Microsoft Certified Trainer (MCT)
Multiple MCP, MCTS, MCITP, MCPD SharePoint, Windows and .NET certifications
Publications
Wictor has published one book called SharePoint 2010 Web Parts in Action (Manning).
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What is a Microsoft Certified Architect?
_1417_thumb.png "MCA(rgb)_1417")
Last Friday I got the fantastic message that I had successfully passed the Microsoft Certified Architect - SharePoint 2010 (MCA) certification, something I'm really proud of - but something most of the community never ever heard of. During this weekend I've been pinged and messaged by a lots of people asking the question "What is a Microsoft Certified Architect?". In this post I intend to answer it as thorough as possible, including my own personal aspects of it.First of all let's answer the most common question - "How does the Microsoft Certified Architect relates to the Microsoft Certified Master exam?".
I might agree that Master sounds way cooler than Architect, but that isn't the real story. The Master certification (MCM) is the most highly technical exam you could ever get in the Microsoft world. The term technical is important here. During the MCM rotation and the exam you explore and learn all the scary and exciting internals and externals of SharePoint (or the other MCM:able products/technologies) from a technical perspective. You will learn from the best teachers and SME's and you will be in a class together with some really awesome and skilled persons. The MCM is both a course (3 weeks on site, or 1 week on site and 10 weeks off-site), a written exam and a qualification lab. Read more about my MCM experience in one of my older posts. To even apply for the MCA you need to be an MCM on the specific product your applying for and on the current version. This means that Microsoft already tested and verified your technical skills! So one could actually say that the MCA is like the Microsoft Certified Grandmaster...
"What is the MCA then?".
So, let's take a look at the Architect certification (MCA). The MCA takes the certification to another level, and focus on the business side of SharePoint (or the other MCA eligible products; SharePoint, Exchange, SQL and AD). The MCA is not a course, it is not something you sit in class and learn for a couple of weeks, it is not something you can study for - it is something you learn over the course of several years of experience with the products, in real business cases together with one or more customers.
"How do I apply for the MCA?".
When applying for the MCA you must supply a portfolio which includes details about real customer gigs, your CV and other documentation to prove that you are in the business for real. Once the program manager thinks you have "what it takes" and that you proven that, you will be scheduled for a board appearance. You need to work on your documents and prepare for the board presentation. This is not something you should do with your left hand - you need to put in some real effort here to produce a good set of documents and a good presentation. It is up to you to prove that you have "what it takes".
"So, how does the MCA board appearance work?".
The board appearance is the certification. You will spend almost a day together with the MCA board (consisting of other MCA's or specific SME's). You will do a presentation, a case study and you will have several intense Q&A sessions. Enough to make you choke. The board will then grade you on six different competencies (full list and details on the official site). Once you are done - all you can do is wait for the pass/no-pass e-mail. This is an exhaustive day for which you need to prepare. But as I said earlier - it all comes down to the actual experience you have in the industry and how used you are to being in these situations with clients. You can't study for the Q&A sessions.
"What's the value of an MCA certification?".
The MCA, and the MCM for that matter, costs a lot of money. So is it worth it? In my opinion definitely. It's really hard to say what the exact payback is. We're currently early in the SharePoint MCA process with quite few certified MCA's and only time will tell. I can directly say that I learnt a lot while preparing for the board appearance - with a lot of time reflecting on past projects. Also the actual board appearance was great in that way that the board tested me; both on my strong areas and weak ones - and now I know what parts I might need to step up on. Studies done on the MCM community shows benefits such as a higher hourly rate, easier recruitment, better and safer deliveries. So the MCM/MCA are really a quality stamp, with MCM focused on the technical aspects and MCA on understanding and implementing business requirements.
"Why did I do this?".
This is the question my wife asks me! Well, first of all I always try to be better in what I'm doing. And going down the MCA route surely did this. I now know what I know and know what I don't know and know what I want to know... Also I think it is great for my company, Connecta, to have this certification - it will definitely be a USP in attracting clients and co-workers. A big thank you to Connecta and my managers who believed in me enough to send me on both the MCM and MCA journey! In the end I know that both me personally, my company and my co-workers will benefit from this.
