Post OCS Master - back in the office....

The following post was written by Keith Hanna (UK MCS) - a graduate of the first rotation of OCS Master. 

Adrian asked us all to write about our experiences during the first OCS Masters Rotation, but I figured there's enough articles out there about Ranger/Master including the recent post from Rajeev specifically regarding rotation 1 (https://blogs.technet.com/themasterblog/archive/2009/03/16/getting-the-most-from-ocs-master.aspx), which is a nice alternative from my post hosted on Eileen’s blog (https://blogs.technet.com/eileen_brown/archive/2009/02/17/ocs-certified-master-from-one-who-knows.aspx)

Others have written on the ‘outsider’ perspective (https://blogs.technet.com/jenstr/archive/tags/OCS+Master/default.aspx and https://blogs.technet.com/themasterblog/archive/2009/02/10/intro-and-update-from-ocs-master-rotation-1.aspx), and finally there’s even been an entry specifically around the labs that we used over the course of the 3 weeks (https://blogs.technet.com/themasterblog/archive/2009/01/31/holy-hol-s-batman.aspx) .

So, what does that leave me to write about here? Well, I thought I’d chip in with some of my experiences ‘back in the office’ since completing the certification and show what sort of difference it has made to my everyday life.

The first few days back were spent with the usual catch up with jet lag (I’m UK based) and 3 weeks worth of missed email. Once the dust had settled and back-to-work as normal there was an immediate difference I noticed – before when I asked questions, my most common response was along the lines of “I’ll check and get back to you”, however since completing the course my first indication of a difference was the way in which I could confidently answer questions without leaving any level of doubt – either with the customer or myself. I noticed this at least 5 or 6 times in the first week alone – I’ve since stopped counting.

As we were the first rotation, it took a little time for the final results to be announced and once it’d been confirmed I’d passed we had a round of internal newsletter announcements etc and then the requests started to come in.

‘Can you help me with this?’ ’My customer has this scenario what should we do?’ etc

The level of recognition of knowledge/skill is unbelievable, I’ve since been involved with :

· Technet events

· Invited to Interact 2009 https://www.interact09.com/INTERACT2009/Content/Home.aspx

· I’m currently working on a OCS/Exchange mini-series follow-up to MCS Talks https://blogs.technet.com/mcstalks/

· Some blog articles for the OCS team blog https://communicationsserverteam.com/

· A couple of internal OCS programs

None of which I would’ve seen without that confirmation of knowledge that is the Masters program.

Keith