I logged onto the Microsoft Dynamics Community page today and found that it has been done up, it reminded me a bit of the Xbox 360 for some reason.

The old site was rather clunky, which I always thought was quite odd given that Microsoft is a massive company who specialize in technology.

So what is the Microsoft Dynamics community actually for, well Microsoft describe it as a place to collaborate with your peers and expert

Whether you’re here to get help or to help others, thanks for stopping by.  As you complete specific activities in the community, you will earn badges to showcase your participation and credibility.

So the Microsoft Dynamics Community allows you to collaborate with fellow CRM users, there are CRM blogs, which my blog gets syndicated to, there are also forums where you can post and answer CRM questions.

Here is a link to my profile if you fancy following me or adding me as a friend, although I’m not entirely sure what adding me as friend actually does

https://community.dynamics.com/members/hosk/default.aspx

Contributing to the CRM community allows you to earn badges.  You can get badges for blog posts, answering forum questions and what’s more there are different levels of badges

So why would you want to earn badges and contribute, well it’s so you can become a CRM expert and maybe if you contribute a lot to the CRM community you may become a CRM MVP, below is a snipped from one of Microsoft blogs about it

EARN BADGES AND SHOWCASE EXPERTISE

As you complete specific activities in the community, you will earn badges to showcase your participation and credibility.

BECOME AN EXPERT

Ready to take the next step?  Compete for the Microsoft Community Contributor (MCC) badge and strive to become a Microsoft Most Valued Professional (MVP).

I was looking at the badges I had acquired, you can check out my badges here, unsuprisingly I have a blogger 4 badge, which means I have posted 150 blog posts and 47 other members have earned this badge.

one badge that made me laugh and showed Microsoft does have a funny side

I’ve been a member for 2 years and all I got…

there is also some fan and celebrity badges for following and being followed.

frustratingly I don’t seem to have any badges for answering forum questions, which I had answered quite a few, still there is always more questions to answer if I have the time.

It was interesting looking at the badges and the badges the CRM MVPS have earned, which you can look at by clicking the link below for the people who have the

https://community.dynamics.com/braggerbadges/badge/69.aspx?pi10956=1

amusing the MVP badge is worth 1 point!

The Microsoft Dynamic Community is a good concept and does work well because CRM experts to answer the forum questions in their quest to become or keep the CRM MVP status.  I’m sure most people reading this blog have found the answer to a CRM question from a forum post.

It also offers a route for people to become CRM MVP’s because by blogging, answering questions and doing lots of other things for the CRM community anyone can become a CRM MVP, although it isn’t easy because if you look at the current CRM MVP’s here you will probably recognise lots of the names on the list because they have published CRM tools, books, answered lots and lots of forum questions and probably have fantastic CRM blogs which you have read many posts from.

I would of course love to become a CRM MVP one day and if you want to nominate me, I certainly won’t stop you, click http://mvp.microsoft.com/en-us/nominate-an-mvp.aspx , my email address ben.hosking@gmail.com.  Although I think its going to take a lot more effort from me to contribute to the CRM community.  On the plus side everyone needs a goal to aim for and becoming a CRM MVP is certainly thinking big.  Talking about asking people to nominate MVP’s I saw this post on Gareth Tucker’s blog and I thought cheeky but then why not and recently Gareth has written so excellent blog posts and he is another person striving to be a CRM MVP and good luck to him I say.

Some advice to myself is probably stop looking at badges and leaderboard’s and get contributing