Top Belgian Students in the Microsoft Virtual Academy
Do you know the Microsoft Virtual Academy (MVA)? The academy was founded in March 2011 and aspires to be a free, easy to access training portal for IT professionals who want to elevate their IT skills and advance their career. You can access a variety of training content online, gain points and become one of the renowned experts in the IT Pro community around the world.
Your learning progress on the platform is measured via points. You can collect points and improve your ranking by completing the different courses, tracks or specializations on offer.
Currently, the academy counts about 2,300 Belgian students (655,000 on a worldwide scale). In the next few weeks 6 top students (all of them part of the top 10) will share their experience on MVA with you. You’ll find out what their favorite trainings are, how the platform helps them to be a better professional and some tips to improve your own ranking.
First up is Samuel Dubrul .
First name: Samuel Last name: Dubrul Description: I'm a frontend solutions system engineer at RealDolmen. My main focus and interests go out to the System Center products and how they make the private cloud. MVA status: Gold 
What’s your experience with the Microsoft Virtual Academy so far? How does it help you to improve your IT skills?
I first heard about MVA from a colleague and it directly caught my attention. I realized that MVA really consolidates and categorizes a lot of useful resources that are out on the internet.
Starting of with the knowledge I already had I took some tracks. It was fun to do and there were some nice "to know's". Later on I also started some tracks of which I knew I could use a knowledge boost.
I must admit that collecting points is also stimulating and these factors keep me going in the Virtual Academy. Even after completing the tracks, I sometimes go back to certain modules to quickly find and access the resources.
What’s your favorite training on MVA (track or course)? Which one(s) would you recommend?
One of my favorite tracks is "Microsoft Virtualization for VMware professionals - Management". In these tracks IT infrastructure expert Corey Hynes and Microsoft Technical Evangelist Symon Perriman really give a clear view about managing the datacenter and eventually managing a private cloud. Yeah I really spent some online time with those two. It made me realize that I was actually becoming a geek (don't know if that's a good thing :-)).
What’s your advice for ambitious MVA newbies who want to improve their ranking?
Yes, you need a lot of time... I would suggest to start with something you already know. Find out if you get extra's out of it and just take the assessments. For the things you don't know a lot about... Take one module at the time and don't take the assessments before you have enough knowledge, you'll just become frustrated doing all the questions again and again. Also remember that you get a second shot if you fail an assessment for the first time, but this is only the first time so be aware.
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Next week Marcelo Estrada Molina (Platinum status) will share his passion for the Microsoft Virtual Academy
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Haven’t signed up for MVA yet? Now is the time to do so! You can get a FREE Welcome Pack (including an exclusive T-shirt and laptop sticker) until the end of May (only for Belgians). Here’s what you need to do:
- Register now on https://www.microsoftvirtualacademy.com
- Send the URL of your MVA profile (example) to tnbewm@microsoft.com along with T-Shirt size and shipping info
- Check your mailbox and open your Welcome Pack
Please read the terms and conditions of this promotion.