"I want to learn more about the MCA?".
So, now I've been ranting about the MCA (from my perspective) and there are probably tons of questions that remains unanswered. Use the following links to learn more.
- Microsoft Certified Architect program
- Microsoft Certified Master program
- Regularly held online events with the MCM/MCA program managers. If you're just a little bit interested make sure to attend one of these held by the awesome program mangers for the MCM/MCA programs and have your chance to ask your questions
- Announcing the Microsoft Certified Architect: SharePoint Server 2010 - MCA/MCM/MVP Spence Harbar writes about the SharePoint MCA program
That's it. I hope you have a far better understanding of what a Microsoft Certified Architect is.
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Summing up the year of 2011 and embracing 2012
It's that time of the year, when you're thinking about what you've done and accomplished the last twelve months. I've been writing a summary for the last five years (2006, 2007, 2008, 2009 and 2010) and I always think it's fun to look back at the year gone and do some predictions for the upcoming one.
This year has been totally crazy - I've been enjoying my work and clients/projects at Connecta and I totally love that we have such a strong team and offering. I can really feel the momentum we have in our team and projects, and nothing is stopping us now...
Writing
As usual I've been jotting down a couple of blog posts, some better than others (IMO) and unfortunately there are several that I just haven't had time to publish. I have on average 1.000 subscribers to my feed and a whole lot of other users finding my writings through the search engines - thank you all readers! These are the top ones for the last 12 months.
- Calling a WCF service using jQuery in SharePoint - the correct way
- Working with URLs in SharePoint 2010 JavaScripts
- SharePoint 2010 Ribbon Controls - Part 4 - The TextBox control
- SharePoint 2010 Ribbon Controls - Part 5 - The Button control
- Improve performance of your SharePoint 2010 applications using Windows Server AppFabric caching
Interesting to see jQuery and JavaScript posts topping the list - might give us a hint on what's been popular this year... The post that still is #1 is the Fix the SharePoint DCOM 10016 error on Windows Server 2008 R2 (remember where you read this first :-).
I also finally got my book SharePoint 2010 Web Parts in Action published in April. It took over a year of writing, re-writing, testing, reviewing etc etc to get it done. And when the books finally arrived in printed form it was such a great feeling. It's a tough competition on SharePoint books nowadays, and I'm glad to see quite good sales figures and especially great reviews (if you haven't already - head on to Amazon and tell me what you think).MVP again...
In April I was re-awarded the Microsoft Most Valuable Professional - SharePoint Server award. This is an award for your on- and offline community contributions. Being a part of the SharePoint MVP community is great and gives you a lot of amazing contacts with some great people.
The Master!
The MCM - Microsoft Certified Master - program was the highlight of the year! In April/May I attended the R8 rotation of the SharePoint 2010 MCM program which was three long and tiresome weeks with best-in-breed SharePoint training by the best of the best. I passed all three written exams and the qualification lab on first attempt and was allows to call my self a SharePoint 2010 MCM in the end of May. Since that rotation I've really felt that my SharePoint skills and confidence has improved - and I do think that also my customers feel the same. I did a post about my experiences of the MCM program a couple of months back - and if you're interested go ahead and read it.
_1406_3.png "MCM")
Conferences and travels
This year has also been filled with a lot of conferences and travelling. First of all in march all MVP's met up in Redmond, at the Microsoft campus, for the annual MVP Summit. This was my first visit to Redmond and the summit and I met a lot of the people I've only met through the online world previously. I had a blast with paintball, late nights and beers talking to some really great friends. A couple of months later I went back to Redmond for the MCM - the weather was the same as in March! October and November was quite hectic with another trip over the pond to the SPC 2011, a trip to the European SharePoint Conference in Berlin and finally the Southeast Asia SharePoint Conference in Singapore. I also managed to do a couple of conferences on home turf as well.
