Some of the highlights of the tweets included:

• Don Jones and his PowerShell classes – “Be the one who writes Powershell commands, not the one who runs them”
• Excitement over the entertaining training from Ed Liberman on Server 2012 and MCSA (and something about him quoting a certain green Jedi master.)
• Joe Rinehart beaming in to teach a CCNA session (Yes, in a Star Trek uniform)
• Mark Minasi getting the crowds excited about Windows Server 2012
• Laura Hunter telling tales from the IT trenches at Microsoft
• Ed Horley’s highly interactive session about IPv6
• Greg Shields building a private cloud
• Bruce Mackenzie-Low on Windows 8 and 2012 Performance Toolkit
• Yung Chou and Windows Azure
• Jason Helmick and his “out of control” PowerShell Web Access class “Jason Helmick should be the standard for giving presentations!” @Eggsabyte on Twitter
• J. Peter Bruzzese with What’s New in Exchange 2013
• Blain Barton on Windows Server 2012 on Azure
• Great Exhibitors like Veam, Storage Craft, Global Knowledge
• Great Food!

ITCertPro was participating by retweeting some of the participants tweets. At one point, I asked this question:

Tell me-What did I miss the most by not being at #TechMentor?

Bill Bailey (@bbnetman) replied:

“2 great keynotes, super Windows Azure sessions, of course amazing PowerShell content, and me! a good mix of Windows Server 2012 features at #TechMentor as well.”

@ikkarus1 replied:

“what was missed keys to the future, Automation, great speakers and teachers. Don’t forget wine and dine!”

If this sounds like a lot of fun and a lot of knowledge to you and you missed Orlando, you have a second chance. TechMentor 2013 Las Vegas is coming up later this year!

TechMentor Las Vegas will be held September 30th through October 4th at the Tropicana Las Vegas. ITCertPro is a Premier Social Media Partner so you can come back here for news leading up to the conference as well as a conference pass giveaway!

For more information about TechMentor 2013, including pricing and hotel information, please visit the Techmentor Las Vegas website.

(NOTE: Despite any rumors that you might hear, Elvis will not be teaching PowerShell. Thank you)

A new study by market intelligence firm IDC reveals global businesses are adopting cloud computing at an escalating rate, with fewer “cloud ready” IT professionals available to administer cloud computing services. One in four IT positions worldwide is currently unfilled and 28% of those are cloud computing related–that’s more than 1.7 million open positions. In 2015, an estimated 7 million job computing jobs will be vacant.

Why vacant? Hiring managers can’t find “cloud-skilled” IT candidates, citing a lack of training, certification and experience as the top reasons cloud computing positions are not filled. To bridge this IT cloud skills gap, employers need professionals with the right set of skills that will help business move forward.

Certified Career Day is an interactive, LIVE panel discussion with IT industry experts who will be your Cloud career counselors for the day, providing you with guidance to help advance your career to the Cloud. Certified Career Day is a full day of events featuring leading experts in the IT and cloud computing industry (all times are Pacific Standard Time):

• 8:30am      Virtual Doors Open. Get behind-the-scenes commentary.
• 9:00-10:15      Live Industry Panel Broadcast. An live panel discussion with IT industry experts who will be your Cloud career counselors for the day, providing you with      guidance to help advance your career to the Cloud.
• 10:15-10:30      Special Guest Interview with Mark Russinovich, Microsoft Technical Fellow. In this exclusive interview with Microsoft Technical Fellow Mark Russinovich, Wes      Miller, VP of Research at Directions on Microsoft, will bring this discussion to the technology level as they explore the challenges organizations will encounter when migrating workloads to the cloud and the      key capabilities IT professionals and organizations will need as they make      this transition.
• 10:30-11:30      Windows Server Live Product Session. Join Microsoft Product      Specialists Rick Claus and Joey Snow for a special session to help you      better understand how to the get the training you need to transform your      IT operations and deliver a whole new level of business value.
• 11:35–12:35      SQL Server 2012 Live Product Session. Join Microsoft Product Specialists Dandy Weyn and Jennifer Moser for a deep dive into this data      platform and explore mission critical evidence, breakthrough insights and cloud on your terms. You will gain an understanding of the Business      Intelligence scenarios SQL Server 2012 delivers to organizations and what training you need now, to help enable this capability.

Check out the full agenda at certifiedcareerday.com.

If you are wondering what cloud computing is, I recommend that you spend some time at this FREE online event. The difficulty with cloud computing is that there are so many definitions of cloud computing. At Microsoft Certified Career Day, you can get to know Microsoft’s vision of cloud computing and understand what skills employers are looking for to support their Microsoft cloud platforms.

And did I mention that it was FREE! Did I also mention that you could win an Acer Tablet?

What are you waiting for? Go register NOW! at certifiedcareerday.com.

(Thank you to Microsoft for providing information for this article)

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CBT Nuggets is now offering a monthly subcription to their entire IT Video Training Library for $99/month. That’s right! For $99/month you get access to their entire IT library including series on Cisco, Microsoft, VMware, Juniper, and much more. Your subscription also includes ExamPrep, so you can make sure that you are ready to take the certification exam.

If you would like a tour of the IT Training library, contact Birk at CBT Nuggets through ITCertPro’s order page. That way, you can see it before you buy it.

Monday of the the conference was devoted to pre-conference sessions. I attended a half-day session with Bruce Mackenzie-Low on Windows Crashes and Hangs: Simple Steps in Finding Every Root Cause. It was a terrific session on how to troubleshoot blue screen types of errors. It was a very useful session and I left it feeling that it was something that I could use in my daily job. I actually ended up using some of his techniques to troubleshoot a problem I had at work.

