I know I tend to skip posting on a weekend, mainly to give me some dedicated time to spend with my family!! But this weekend I did a fair amount of work in an around the wider scope of working with Cloud Services.

As you will know if you have been following my journey, I have spent a significant amount of time setting up a nice fresh office space, upgrading my PC, splashing out on a few Light strips and bulbs and a new camera etc. Which for me personally has been something I have really enjoyed doing, it fits with my personality and it has also taught me a huge amount in areas that to be frank, I probably would never had looked into if I had not been confined to working from home.

After my visit to IKEA this weekend to buy some fake plants to make sure the background of my camera image looks as interesting as possible, I must admit I got into thinking about a few things!

What started as a bit of fun and a pass time has morphed into something else. On a call only this morning I fired up my camera to say hello to a customer and the first thing that was said was…….. ‘I have room envy!’ from my customer! Now…. don’t get me wrong I am no interior designer, but know enough to understand that having a splash of colour or something interesting sat on a shelf in the slightly blurred background does something to your video stream! What is it? And should we all be thinking of our ‘video presence?’

I don’t propose that I have the answer to these questions, but I can tell you about my experiences with it!

I started with a simple view that as I was working from home predominantly I would spend some time in learning how to create content and put a bit back into the Technical Community. That would require me to have a semi decent camera and a microphone that wouldn’t pick up the raging spinning of my overheating laptop!! Now, of course to do content it doesn’t really matter about the quality of the video or how expensive a microphone you have, I absolutely agree! It should be about the quality of your content and how much use your audience can get out of it, but I know I need to practice this and I wont have perfect content from day 1.

So….. for me, this journey has transcended a number of differing principles and elements of learning for me…… 1) Building a new PC and office space 2) Understanding Streaming concepts and software, as well as what you need and possibly don’t need. 3) Presenting to a camera 4) Finding reasonable content that has the balance of 1…. being useful to record, and 2……. helping me practice presenting a technical subject. 5) Returning to Networking (people) and helping to run a user group.

I must add, for anyone who has watched a 10 or 20 minute YouTube video of something, if you do find it useful…….. give them a like and a follow! I now know how much effort goes into making these videos! I am by no means a master at content creation and I still have a lot to learn, but it has shed a completely different view on the situation for me!

So ok yeah…. I’m rambling a bit, so what am I trying to say?

Well, I’m now nearly 3/4 of the way through my 100 Days of Cloud challenge, over the last 3 months I have gone from having an idea to living an breathing the ideas on a daily basis. I haven’t said No to anything, I’ve had fun and learnt a lot in many areas that I never thought I would and its all leading me to the point of……… Has WFH changed significantly? For me the answer is yes! I have been able to make my journey part of my daily working schedule and discovered an unexpected side effect…… it has spilled over into my kids lives….. can you imagine what they are thinking when I tell them that Dad has a YouTube and Twitch channels! I am now more engaged with my kids on the things that matter to them, well, the only thing they can do to keep in contact with their friends! Gaming…….. I am now helping my son with his ‘Streaming’ endeavours……. I am not saying no and I would urge any other parents to listen as assist where they can!

My son was creating overlays for his twitch stream with some free graphics editing software, he was adjusting his microphone levels to avoid clip, he was making sure his channel branding matched in colour and theme. He has made it to affiliate with Twitch and was setting up Discord channels for subscriber only as well as followers……. I could go on and on! So does leaving our kids sat on games really do them all that much harm? The concepts and the lessons learned by embracing change for me any my family have been priceless so far, and I’m sop happy that I am in a position to support them with these things.

So what does this have to do with Cloud John?

Well……. everything and nothing I guess. Cloud for most people and business is just a buzz word, what you make of it is down to your imagination and creativity. Don’t let opportunities pass you by, much like the Cloud. It’s far more than just servers and networks. It is a steep learning curve, but one that should be fun to learn on the way and it certainly has become more prevalent since the Covid Pandemic. However I think that more people now have had their eyes opened to the possibilities with the technology we are surrounded by.

Is this a good or a bad thing? Again not a question from me to answer, but the one clear thing that has played out for me is to embrace the growth mindset concept, nothing is too much trouble and stay on the positive side and you cant go too far wrong!

Stay focussed and keep being Creative!

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!