For MSP's - How to clear the probation period

Congrats and regards to all new MSP's. Sorry to be so straight to the topic but for you the intent is very much clear for now -- Score 150 points to stay in the league of MSP's.

'150 points' that's what the ADMIN have asked for and from my experience I can tell you that I had to literally screw my schedules apart to get it. The result - Bad performance in ACADS and a lot of sleepless nights. But that was the story then but I can assure you that you will surely not have to go through this - COURTESY ME.

Following are the list of activities(in the order of less work and more points) which you can pursue to see yourself besides me i.e. a permanent MSP (till you graduate) and then an MSP Alumni. So here I go ...


1] Imagine Cup 2010 :

Imagine Cup is a wonderful initiative and a technical competition held every year to promote display of expertise in various fields and learning to get there. Any active student can participate in it. Some of the categories include:

--> I.T. challenge
--> Software design
--> Inter-Operability
--> Software development
--> Game design and many more...

For more information you can check out www.imaginecup.com.

Registering for Imagine Cup in any of the above categories and going past the 1st round can get you a whopping 100 points. EASILY said then DONE but try yourself and see for yourself. Though not many qualify past the 1st round and those who do cannot cope with the 2nd round. A matter of fact, I qualified to the 2nd round of I.T. challenge which clashed with my Exam dates !!!

Coming back, you can also get participants to join this competition(in groups of 40) and win points from it.

You can create your own account with student-partners E-Mail and your ID part of your E-Mail becomes your "Referral code". For example, in my case "hardikguru".

I had penned down a blog on the same probably last year to promote it. You can check out Here.


2] Sessions :

A variety of sessions can be conducted to promote the MSP program, initiatives of Microsoft, any particular technologies of Microsoft like .Net/WPF/Silverlight/etc. The target audience can be students or even teachers.

But do keep in mind that if you conduct these activities under your colleges' Tech-Club than you would be at any added advantage i.e. you can keep your Tech-Club abuzz. Also on having a particular amount of activities in your Tech-Club you are entitled to BENEFITS so keep that in mind. Proofs in the form of PHOTOS, feedback forms, etc are required so check out the ACTIVITES TAB of our student-partners web-site.

Many other forms of sessions are there which include DevCon wherein you've got to conduct a day-long session on myriad of topics with a team of speakers and the mass audience should go into hundreds. Assistance in any form can be procured from "studpart@microsoft.com".

Other forms like Rhythm Sessions, HOL(Hands-On-Lab), etc can be learnt and understood from the ACTIVITES TAB of our student-partners web-site.

3] Microsoft Live@Edu and MSDN-AA campaign :

For Live@Edu you can check out my own blog dating back 10 months(At a time when I was learning to BLOG) Here.

You can also check out videos and any materials for the same Here.

Any questions on 'How-to' and 'What-to' can be forwarded to "livein@microsoft.com"

For MSDN-AA you can check out Here.

You get 140 points for deploying any of them in your own college or any of your peer.


Note :
Any pre-requisites for any activities are mentioned very clearly in the "ACTIVITIES" TAB of our student-partners web-site.

Besides this blog I'll be coming with another BLOG later on the benefits which you derive being an MSP. But for now don't even think about it coz that might lead you astray. FOCUS on the points and enjoy all the activities. Grab what you can.

"Do you have it in you to make a difference ?" -- The MSP Program caption