Go Cloud Architects Starting Point 🚀🚀🚀

THE STORY

Since 2019 when I was working for my friend healthcare startup , I was forced to learn Cloud Computing to host my mental health chatbot on a cloud provider. At that time I was fascinated with Google Cloud since they did their famous NextGen conference 2019 online where I got to see the latest cutting edge technology but gradually you know that one technology is not enough and when I saw that there were issues with Facebook servers due to social networks getting down for a few hours, this showed that that there is something called security outage.

 And the Eureka moment hit when in mid 2020 I attended a Zoom call from an experts called Mr Michael Gibbs who emphasized deeply on Multi-Cloud Strategy and this is where I saw the value of AWS being a global leader and the potential of a career prospect within the cloud space as a Cloud Architect.

WHEN I STARTED

I started watching his videos as from 2021 and I promised myself once I saved enough money I will enroll in his academy. As from December 2021 I enrolled myself since one of his students from USA got a job as an Associate Solution Architect and this boost my desire to such a point that I spent all my savings on his Go Cloud Architects academy.

Only one word to describe Mr Michael Gibbs leadership, it is SIMPLICITY.  He knows his field, he masters his discipline to a very high level of excellence and interacts with his students like his own children. And the best part is that he creates a balance between the technical side and the non-technical as well to create that conducive atmosphere to learn and put into practice. I enrolled myself into his Career Development Program which equips students and even professionals with the necessary skills to get hired as a Cloud Architect.

AIM OF THE PROGRAM

The goal of the program is to build both your technical competency and your leadership skills to get you hired as a Cloud Architect and be able to think like a leader even as a beginner, whether it is about leadership, attitude, emotional intelligence. 

HOW PROGRAM IS DELIVERED

Since it is a program that prepares you for your future tech job, there are:

1. Live lectures per week where they do architectural training, interview training, executive presence training and soft skills training. The aim is to build your:

- Cloud Architect career

-  Enterprise Architect career

- Network Architect career

ORIGIN OF THE GO CLOUD ARCHITECTS PROGRAM

Mr Michael Gibbs has 20 + years of work experience in the technology space. But before that he was in medicine, he tried to send his medical qualifications along with his CCNP and CCDP, 2 heavy duty networking certifications. The recruiter said no experience since there is no compatibility between medicine and networking. And on the other part, many people thinks to be a cloud architect, you must learn coding, devops, wireless communication, the whole tech stack, IT DOES NOT WORK LIKE THIS. 

He also emphasized how Martial Arts made him a confident person, same things happen at work, you do not know your colleagues or the other people applying for the same position that you also applied for. Martial Arts taught Mr Mike how to have a plan, a backup plan and a backup backup plan and if that does not work, try to improvise and adapt. This applied to the medical field, you got seconds to save a person's life, how to adapt and save that person. And when we see the Cloud space, what are your risk mitigation strategies when working on a project. When interacting with customers, know how to communicate effectively just like a doctor communicates with his patient.

And last but not the least:

"DO NOT DO 10 CERTIFICATIONS, YOU CANNOT BE EXPERT IN ALL, FOCUS ON ONE"

HANDS - ON LABS

We were also advised to practice a list of hands-on lab to be able to build competency and also choose the appropriate career pathway within the Cloud space. We get some labs to do so that we get used to that virtual environment of the cloud and also learn the basics before getting into the depth of cloud architecture and also cloud service providers.

BUILDING ENTERPRISE ARCHITECTURES

One of the things that motivated to start my learning journey with Go Cloud Architects is the opportunity to work on real High Performance Cloud Architecture scenarios. Within their syllabus, they have a Section 11 for that gives students a cloud architecture project for healthcare institution and financial firm. After students have done the necessary training to build their technical competency, they have to design a cloud architecture for those projects.

 And on Section 12, students have to design a Large Enterprise project while working with external partners. And this does not finish here, in Section 13 students get the opportunity to work on a Capstone project for Extreme Performance Systems. So that #GoCloudArchitect program is not just a simple online academy, it prepares for your future tech job with industrial maturity. 

One of my colleague on Go Cloud Architect slack group named Yvan has written a blog article on how to design a high performance cloud architecture for a company. Kindly check his blog post in the link for more details: L'architecte Intelligent. He was of the students of Mr Michael Gibbs and now he works for AWS as Associate Solution Architect.

PREPARE FOR TECHNICAL INTERVIEWS

One of the most important thing as a professional is to be able to present him/her in a very elegant way during interviews and be able to communicate effectively to the recruiters. I have seen our coach Mr Michael Gibbs laying a lot of emphasis on that because even if you are not so technically good, at least you can communicate in a way that attracts the audience and makes you as a potential employee for the company. So having a high level of emotional intelligence, be able to express yourself diligently and respectfully and understanding what the job requirements are, at least 50% in the job description are some of the key factors before the technical interview.