I've already planned a couple of trips for 2012 - at least two trips to US again, one is the SPC 2012 in Las Vegas where I hope to meet a lot of you. I have also planned a trip to London in late April for the International SharePoint Conference. This will be an extraordinary conference with two really cool tracks - one IT-pro and one dev, where we'll build one big solution during three days. I promise to get back to you with more information about it as soon as it's available.SharePoint
Yea, as usual this year has been all about SharePoint for me. I've seen the product mature, I've learnt more about it (again) than I ever could expect and I see a huge and increasing demand for the platform. If you're new in IT - bet on SharePoint! We've also seen the birth of Office 365. I'm running both my work and personal e-mail in the hosted Exchange solution and I'm very satisfied. This fall I've spent a lot of time with SharePoint Online trying to do real work and deployments. To put in in nice words I should say that I'm more of an on-premise guy!
Predictions
In these recap posts I've done some predictions for the upcoming year. I had three last year and I was right about two of them: Windows 8 is communicated and with Hyper-V support. I've been thinking quite hard on what predictions to have this year, trying not to reveal anything or stating anything obvious. So here are my predictions for 2012.
- Silverlight will die! - yeah, Microsoft haven't put it in those words, but that's what's going to happen. We'll probably see Silverlight doing it lasts breaths on the Windows Phone 7 platform though. HTML5 and JavaScript will take over.
- Second Browser World War - for a couple of years browsers have tried to strive for a common standard, and Internet Explorer has finally caught up. Since the HTML5 standard is far from standardized we will see Firefox, Chrome, Safari and IE add its own proprietary "interpretations" of the standard which will diversify the browser world once again. It's already happening, unfortunately...
- Windows Phone momentum - I do think that the movement of Windows Phone 7+ will finally accelerate 2012. Great hardware, Nokia, great apps, unlimited marketing money and people getting bored of icons in a row are a few of the reasons. And I never ever had my WP7 phone crash - but for the Android devices we have in the family it's a part of the daily routine...
- Less cloudy - this is more of a wish than a prediction but I do hope that 2012 will be less cloudy. I'm so fed up with the term "cloud"! Of course hosted services will still be a major option but I do think that more and more customers are going to look at internal hosting and/or hybrid solutions.
What do you think?
Thank you and a happy new year
So, I do not think I will be posting anything more this year! It's been a fantastic year but I'm sure 2012 will beat 2011 big time. Thank you all readers and followers and thank you to all new friends I've met throughout this year and thank you to everyone supporting me and has to put up with late night IM's or e-mails (you know who you are!).
Now, enjoy your last days of 2011 and have really great New Years Eve - I know I will (even though enjoy incorporates some work!).
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I'm on the SharePoint Pod Show talking about Web Parts
The 65th SharePoint Pod Show is out featuring...tada...me :-)
The SharePoint Pod Show is THE podcast about SharePoint and is done by Rob Foster, Nick Swan and Brett Lonsdale and has featured a lot of great SharePointers from all around the world throughout the years. If you haven't already listened to the podcasts, then you got 65 episodes to catch up on! There are some epic ones, such as my favorite one #50 - which is about performance tuning. And make sure that you subscribe - you don't want to miss their SPC11 Road-trip...This episode was recorded at the MVP Summit earlier this year in Redmond between two sessions. It was my first time meeting most of the MVP's in real life and Rob was the one interviewing me. He's one heck of an interviewer asking questions like an ice-hockey radio commentator in some weird southern accent... It was great fun and we discussed SharePoint development and Web Parts development in particular. We talked through how to get started with SharePoint development, how to build Web Parts and why I wrote my book (SharePoint 2010 Web Parts in Action).
Until next time.
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Microsoft Certified Master - SharePoint 2010, thoughts and reflections
Now with the Microsoft Certified Master course two and a half weeks behind me and the great news that I accomplished all the exams, and might call myself a Microsoft Certified Master for SharePoint 2010, only a few days old I thought I should write something about the program, experience and value of it. Recent blog posts about the Microsoft certification programs also put some extra fuel onto the urge of writing about it.
