I’m just back from my holidays in Mallorca (what a lovely place that is!) with my kids (what a lovely kids they are! – of course – unconditional love, right Alex? :-)). So time to pick up work .. and community for that matter. There were some things that have “moved” in the community, which is worth to address – at least from my humble perspective ;-).
NAVUG All Star
First of all, I got the message that I got nominated in the list “NAVUG All-Star Awards 2015“. What an honor. Only being nominated already feels like I won the damn thing ;-).
If you’re not familiar with NAVUG, well, in short, it’s an on-and-offline NAV community, with a VERY strong focus on the NAV user instead of the consultant/developer/partner. There is an academy, forum, webinars … and much more .. AND also a conference, called the NAVUG Summit. I strongly recommend you to check out the NAVUG Homepage!
And – of course – don’t forget to vote for the person you think deserves to be an All-Star in the NAV World! 
Plataan.tv
Next initiative that was announced during my holiday, that I really really like, is “plataan.tv“? Sure, it’s a commercial platform, and you’ll have to pay for the services (only sunrise is for free, right?) – and I shouldn’t be advertising too many commercial products – but this initiative I just really like! Sorry.
You know Plataan– may be without realizing it. They are the ones behind the “How-Do-I” video’s, which is an initiative from Microsoft, but a lot of them are created in co-operation with Plataan. They have loads of experience in teaching, massive experience in video’s .. so plataan.tv can only be a very successful, interesting learning platform! I look forward to see how this story continues.
Mark’s book
I was happy to notice Mark’s new book is almost finished. You know I have been blogging about NAV Design Patterns and such .. well, Mark took it upon him to learn from all these efforts from the community, and put it in a book-format. You can obviously read all about it on his blog.
Cumulative Updates
Of course, there are new Cumulative Updates again – be sure to check them out! I didn’t update my page just yet (will be worked on in the next few days) .. but they can always be found in the knowledge base, of course.
New HDI video’s
Already mentioned above – you know about the How-Do-I video’s? Well, new video’s are coming every month. Just for your convenience, there is the YouTube playlist to put in your bookmarks ;-): https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL5B63EF419A3B59C8
Certification exams for NAV
There is a group of people that call themselves “Association of Dynamics Professionals“. I have to be honest: I’m not that familiar (yet) with them, but looking at their website, I assume it’s more then “just” NAV (also CRM, GP, …), and they have something to do with NAVUG, as their website is very similar. As said, I didn’t put too much time in it.
But I have read this blogpost from Aleksandar Totovic: New Certification Exams for NAV, and even more people have been blogging about them, like:
- Luc Van Vugt: The Association of Dynamics Professionals – Certification Exam Question Submission
- Mark Brummel: HELP WANTED | NAV 2015 Exam Question Writing
And may be more .. .
It really made me wonder: do we really need exams back? Or better yet: do we really want third party people creating exams .. are they going to tell me what is good and what not?
In a way, yes, I do want some kind of organism (wrote that word wrong, the first time … ;-)) which I can use to “test” certain people whether they have basic knowledge. So it DOES make sense. But then again .. Being “certified” by a party other than Microsoft sounds strange… .
I’m in doubt .. so please help me: I’ve put up a poll to check for your opinions on this :-).
New download coming up!
During my holiday, I was also thinking .. why not just put all my PowerShell scripts online on a download. Sure, without any support, but I already have quite a lot of scripts, too much to blog about .. adding more scripts each day .. . I’m trying to find out what is the best way to get them to you, and being updated. Should I use GIT? Or transform it into a MiBuSo download? Tell me what think and leave a comment!