The goal of my weekly video diary is to talk about my experience as a SetFocus candidate in the Master’s Program.  Each week I will discuss various topics, but I really just want to offer an insider’s view of what I’m learning each week in the SharePoint training track and the real life process of juggling it all.

This is my very first video diary entry in which I answer the question, “why I chose SetFocus.” 

Hi, I’m David Wier and welcome to my video blog.

 Today, I’d like to talk about why I chose SetFocus for my learning experience and my experiences so far.   I checked them out.  They had a pretty good reputation nationwide and that was pretty important to me but now that I’ve actually got into classes,  I’m finding that the reputation goes internationally.    I had a background of ASP.NET development but there was just — it just seemed to stagnate.   I mean, there’s new stuff on ASP.NET.   I’ve been working ASP.NET probably more than eight years, professionally eight years, but then, I guess,  I went to my first conference in September of 2000 when it was still in the alpha stages.  But I needed and wanted SharePoint training because I looked at it as being the next logical step for me and since they had SharePoint training and it was a Master’s Program,  they just really gave you a lot of experience and learning.

 SharePoint was a slam dunk.  I was — I was hooked on SharePoint from the start, but then I was also hooked on SetFocus’ program from the start, too, when I found out.

It’s very different in the first couple of weeks.  I wasn’t really sure what to expect.  But they have all these different things that you have to juggle and get used to – Live Meeting and at the same time you have a remote desktop connection.  You have this Polycom unit which has the online class so that you could see all the other students and interact with the other students.  And it’s a little rough at first because I was a little bit behind and had a bad, bad ISP.  Luckily I got a new one and the upload speed was much better, so everything is smoothed out and with the great support staff that SetFocus has, it helped me over the little bumps.   I got through and I was having my classes.  Now, every time that I have a class and it’s over with, it just leaves me wanting more.   I can’t wait to get to the next class.