About the Microsoft Certified Master Program
The Microsoft Certified Master Program is a high-end and exclusive training available for SQL Server, Active Directory, Lync Server, Exchange Server and SharePoint Server. The training is normally a three week course, held on site at the mothership in Redmond, tutored by the most skilled people on the respective product. It's the best training you can get! But it's not for everyone; first of all you need to pass several steps to even get into the program, then you need to pay the huge fee and then finally get out of the classroom with three exams and a qualification lab alive. If you need more information about the program, head on over to the MCM/MCA site.
My rotation
Ever since I first heard about the MCM program for SharePoint it has been a dream going over to Redmond and endure the pain. Last fall me and my company decided that I should go for it. So in December I started the application for the MCM training. The application is done in several steps. Before even starting it you have to pay the non-refundable application fee of about $1.000. Once this is cleared the application process starts; you need to send in samples of what you have done with the SharePoint products like specifications and designs and then you will be scheduled for an interview. The interview was horrible and at the same time fantastic. I had three people, current masters, interview me trying to find all my gaps and pain points. Once you couldn't answer properly or directly the drilled even further until you almost had no idea what they were talking about. I was really impressed by the interview and the background research the interviewer had made - they even questioned me on details in my presentations that I had posted on my blog.
About a week after the interview I had a phone call where I was told that I was allowed into the program and schedule a rotation, after paying the huge fee. I also received very good feedback on what I needed to read up on and practice on. This was in January and I scheduled the next upcoming full rotation, which was in April/May. And now the hard work started. The pre-reading list is quite extensive and covers most of TechNet and MSDN and I finished that a couple of weeks prior to the rotation. I also did a lot of practice on my own using CloudShare where I could build me some virtual farms and experiment with different scenarios.When the actual rotation started I thought I was well prepared! But, the depth and level of details was far more than I expected. Each and every session had so much information that needed to be placed somewhere in your head and I found myself sometimes not finding room for it. I especially remember the Search session and the Upgrades sessions! During these three weeks every weekday had scheduled sessions daytime and evening/nights were spent on reading and doing hand-on-labs. A huge credit to the MCM team with Brett leading the crew, for all the labs and the amazing lab environment! The weekends were spent on reading, reading, reading and doing labs to prepare for the weekly exams. These are Prometric like exams but where almost any answer could be the correct one - extremely hard.
The Qualification Lab
The grand final of the MCM is the Qualification Lab. It's an 8 hour long lab where you get a number of tasks, ranging from IT-pro to dev stuff to governance and architecture. I was quite nervous about this one, but as soon as it started I enjoyed every single minute of it. I usually drink quite a lot of coffee - but I forgot about that and I almost skipped eating my lunch to try to get as much as possibly done. After the qual lab I was completely drained, and I guess most of my R8 mates was as well.
MCM Summary
After coming home I was so tired, should have taken vacation! Not only the jet lag but in fact that you have been receiving so much information and learnt so much over the past few weeks. A week and a half after getting home I got the fantastic news that I passed all written exams and the qualification lab. On my first attempt - hell yeah I'm proud!
The network you build during the rotation with the class mates, tutors and product group are invaluable. I've already after a few days seen the benefit of this!
MCM tips and tricks
Here are some tips and tricks for you already scheduled for a rotation or planning on diving into the MCM:
- Prepare and prepare well
- Plan your rotation - plan the pre-reading and practice on the different topics
- Read the pre-read list
- Exercise before and during your rotation - sitting in those chairs for three weeks really takes its toll
- If your used to a non-American keyboard - bring your own since you're going to write a lot of PowerShell and stuff and you don't want to waste time on mistyping for the qual lab. (I actually bought an American keyboard over there instead)
- Enjoy!
- It depends!
So what about the other SharePoint certifications...
