As of last week, I've been back at Microsoft for a year now. I knew Azure was a fast-moving product, but holy crap! It never stops.
I remember when I started at Microsoft we spent something like 3+ years working on Visual Studio .NET & .NET. Nobody can afford to be that leisurely these days. Without the accompanying risk to life, it's like moving from Class I rapids to Class IV or V.
Here are a few things that I'm working on that you can find on a regular basis:
- Azure Friday - Many of you may be familiar with Scott Hanselman's video series that he started back in 2013. It may surprise some people to know that Azure is not Scott's day job. I started helping Scott with Azure Friday almost a year ago to limit his burden to the time he spends in the studio. A byproduct of that is that we're able to produce and publish more episodes, which means we've outgrown the name. Perhaps you should think of it as Azure Fri-yay, or every day is Friday in Azure?
- Last week in Azure - This is a new thing I started on the Azure blog to help current and prospective Azure customers keep up to speed with what's happening in Azure each week. To consume all the content that comes out each week is nearly a full-time job on its own. Ain't nobody got time for that.
I love feedback and I'm always looking for ways to improve, so please let me know how this content can better serve your needs. Also, let me know if there are particular topics you'd like to see covered on Azure Friday.
I'm also the Product Marketing Manager for Azure Cloud Shell, which has been a fantastic learning experience. I've been in marketing at Microsoft for almost a decade and this is the first time I owned part of the product. One thing I really enjoy about Cloud Shell is watching it proliferate: the Azure portal, the Azure mobile app, in the Azure documentation, etc. And there's more to come. And it's still early days for Cloud Shell with much more to come.
Here are just a few other things I've worked on or contributed to in the past year that you can find online:
- Cloud Architecture Whiteboard Webinar Series - I interviewed members of the patterns & practices team on how to address common challenges that engineers and developers face when designing cloud-based solutions. Each webinar in the series will focus on a set of design patterns that address a fundamental design challenge.
- Cloud Design Patterns Poster - This poster depicts common problems in designing cloud-hosted applications and design patterns that offer guidance. Each of the patterns covered in the webinar series is included here, but the poster is a superset of those and others.
- Web for Containers explainer video - Some of the hardest content projects are when you have to be as concise as possible because you only have x words or y minutes. It's living the classic Pascal quote, "Je n'ai fait celle-ci plus longue que parce que je n'ai pas eu le loisir de la faire plus courte."
- Everything else I've published on Channel 9 - There are things on there other than Azure Friday. Sometimes it's a minor post-production role, other times it's deeper involvement in the content itself. But as demonstrated in the webinar series above, I'm better off behind the camera instead of in front of it.
I'm looking forward to more Azure fun!