AWS Solution Architect professional part 1 course

An introduction to the Cloud - a Conversation introducing key Cloud concepts

All about all three main cloud provider options - AWS Azure and GCP

Learn all about

- Messaging, queues, event hubs, Steps, Logic Apps

- Devops both in the cloud and on premise

- Migration to the cloud - a detailed case study including Roadmaps, Sprints, Microservices, Blazor and more

- Data Components in the cloud

and much more

Learn everything about the Cloud - from general principles like - what is a VM and what is IAAS, PAAS and SAAS through to ROI in the cloud - all the way through to detailed technical principles and how to pass Solution Architect Professional certification, Data Analytics certification, etc.

Useful links and resources for passing AZ-305 Azure Architect exam

To IAAS, To PAAS or to SAAS, that is the Question?

One of the huge benefits of moving to the Cloud can be the amount of time and money saved by doing less to obtain the same benefits from your organization’s Digital Ecosystem.  There are a number of models and paradigms providing different ways to obtain those benefits in the Cloud.

Intro to docker and installation

Part 2 about Docker

Docker and Kubernetes 101 material

Learning new technologies all the time is key to being a successful ebusiness consultant. You can use udemy to find free / cheap courses on most technologies to help you with this. Google search is also an amazing tool for finding new learning resources, and if you can afford it a Quickcert annual membership is great for learning lots of technologies and becoming certified in them. One of my favorite ways to learn new technologies is by downloading a free book from succinctly. I have attached a selection of their free ebooks here to help you to learn:

- ASP.Net MVC (4)

- Bootstrap

- Javascript libraries like Node or Knockout

etc.

Mainly about Javascript and its many libraries and derivatives

udemy dot com quickcert.com for training in IT topics

udemy - some courses are free, some are $10 - 30

learn about asp.net mvc, sql server, javascript topics etc.

performance testing - why are web pages slow?

webpagetest.org - great site for testing a web page to see why it is slow

it will tell you how long it took to load each component of the site

1. time to first byte (if web server is far away, this will be longer)

cloud services get around this by providing servers all over the world, redirect call

to the closest server to respond to the request

e.g. Azure (Microsoft cloud platform) has servers all over the world.

AWS Amazon Web services (Amazon's web service cloud platform)

2. Time to download the html page itself -

- is the web page too big?

- is caching effective? repeat read will be lower if caching is effective

- iis (web server) can be configured to respond better to calls made to it

- images - smaller image size can reduce time to load a web page (lower resolution for smaller images)

- cdns - host big files on a common domain where file is cached and optimized, takes the load off of your server

e.g. google has jquery files available on cdn (cloud) caching speeds up serving of the file

- minimized files are smaller, compressed files - easier to download

- bundled files - reduces time to download javascript or css files typically, separate connections for each js file not needed

- back end

- database calls

- optimize queries (aim for 100% coverage)

- use indexes effectively (clustered and non-clustered indexes)

- joins should use clustered index at one end to retrieve at least

- use non-clustered index where you do not know the clustered index on the join

- use query plans in sql server to tell whether or not covered indexes 100%

- table structure and definition (Schema) of database must be right on projects due to performance issues if not

- entity framework encourages laziness - but you should resist laziness - do the query on the database first

BEFORE linq queries are done like take or where clauses in linq.. do it in stored procedures first

- otherwise we will bring ALL the data to the client an then later do the take clauses etc

- dev and testing - may work fine doing it in linq but when you scale it up it will be SLOOOOOW if you are

doing takes in linq etc.

- debug code look for loops that take a long time

- look for lazy loading problems

- look for lots of ajax and jquery which repeatedly goes to the server to get data

The main part of this lecture is a great FREE book from Oreilly on Software Architecture Patterns!

In the Resources section:

- yEd which is a graphical tool that is FREE and very useful for drawing technical diagrams in your role as a Technical Architect.

- a link to a Udemy course "Become an Enterprise Architect with TOGAF 9.1 Certification!" by Scott Duffy

- a copy of a sample Technical Architecture document produced by Deloitte that I believe illustrates some of the most important aspects of a Technical Architecture document

Lots of cheat sheets and guides, helpful resources etc.  to help you be a successful Technical Consultant

Michelle Sollicito is an expert in Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery. She has written a book on the topic, see Content.

