Checking out the other team

November 6, 2024

On the edge of the South Lake Union neighborhood, just a few blocks from Seattle Convention Center Summit, you'll find AWS Skills Center Seattle.

Outside is a sign inviting visitors to take free courses.

You know me, I like free courses.

And so last week, I signed up for Part 1 of "Becoming a Cloud Practitioner" to spend 3.5 hours learning about AWS Cloud.

At check-in, I showed my registration email. Got my visitor badge. AWS stickers. Complimentary coffee. A quick look at the exhibits. "Alexa, change the color of the lights."

I was the only student in the physical classroom. The teacher managed the hybrid experience from the corner of the room, controlling the online chat and the classroom projector from behind a three-terminal display mounted atop an adjustable-height desk.

From my seat, I could see the slides projected onto a screen at the front of the classroom, but I wasn't able to join the chat or see who else was there.

It felt like being in the studio during a radio broadcast.

As expected, the material leaned towards the beginner end of the scale.

And yet I found it worthwhile.

It's like learning another language. If you know some Spanish, it's easier to learn Portuguese, but you still have to put in the time to learn the new vocabulary.

The concepts were all familiar. Data centers, regions, availability zones, users and groups.

But things have different names here: EC2 instead of Azure VMs. S3 instead of Azure Blob Storage. Lambda instead of Azure Function Apps. AWS Console instead of Azure Portal.

Travel broadens the mind.

A few notes:

My top takeaway from the class: AWS Well-Architected contains comprehensive advice on how to build infrastructure, with good examples of what to do -- and anti-patterns of what not to do.
Also valuable reading: AWS Cloud Adoption Framework.
AWS Skill Builder includes 600+ free courses, but if you want to pursue the advanced certifications, you're looking at $29/month (or $449 annual) for a subscription.
As a Seattle booster, I'm glad to see a company with local roots investing in a local presence for community education. But it would be much better with more in-person attendance. Hybrid courses are more fun when you can say "Hi!" to someone.
Workspace of the future: A Skills Center combined with coworking, networking, mentoring, startup resources, and job placement resources.

AWS Skills Centers are located in Seattle, Wash., Arlington, Va., and Cape Town, South Africa.

Over the last year, I've made a significant investment in learning Power Platform and Azure. I've earned certifications, attended events, made new connections, and even won a prize!

And I'm just getting started.

I have tremendous respect for what Microsoft has accomplished, and I'm excited about the direction of the company.

And even as a relatively new member of the developer community, I have felt it to be a welcoming environment for myself and others. That's important.

So far, I've been building solutions entirely on my own account, which gives me the freedom to choose whichever tools suit me best. That's all well and good until the money runs out. (Tick-tock.)

And if it does come to pass that I must put myself out there, whether as a functional consultant or solution architect, or bringing some other combination of skills to the table, the customer takes priority over any platform.

I'd love to work full-time for an organization committed to Power Platform and Azure, where I'd be able to build upon my growing expertise in the Microsoft stack.

But unless and until that happens, I'm in a marketplace where it would be professional malpractice to represent myself as a functional consultant or a solution builder while knowing only one stack to the exclusion of the rest.

And so I keep my eyes open, keep learning, keep going.