I'm not talking about the MCA, that's for just a few brave ones. I'm talking about the four MCP exams. I've done them all, since it's a pre-requisite for MCM, and I've done the four for 2007 and one for 2003. I've previously wrote about them and I still stand by my post from last year. I do not think the exams are actually good - they have huge improvement potential.
But I'm not, like some others, that refuses to take them just to stand out and look cool. They provide value for businesses that are Microsoft Partners and if you're a MCT. Also the clients are actually aware of these exams, compared to other non-Microsoft sanctioned exams, and they sometimes request that you have them. Also they can be of real value when your learning SharePoint - you can see what areas you need to improve on etc. So I do recommend you to go and get them!
The problem with MCM though is that very few clients are aware of this certification. And that's what we/I are trying to change. And in fact I think this is changing right now, even before attending the training, I saw an increase in attention in my and my companies services.
Now I'm going to enjoy this and soon have a nice vacation to catch up with lost time with the family.
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Happy Birthday SharePoint - 10 amazing years!
Earlier today Jeff Teper, Microsoft Corporate Vice President, wrote about the 10th birthday of SharePoint. This post made me lean back and close my eyes for a while and think back of what has happened during the last decade - and it is a lot of stuff! And I've playing with SharePoint more or less since then!
The SharePoint story for me started back in 2000. I was running my own company, iBizkit, and we built a "SharePoint like" Intranet portal product. The product was modular based and very configurable. We hade something we called Modules based on COM+ components and XML output, that had a common interface and a single rendering engine which could translate the XML output to HTML, WML or whatever depending on the device and the users settings. I was, and am, still very proud of that architecture. Initially we looked at the Digital Dashboard, but came to the conclusion that it didn't fit our needs, so we built our own from scratch. It was built on top of Site Server (and then later on AD), IIS, ASP and COM+. We got a request from a customer that they would like a document management system for their Intranet. And what could be better than building it yourself - use a third party tool. And at that time I've been checking out the Tahoe project from Microsoft, that later became 
SharePoint Portal Server 2001. What we did was build a more dynamic interface (way before AJAX was known as AJAX, and this is where Robert Nyman started his brilliant JavaScript career). than SPS 2001 had and incorporated that into a module in our portal solution. I dug up on old screenshot:
This gave me a great introduction to the SharePoint world. The document management module was a great success - and I think we were one of the companies in Sweden that actually managed to sell a few SPS 2001 licenses :-).
Then Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server 2003 and WSS 2.0 arrived! Based on .NET with all new API's and stuff - but the lack of real document versioning. We once again incorporated SharePoint into our portal - also now built on .NET. But since there was no real versioning our clients stayed on the SPS 2001 platform. I actually spent about six months trying to build decent versioning on top of SPS 2003 - without any good results. 
And that project ended when the betas of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and WSS 3.0 was released. And from that day I was totally hooked!For the last time we adapted our document management module to SharePoint and continued our portal product - but in parallel we started plain ol' SharePoint consulting. As time went the SharePoint consulting part took overhand for me and we could not longer compete with our small niche product. In 2009 I left my dear old company, which we sold a couple of years earlier, in chase of even greater SharePoint adventures.
In 2010 I was awarded SharePoint MVP, and now again in 2011. I just released my first book, about SharePoint of course, called SharePoint 2010 Web Parts in Action.Why is SharePoint so damn special then? First of all it's a great product - no doubt about it. Microsoft has sold a gazillion licenses, it's their fastest growing server product ever! But why am I still loving this so much? There are several reasons; first and foremost it's my will to build great things that the customers like. What can be better to base that of a great platform. Secondly is that it's quite a challenging product that gives you never ending obstacles and situations - which makes me learn more and grow more. Third is the amazing community - I do not think that there are many alike out there.
I thought that I should end this with a link to a very, very old article, from back in February 1999. This is an article where Mary Jo Foley (who knows more about Microsoft than Microsoft themselves do) for the first time mentioned the product that we all love: MS readies next-generation software.
Thank you all and thank you Microsoft. Looking forward to ten more great years!
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