Download the document to see a sample high quality software roadmap report provided as part of my work as a consultant

I am a published author and I have a degree in English (Language and Literature) as well as all my skills and experience in the technical realm, so I like to think I know a little bit about writing. I also love to write!

Books Published

Business Survival (A Guide to Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery)

Advanced Visual Basic 5 (TMS/Microsoft Press)

Advanced Visual Basic 6 (TMS/Microsoft Press)

Snowed Out Atlanta - the Inside Story of the Fastest-growing Facebook Group In History

Home Theater Toolkit - A Guide to Making Your Home Theater Dreams A Reality (co author)

Many "techies" find writing to be a tortuous part of their job and take great pains to do as little technical writing or documentation as possible. Thus, a lot of clients employ me simply to find out how their software works and to write good documentation for it, or to document the requirements in terms that the "techies" will understand so that the "techies" do not have to write up the requirements. It works to my advantage that I am one of those rare breeds - a "techie" who likes to write, and is good at it!

If you are also a techie who likes to write you may want to take advantage of this discrepancy. In the Resources section here is a link to an article providing some great technical writing tips.

I also attach here some samples of my written work.

Clients often ask for my help with writing Business Plans for technical projects, new website companies etc. Here is an example of a Business Plan I wrote for my own business/website, TxtToAd. It shows the kind of information to include in a Business Plan, the kind of monetary information required etc.

Sometimes I am asked by a client to write a Marketing Plan because of my social media knowledge coupled with my extensive experience with SEO, Pay Per Click, Backlink marketing, etc. So this lecture covers some key points when developing a Marketing Plan. Paying participants in this course will get high quality sample Marketing Plans in the next Lecture.

A Marketing Plan should include:

- Full Competitive Analysis

- Projection into the future based upon Market Research, studies etc.

- Gaps in the Market that you will exploit

- Full description of your target user / customer type(s)

- SEO strategy

- Social Media Marketing strategy

- Facebook app / smartphone app strategy

- Articles / content (offsite / backlink marketing)

- Media (Youtube video / tv spots)

- PPC (pay per click ads) / Facebook Ads etc.

- Timelines for each

- Goals of Marketing and how these reflect Business Strategy / Objectives

- How you will measure these Goals / objectives (SMART)

Attached in the Resources are some sample Marketing Plans from past work I have carried out. Note that I have not included more recent Marketing Plans which would contain more up-to-date Marketing techniques because I do not want to give away ALL my secrets!

Some days I carry out presentations on my social media expertise, often to Emergency Manager personnel in Government agencies (Cobb EMA, GEMA, FEMA, Governor Deal's office - and even to George H W Bush's friends including Ben Carson, Condolezza Rice and other governmental leaders from his administration!), but also to companies such as the Weather Channel.

Many people ask how my Facebook group Snowedoutatlanta got 50,000 members in less than 24 hours. I answer that it was the "Perfect Storm" (pun intended) of a mixture of factors. There are various models for analyzing why social media successes happen and with hindsight I found a couple of models that made sense of the mind-boggling success to me.

I attach in the resources some slides that show these models and hopefully you can see from this video plus those slides why this phenomenal success happened.

In order to capture as much as I could about the success of my Facebook page Snowedoutatlanta, I wrote a book about the experience. I tried to include as much as possible about what Emergency Management / Disaster Relief personnel could learn from the experience especially with regard to social media. I am often asked to talk to groups about my social media expertise as a result. Here is the summary about the book.

Michelle Sollicito has gained many awards for her work on Facebook helping people in emergencies, most notably for her Snowedoutatlanta Facebook group which was the "fastest-growing Facebook group in history". This section offers her book about the whole experience for free. Find out what made the Facebook group so popular, find out how much it helped people and how Michelle has worked with Emergency Management professionals since then to enhance their understanding of Social Media and its power to help people in a crisis.

I wrote this White Paper on how to use the Facebook API with C#. Hopefully it will help you in two ways - firstly it will help you as it serves as a sample White Paper you can use as a template for creating white papers of your own. But also, if you want to know more about how Facebook works "under the hood" or how you can program its api using C# (or javascript), it will help you with that also.

Start Up Chicks is an organization I am involved with which is helping me to create my own startup business. As a result it is helping me to help other businesses to become more successful also.

