I've been working in the IT space for coming on 20 years, holding several different roles. The first several years of my career were focused in mobile, and more recently I've been working within the Microsoft ecosystem, including administering various Azure cloud services.

While tech has been a passion of mine for a many years, in 2021 I made the decision to focus on learning the cloud, since it seemed like the good match for me as it's ever-changing (and I consider myself a persistent learner). I also live in the Seattle Area, which is a good hub for cloud-related opportunities. I started working on a bachelor's degree program in IT/Cloud Computing with a focus on Azure services, and I graduated in early 2023. Along the way, I earned several certifications, and have already taken the steps to renew a couple of them.

Since I graduated (at the time of this writing), I've been exploring a few other avenues of self-learning, including studying for the AWS Certified Solutions architect (though I haven't sat for it yet). I've gone as far as putting together a certification path I would like to follow to get multi-cloud experience, however since graduating with my degree, I've been struggling to make up my mind on a path to get me job-ready for a role such as a Cloud or DevOps engineer, or perhaps something in the cloud security space. I've also been working on the side to put together a portfolio of projects on GitHub, however I've been struggling to find a good path or series of projects that seem to have a logical progression to something tangible for future opportunities.

The other day, while taking another stab and coming up with a plan that seems logical to stick to, I came across a video that recommended starting with the Cloud Resume Challenge. Upon researching this, it looks like a good roadmap to build a project that demonstrates real skills, but without giving you step-by-step instructions (giving you the goal but making you put in the work to learn how to achieve it in a way that is meaningful to you) . Today, I'm choosing to embark on this challenge.

Since the challenge can be done for each of the major cloud platforms (AWS, Azure & Google Cloud), I'm going to start with Azure for two reasons:

• I have the most experience working with Azure based on jobs I have held as well as my studies while working on the degree.

• I have already earned the AZ-900 certification (hence Step 1 of the challenge is already complete!)

I do intend to complete the AWS and Google Cloud challenges as well, to make my portfolio more well-rounded.

Creating a blog post is actually the last step of the challenge, however I'm deciding to start this blog now, so I can journal my progress along the way. I'll also post any relevant documents on my GitHub and link them into future journal entries as I go.

Onward to the challenge!