Phew……… where did this week go?! Ok so I thought Id get my Day 18 blog entry up and out there and use it as a bit of a stop, breathe and reset for the next phase of learnings!

In the early part of my 100DaysOfCloud Challenge I was looking at all the different areas of interest and points of learning that I want to either refresh, learn from new and make some decisions on whether I need to go deep or broad with my knowledge. I think its fair to say that I have definitely unearthed a fair few areas of interest, which of course is great! As we know there is always something new to learn!

So……. the last few days have been pretty full on, in my day job working on some really impressive changes and customer projects, outside of work juggling my mask laden kids to and from school, well, I’ve mastered this now…… there are all in comp and have legs! So apart from signing up for a personal loan each morning so they can buy a feast from the corner shop to see them through the limited time they are in school…… we are golden! After this I try to squeeze in some learnings, and a bit of down time!

Where am I up to?

Currently there are two main points that I feel need to be my next challenge to fit in with my work and personal interest life, being Terraform and Azure DevOps. If you have been keeping up with my posts over the last few weeks you will see that I have created a couple of blogs on each, but there are some deeper learnings that I need to explore.

This ecening I have used to take stock of what I have achieved in such a short amount of time, has it been intense? Yes! Has it been time consuming? You better believe it! Has it been fun?! For me I would use the word exciting! (Too nerdy?!) Has is been rewording? Um……. very much so!

Apart from the technologies I have been working with and the colleagues friends family and acquaintances I have spoken with about my endeavours, I cannot believe how quickly things are progressing in many different ways and it really is very rewarding in a personal way.

So…… what have I been up to today?! A fair bit! Action packed day of internal and customer calls, a few more projects kicking off in work doing some funky things with Teams Direct Routing in Azure and Contact Centres, as well working with some really great customers and finally being able to kick of some projects that have been on hold during COVID.(Oh did I mention my links to 365!). These are really exciting times, but like everything…… full on! Later in the day I managed to catch up with the admin side of last nights Welsh Azure User Group *See Day 17 post for more details! Now finally sitting down with the kids to watch Karate Kid 2 as I ponder my next moves.

A quick review of the Microsoft AZ-400 Designing and Implementing DevOps Solution learning materials: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-gb/learn/certifications/devops-engineer And I can see that I’m about 20% of the way through the modules. A quick run through of one of the sub modules on enabling application logging on web apps and also App Insights I’m feeling a bit more confident that this is the next cert route I need to take.

Together with this I will carry on pursuing the Terraform learnings and put in some more test scripts, especially around Terraform Cloud and state file sharing.

So that’s been my day, sorry this is a bit more of a blog/diary entry, but I felt that I didn’t want to skip a day as I have actually been contemplating and researching my next logical move!

Not that I’m keeping track but I do think I need to keep a list of all the areas and learnings I have on my table at the moment that I hope to work through one by one over time!

• Azure in General – Constant Learning
• AZ400
• Terraform
• Ansible
• Python
• MVC with C# and .NET (Bringing back the old school!)
• Docker Containers (May even throw in a splash of K8s)
• Raspberry Pi
• IoT Kit – Azure IoT Hub
• Books – Back to Smart Cities (Its been staring at me and I so want to get back reading the next section!!!)
• More AI and ML
• Data……. Yes Data…….. hell I know its quite far down my list but there is reason for this! Data is HUGE imo……. however it happens to be an area that I am reasonably familiar in and learning all the above to a similar level will help me democratise DATA for business and make it talk….. well that is my theory any way!
• All of the above focussed on an Azure centred use with one, sorry two caveats. AWS and GCloud (yep I think I need to get to at least the comparison level), I have some knowledge but as people will know, my main passion and career has been centred around Microsoft, and really, for me to know my job better I need to understand the competition, therefore they are on my list!

I am so sure this list will grown and change over time, but hopefully you can see where I am going….. oh and please if anyone has any pointers or suggestions for me then I would love to hear it!

Right, I’ve had by typing fix for tonight, like I said, sorry its a wordy blog/diary entry, but this is Cloud Computing with a side of Chipz on my 100DaysOfCloud Challenge!

Id love to hear from anyone following a similar track to me, or at least a few similar points!

Thanks for all the supports from the Core team on the 100DaysOfCLoud Discord! Really looking forward to working with a few of the guys and gals in there for a bit of motivation!!!

For now………

Jonnychipz

100DaysOfCloud Overview

My Main ReadMe Page is all set up with a bit about me!

The guys at 100DaysofCloud have set up the GitHub repo to be cloned and also have a great repo containing ideas and areas to collaborate on: https://github.com/100DaysOfCloud/100DaysOfCloudIdeas

My Github Journey tracker can be found here: https://github.com/jonnychipz/100DaysOfCloud

Please Watch/Star my repo and feel free to comment of contribute to anything I push! I really look forward to hearing from anyone who is going to jump on the journey around the same time as me! Lets see where I get to in 100 days!

I would encourage others to jump on this journey, I’m not sure that I will be able to commit every day for 100 days, but as long as I can complete 100 days that will be great!