Featured in Company Learning Initiative!
Journey: 📊 Community Builder 📊
Subject matter: 💡 Career Pathway 💡
Featured in Company Learning Initiative!
Something a little different!
Recently, at my workplace, I was invited by the company CTO to do a presentation to a few hundred people at my workplace on the topic of Rally Driving, or more specifically, Rally Navigating.
My aim was to keep it fun and as entertaining as possible.
I had a short slide deck to work from, mainly pictures of events I had navigated on, and some action shots of the car travelling sideways. I think it went pretty well, as I had a few people message me on my work Teams afterwards, thanking me for putting the talk together.
One of the solutions architects actually popped up in my messages, stating that he himself used to be a rally navigator, so we enjoyed exchanging a couple of funny stories about our times sitting in the ‘second seat’.
On page one of my slide deck, alongside my rally license, I had my name, the department I work in, and I thought I would add ‘AWS Community Builder’ too, as it is something I am immensely proud to be part of.
It was a couple of days after the presentation, when one of the talented Technical Analysts, someone who wears various hats at work, dropped into my Teams with a question:
“Hi Barny, I noticed your slide deck had ‘AWS Community Builder’ written under your name. What exactly is an AWS Community Builder?”
I explained the role further and how all things AWS/cloud had helped me on my technical career path, and then we went back to our busy working day.
A week or so later, an unexpected meeting invite dropped into my mailbox with an interesting agenda based on hearing more about my career.
I joined the call, and was asked to explain in more detail how I got to where I am in my job now, specifically my career history over the last few years.
I described my transition into cloud based learning, overlaying 15 years of on-prem technical principles to cloud hyperscaler environments.
We discussed my achievements with AWS, how certifications helped me, and also the article that AWS wrote about me, which can be seen Here.
After recounting my own pathway, I was asked if I would be interested in having another article written about my journey for internal company distribution, with a view to driving a new learning initiative!
Obviously, I was thrilled at this, and we got to work. With permission, I am able to share that write-up here:
I hope this article helps others in the company who are thinking of learning something new to get started on their own journey of discovery, and to the global technical community, if you feel inspired by this post, find your passion and learn something new!
Wherever you are on your learning pathway and whatever obstacles you have in front of you, remember, you absolutely can do it with dedication and time spent learning the fundamentals.
And finally, for good measure, a few of my rally navigating trophies…