Jen Bonnett is an inspiring serial technology entrepreneur who has raised $46 million over 3 startup companies. Her "day job" is working as the Assistant Director, Education & Community Outreach, for the highly successful ATDC at Georgia Tech, which is a 34 year old business incubator with a 90% success rate of coaching startups to become mature companies (this is huge given that 90% of startups usually fail).

Jenn started "Startup Chicks" (http://startupchicks.org/) in February 2009 specifically to help coach women launching startups towards success because she saw that women were under-represented in the successful startup community. She saw that women often have different issues in getting their ideas to market and need a different type of coaching. As a result she has created a whole program uniquely designed to address those issues and that coaching need. Now there are 2000+ members worldwide and there are chapters popping up all over the USA.

Startup Chicks' mission is:

• To Inspire: Prospective Entrepreneurs to make the leap, Existing Entrepreneurs to think BIG.
• To Connect: Authentic Connection with Like-Minded Women and Mentors.
• To Educate: Share best practices through Seminars, Workshops and our Hatch Programs.

The organizational values include:

• Be Inspiring/Inspired – Amazing women sharing their stories
• Be Supportive – “Give before you Get” Mentality
• Be Accountable – “Tough Love”
• Create Friendships – Authentic Connections
• Educate / Guide – Coaching / Mentorship
• Have fun!

There are three membership levels for being a Startup Chick ranging from the free basic level which provides invitations to events and newsletters, to "web-only chick" which provides access to online classes and events in addition, and up to "full access chick" which provides VIP access to special events and workshops and free access to local meetups.

To join startup chicks or to consider starting up a local chapter go to http://startupchicks.org

TxtToAd was the precursor to Facebook Marketplace.  I tried to sell it to many venture capitalists, then tried to sell it to Mark Zuckerburg - when I had no luck with that I simply sent him my whole business plan and technology and let him use it to create Facebook Marketplace.  It is cool to think I started such an amazingly successful feature of Facebook - sad I did not make any money out of it though!  ;-)

Why Startups Fail

The most common way for startups to fail is because they did not honestly do their market research and make sure that there really was a need for a product or service before they started investing resources and time into their idea. A little bit of time up front really listening to potential customers can save a lot of money, pain and heartache later on, and can also help you to adapt an idea into something that DOES work in the market.

Customer discovery is key to this. Go out with a list of questions and ask them of 100 potential customers. Be sure you target potential customers carefully and be careful not to lead them in their answers. Rather than say "Do you shop on eBay, Amazon or Craigslist?" instead say "When you shop, do you ever shop online?" If they say yes, then ask "Where do you shop online? Which websites do you use?"

Really listen to the answers. For example if they say "No I never shop online" do not end the conversation there. Ask why they do not shop online, to find out reasons that people distrust online shopping or what they find inconvenient about it etc. Also, try to find out the value the potential customer would attribute to your product - for example, if stay at home moms really want your product that is great, but if they are not prepared to pay anything for it (they would expect to get it for free) you may have a problem.

Market research also includes knowing your competition really well. Knowing all the other companies in your space and what they have to offer is key. Knowing what you offer that is different to what they offer is critical.

Another reason startups do not work is because they do not have a full Business Plan with detailed numbers to ensure that the math works out. It is important to work out how many items you need to sell in order to break even and also to predict when that break even point will be and how you will get to that point. If you sell 100 items for $100 each by the end of the first year, that might sound great but how much is it going to cost to produce those items? If it is going to cost you more than $10,000 that may not be so good.

If you have a startup, you really need a short sentence that succinctly explains what your startup is all about. This is so that you can explain it to as many people as possible as quickly as possible and is often known as the "Elevator Pitch". Your Elevator pitch must be clear, concise, interesting and relevant, and ideally should leave your audience with questions because you want to open up a conversation. It should take the format of something like this.

[Company] provides [product/service] for [who] so they can [whatever they can do]. Unlike [competitor] we [what you do].

Here are some more ideas around this topic http://www.quora.com/How-do-I-write-an-effective-elevator-pitch

Incubators usually provide training, coaching and some facilities to help people building businesses in the startup phase.

They're often a good path to capital from angel investors, state governments, economic-development coalitions and other investors. Mentorship and networking is often another benefit.

There are many incubators in any state in the USA. For example, here is the list for Georgia:

http://www.georgia.org/business-resources/business-incubators/

Each usually has its own culture and attracts a specific type of business.

An overview of testing of all kinds including unit testing, integration testing, system testing and security testing (both manual and automated)