Starting off with a very genuine and emphatic statement that I love being a Microsoft MVP.  To me it truly is an honor.  The program is awesome, I’ve made great friends, I’ve grown personally and professionally and I love it.  However the program is totally lacking women.  I want that to change.

Gloria Steinem once told me that women become activists when they get angry.  I’m not quite there, but I am a bit fired-up.

So here’s the deal.  I saw this MVP blog site on MSDN and couldn’t help but notice the alarming lack of women included here.  Common statistics put women in over 50% of all professional jobs, but under 25% in IT.  On this page, we’ve got right about 5% women.  That must change.

I am in no way suggesting we give MVP awards to anyone that hasn’t earned it, regardless of their gender.  I am suggesting that we need to find the female MVPs that are already out there, that just haven’t gotten the recognition yet.  I am suggesting we find those that are interested and we help them along the path.

Here’s what I will do.  I will help match mentors with folks that need one.  This will be specialty agnostic.  Don’t care if you’re an IT pro or developer.  Don’t care if you dig deep into Access or SQL.  Let me know you want a professional mentor and I will make it a point to either be that mentor or find one with you.  If you want to be a mentor, tell me too, I’ll keep you in mind when folks ask for one.

The path to MVP is different for every single person.  There is not a formula to follow.  It is a great recognition for professionals that GIVE BACK.  If that’s you, let’s talk.

Men and women make great mentors, one of my best professional mentors has been my husband.  We have so much to learn from each other and offer each other.  Let’s do something.  Together.

Both Dave and I have worked for the “BIG” publishers and while there’s nothing wrong with that, one day we decided that we could do this publishing thing ourselves (ok, he did and kinda dragged me kicking and screaming).  Well, once again, my hubby proved to be smarter than I and this was a great idea.  Our 4th book together has been released, the full on marketing push started yesterday and today the global press releases went out.  There’s a link below where Yahoo! Finance picked it up.

The new book, Silverlight + CRM is a great resource for CRM developers that need to get up to speed on Silverlight and how to make it work well with Dynamics CRM 2011.  This is a need I have seen over and over again.  This comes up with clients, friends, user groups.  We hope to fill a gap and get other professionals up to speed and making some great software.  This book covers where others have not yet.  Go to Amazon and search for Silverlight CRM and the results are few!

We’ve got code samples/library and you’ve got direct access to the author/editor/publisher like you wouldn’t have from one of the big guys.

The book retails for $69.99 print and $29.99 for electronic.  Head over and use these discount codes directly on our site.

And yes, we are fast at work on the revised CRM as a Rapid Development Platform book with CRM 2011 content.  It’s CLOSE.

Using Silverlight with Your Dynamics CRM 2011 from Industry Guru David Yack - Yahoo! Finance

This session is one I’ve been building in my head for years and am so glad I have an opportunity to present it to CRMUG on October 11.

So first, this makes the assumption that you give some credibility to my “expert consultant” status.  So, once past that, it’s great. 

I will be sharing what I think are key details to being a successful (independent-ish) tech consultant and what to look for when hiring one.

Some things I’ll cover:

• Affordable training
• Build your brand
• Secure your second string
• and more

Join me?

CRMUG - Microsoft Dynamics CRM User Group - CRMUG: How to Become an Expert Consultant