Tuesday was a regular conference day. The keynote was given by Mark Minasi on Cloud Computing: A Lapsed Economist’s View. I went to a couple more sessions by Bruce Mackenzie-Low on troubleshooting and then went to lunch. The food was delicious. In fact, during that week, I had a few speakers tell me that we had some of the best food that they ever had at a conference. I did not expect anything less at a Disney hotel property. We sat down at tables labeled with topics to help promote conversation. Speakers sat down with attendees at the tables which added to the experience.

One of the conference lunch highlights was a luau hosted by Train Signal. It was nice to get out of the conference hall for a while and get outside on a the hotel’s beach with the other attendees. At one point, I thought how surreal this event was: A Hawaiian style meal, in a New England sea shore setting, on a man made beach, in the middle of Florida! I tell you, only in Orlando!

Access to the speakers is incredibly easy to get at a TechMentor conference. For example, at one point I caught Mark Minasi in the hall between sessions. We started up a conversation about a British TV show we both enjoy called “The IT Crowd”. At other conferences where I have seen Mark Minasi, you are lucky if, after standing in a long line, you actually get five minutes to ask him a technical question from his session! And I did get to meet my favorite IT Training video instructors: James Conrad of CBT Nuggets and J. Peter Bruzzese and Ed Liberman of Train Signal. They were just as friendly and knowledgeable in person as they were in their videos.

The main quality of a TechMentor conference that makes these kind of experiences possible is the size. TechMentor is a smaller conference and it makes possible these interactions with not only the speakers, but other conference attendees. During an evening social,  it was possible to get to know many of the other attendees, as conversational groups would form and recombine throughout the night.

TechMentor 2013 is coming up next week, March 4-8 and will be held at the Buena Vista Palace in Orlando, Fl. Registration is still open and you can save $400 by clicking here.

If you miss TechMentor 2013 in Orlando, you can attend the conference in Las Vegas at the Tropicana, September 30 – October 4. You can get more information about the Las Vegas TechMentor 2013 conference here.

Birk was calling me to introduce me to CBT Nuggets streaming video subscriptions.

Now, I have used CBT Nuggets in the past when the courses were sold on DVD’s. I found the courses to be just as useful as live training courses that I have attended in the past. I even used CBT Nuggets to upgrade my MCSE certification to Windows Server 2003 with Instructor James Conrad’s videos. But I have not had the chance to try their streaming subscriptions. Birk would change that.

There are three subscriptions levels to choose from:

The Office Training subscription is good for office workers who want to be proficient using Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Access, or even Office 365, Microsoft’s cloud computing solution. The Project Management Training subscription is for project managers who are looking to get the prized Project Management Professional (PMP) certification or perhaps wants to learn about ITIL or Agile Software Development methods.

The IT Training subscription is the largest subscription (205 titles as I write this article) and is geared toward IT professionals working with servers, databases, operating systems, programming, and whatever else you can think of that ITCertPros would be interested in.

The subscriptions also come with corresponding practice tests from Transcender and Kaplan Self Test, two of the best names in certification practice tests. That way, after you are finished watching the videos, you can make sure that you are ready for the certification test. If you find that you are weak in a certain area, you can go right back to the videos and watch that lesson again!

You can watch CBT Nuggets when you are on the go. Apps are available for Apple IOS and Android so you can watch CBT Nuggets from your phone or tablet.

Companies looking to implement CBT Nuggets in their organizations will be pleased with the user management interface, which can be used to track employees’ training progress. Subscriptions are concurrent licenses meaning that licenses can be shared among employees. You can also limit employees to which titles they can access.

I am pleased to offer CBT Nuggets through ITCertpro. As a bonus to customers that sign up through ITCertPro, Birk (or one of his colleagues) will give you the same tour of the CBT Nuggets streaming solution so that you can check it out yourself. Birk will help you find a CBT Nuggets solution that best fits you!

Purchase CBT Nuggets through ITCertPro by filling out this form.

Thank you for reading.

However, I would like to tell you about a recent experience that I had with the Microsoft Store online. In August, I placed an pre-order for Halo 4, which would be released on November 6. The pre-order came with downloadable game content and a $25 Microsoft Store credit. A few weeks prior to the game release, I had an unauthorized charge on the credit card that I had used for the purchase. The bank closed out the card and sent me a new one. When it was time for Halo 4 to release, the Microsoft Store tried to charge my old card, which of course, failed. The day before Halo 4 was to release, I received an email from the Microsoft Store notifying me that my order was canceled due to my credit card being declined. I called Microsoft Store customer service thinking that I would give them a valid card number and I would receive my pre-order with the bonus items. However, when I called the overseas customer service center, I found out that they could do nothing for me. They couldn’t even give me the $25 store credit if I re-ordered. I was very disappointed. It was not earth shattering, but it was very disappointing.

I live in Orlando and recently a Microsoft Store opened. I decided to reach out to a manager at the store and see if they could help me. The manager invited me to the store and said that they would take care of me, I went to the store and retold my story to a sales associate. He took great care of me and I am again a satisfied customer of the Microsoft Store.

By the way, my first experience with the Microsoft Store online was last year during Black Friday. I was able to get a Dell Inspiron Duo with docking station for $300 (half price!). This year, I bought some very discounted software and XBox games which arrived in a very timely fashion.

Shop Small & Midsize Business solutions at the Microsoft Store. Click Here

Thank you for reading.

“Those who can do, do. Those who can do AND can explain what they are doing and why they are doing it, teach.”
- Tom Swanson

For those not familiar with this promotion, it allows you take take a Microsoft Certification test with the assurance that if you fail, you get to take the test a second time at no charge.

For details, see the following web page:
http://www.microsoft.com/learning/en/us/offers/secondshot.aspx