The World According to Mitch

Today a new program was announced by Microsoft Learning.  The MCT Regional Leads will be a liaison between the Microsoft Certified Trainers in their region and MSL.  a call for applications went out in August, and the Leads were announced today.  Melissa Bathum and Veronica Sopher asked me to record a short video for the conference call.  Unfortunately that video was corrupted in transit, so they asked me to post the text of that video.  I am not editing the original text, what you are reading is the original text as I intended to deliver it to the call today.

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Hi. My name is Mitch Garvis, and I am the MCT Regional Lead for Eastern Canada. I am a trainer and IT Pro consultant with SWMI Consulting Group, as well as a Virtual Technical Evangelist with Microsoft Canada.

When I first heard about the role of Regional Lead I tried to imagine what the needs and requests of a typical MCT in Canada would be. After a great deal of trying I came to the conclusion that you cannot generalize; an MCT in Halifax could not have the same type of career as one in Calgary, Montreal, or Toronto, or in any of the other cities across this great land.

In the same way that the career of MCTs could vary greatly across geography, so too were they likely to differ across technical areas of specialization and many other factors. I decided that if any one MCT truly wanted to represent the entirety of the MCT community across the country he would best be served by creating a national council consisting of trainers from different regions, from different technical specialties. It is the only way that I felt that any one person could truly represent the needs of an entire nation and do so equitably.

As the Regional Lead for Canada it is my intent to create such a council; I am fortunate that I have the opportunity to visit different regions across the country, and will try to meet with as many of my fellow MCTs as I can, and will choose one or two from different regions. This is not to say that any MCT cannot reach out to me, for if it is my goal to represent their voice to Microsoft Learning, I must be willing to listen to everyone. I hope that my fellow trainers will be comfortable enough to reach out to me and discuss any issues that they feel are important to them.

Just as Alberta is different from Ontario, Canada will be different from Ireland; the model that I plan to follow for Canada will not necessarily be right for other lands, and I expect that each Regional Lead will have to give a lot of thought to how their region can best be served. What we will all have in common though is a desire to represent our communities fairly and proudly.

I am honoured to have been selected from the many qualified candidates, and will do my best to deserve this honour by listening to my fellow trainers from across this great land, and representing their opinions and positions truly to Microsoft Learning throughout the year. I am excited for this opportunity and challenge, and know that in order to succeed I must know and listen to my peers, for this position is not for myself but for them, and thus my duty is ultimately to them.

On behalf of the Canadian MCT community I want to wish my fellow inaugural class of MCT Regional Leads the best of luck and success. As Microsoft Learning celebrates its 20^th year we have heard loud and clear from our fellows that there are many things that they are doing right, and there are likewise things that can be improved upon. I hope that our communal goal is to achieve that – to improve the system for us all – for the trainers, for Microsoft, and for our students.

I look forward to working with you all to make that a reality.