Stephen Charles Rea: MCT + Blogger + Comedian = Evangelist
It’s widely-known that Microsoft Certified Trainers are some of Microsoft's most active evangelists. They showcase our products to their students and speak on behalf of MS at events such as TechEd and user group meetings. Over the past few years, a number of MCTs have taken their support of MS beyond the classroom and onto the internet.
AskTheMCT.com is Stephen Charles Rea’s entry into the MCT blogosphere and has tallied more than 25,000 hits since it started on January 1, 2008. Steve, or as he’s know to his friend, the Rev or .rev, is an MCT at the New Horizons in Greensboro, NC where he specializes in the ITPro curriculum. A former stand-up comedian and radio disc jockey, Rea now delivers most of his jokes in the classroom, with a few sneaking into the interview he did with Microsoft in July.
Why did you start this blog? The reason I started this particular blog is there just isn’t anything out there that caters in the direction that I want to go. There are a lot of blogs about specific projects, but I decided I wanted to build a blog that was really specific to helping people get certified by giving someone the tools they need.
What do you hope to achieve with AskTheMCT.com? Fame, fortune…nah, just kidding. For me, it’s kind of an extension of who I’ve become as a trainer. I was a Security Admin 4 ½ years ago and was sick of having a desk job. I decided to make myself marketable, and thought,” Hey, I’ll go take some tests.” I’d been in IT about 8 or 9 years, but had never tested before. So, I went out and took some classes and about half way through my MCSE courses, thought, I could do this, I could teach. Maybe this would be a way to bring the 2 sides of my personality together: giant nerd with an addiction to attention. In August 2004 I quit my job, and by October, started training full time. The website is an extension of that. I really enjoy what I do and I enjoy empowering others. I want to attract other authors to contribute to the site because it’s not about money, it’s really about trying to build a community and bring information to the audience.
Who is your audience? My audience is the startup to mid-level IT guy. I don’t really cater to hardcore technical specifications. There are enough whitepapers, TechNet articles and MSDN content so that people can get that information. For me it’s about giving the guy who’s starting a certification or the guy who is maybe in the middle of his cert track, giving him a little leg up. Plus, the hard-core know-it-alls annoy me.
How do you pick your topics? Student suggestions, things they want to see, things that come up in class, things I find myself explaining a lot. These are the things that I write about. I’m currently working on 2-3 different articles right now. My most recent article, “What’s with all these tests,” explains my interpretation of what I believe MS was trying to do with the new generation certifications. I answer this question a lot in person, so I thought it’d be good to get it on the blog.
What kind of feedback do you receive on your blog? I actually received a lot of feedback on the very specific articles. I probably get 4 times the volume of email rather than comments. I’ve received about 30-40 comments on the “What’s with all the tests” article. For instance, I had one guy email me that he hated the Microsoft new generation certifications. He thought all these tests were stupid and read my article and wanted to tell me that now that he’d read my article he was headed back to certification. For me that was really cool.
What blogs do you read? I read Trika’s blog pretty religiously. Being one of the marketing people for the community that I’m part of I can’t not read it. Trika does a really good job of getting information public that sometimes you don’t hear elsewhere. I also read Thomas Lee, he’s an MCT from the UK and a friend of mine. He’s the only person I know who pushes the MS solutions framework like it’s water and if you don’t drink it then you die. Beyond that, I read Chris Randell’s blog a bit because he’s a SQL guy and I do SQL administration.
What is your dream outcome of the blog? It’s a little bit about recognition. It’s not the driving motivation, but everyone wants some recognition. I get a little satisfaction when people know my name, but for me the total outcome is that I want it to become a community with a bidirectional flow of knowledge with multiple authors. I want to open up a community that at least in some way ties into and takes note of the other resources available on the internet. At last count, since January 1st, I’d had about 25,000 hits. I was impressed until my 60 year old mother started blogging 9 weeks ago. She works for a little small-town newspaper and they wanted everyone to start blogging and she chose country music (Countrychatter.wordpress.com) and she gets about 11,000 hits per week. I thought I was on fire with 14,000 hits a couple of months ago.
