Looking back at my Serverless Advocacy

It has been less than an year that I've got started on Dev.To platform and last week I celebrated a milestone of 500+ reactions and 35,000+ views across all my blog-posts on Dev.To.

Jones Zachariah Noel

@zachjonesnoel

Today I just hit 500 blog post reactions on dev.to/zachjonesnoel, I know it's a small number but it's a good starting milestone and it wouldn't have been possible with all of you reacting to my blog posts.
Thanks and cheers!! 🍾🥂

@ThePracticalDev @AWSCommunity

06:04 AM - 26 Jan 2022

Looking back at my journey

Over the last 4 years I've been working on AWS Serverless tech stack, where I started off as a developer and being the earliest adaptor of Serverless. From a developer's stand-point I must say Serverless is the best go-to solution as you are not managing the server infrastructure instead focusing on your application.
And that was the point of time where SAM CLI or CDK was not available and I was not introduced to Infrastructure as Code, so my applications were managed purely on AWS Console. This is when, I understood the best to do is build a CloudFormation template and deploy it over CLI.

And then my curious mind couldn't stop thinking there could be a better way! And I got introduced to the blogs and I got into an habit of reading more and more blog posts about Serverless and how to architect Serverless applications. And the applications which I was into were mostly managed with Console or CLI.
When I was overly excited with what all awesomeness Serverless holds, I started internal developer advocacy (explaining and bragging about Serverless) to my peers, colleagues and tech savy friends. Which also made me do my research right so that I get to convey the correct version of my understanding! And I started thinking of basic ideas and also the projects which I had implementated with the traditional architecture and as my excitement driven force got me implement those on Serverless with similar or equivalent architecture (P. S. mostly monolithic architecture) which resulted in some cost and made me think that Serverless is expensive for a production level applications!? Which is when one of the StackOverflow posts mentioned that you need to forget the monolithic way and think event-driven! which made a whole lot of sense for me, as I understood by them, Serverless architecture and traditional architecture are multitudes away. And I started attending Twitch streams, events, meet-ups where I got to understand Serverless more.
And it was in 2020 when the pandemic had encapsulated the world and there were long lockdowns, which gave me crazy amount of time to try out (in other words become a mad scientist working on experiments) with Serverless architecture and get a hang of it.

This was around the time when I got introduced to a Senior Developer Advocate ASEAN during a AWS CDK workshop hosted online, who guided me with CDK development. By this time, I had got a good understanding and started blogging about Serverless on Dev.To. By seeing my content about Serverless, I was invited to AWS Community ASEAN and I'm continuously contributing to the community.
And then I started extensively contributing to the AWS community with blog posts, tweets, GitHub contributions to sample repositories of AWS services.
Apart from these, I'm actively contributing to the re:Skill community with challenges and blog posts.

AWS re:Skill

@awsreskill

Our 🆕challenge 'Using Cognito with Jones Zachariah Noel N sheds light on:
✔️Gist & advantages of using Cognito
✔️Setting up Cognito User Pool, Hosted UIs & more

Take the challenge here➡️: awsreskill.com/challenges/d8b…

#AWS #Community #Cloud #awsugin #awsreskill

06:37 AM - 08 Nov 2021

Based on these works, I got accepted as AWS Community Builder during Oct 2021.

Jones Zachariah Noel

@zachjonesnoel

Excited to announce that I've got into AWS Community Builders program.
Looking forward to collaborate with @shafjag, @FarrahC32, @jasondunn and the #serverless team.
aws.amazon.com/developer/comm…
Shout out to @donnieprakoso!
#aws #awscloud #awscommunity

07:14 AM - 01 Oct 2021

As a Community Builder, I got the exposure and network with some amazing co-Community Builders who are not only up for networking and sharing knowledge but also helping out whenever I have questions. I've got the opportunity to learn and collaborate with amazing developers and builders. The CB program within 4-5 months, has help me grow immensely and with that said, not only I got deeper understanding of AWS and its services but I got my advocacy skills sharpened.
During AWS Community Day ASEAN 2021, I got the opportunity to be on the otherside of the virtual sessions. Yes, a pride moment for me as that was one of the first time every, I got to be a speaker for AWS event. And my topic was about the recently launched feature of AWS Lambda functions with event-filtering for DynamoDB streams YouTube recording.

Today, lot of Community Builders give a lot of shout-out about my content.
Recently, I've also started my newsletter which emphasize on AWS, Serverless and architectures with announcements from AWS, content from the community where a lot of Community Builder's and non Community Builder's about Serverless. This newsletter today stands with 50+ subscriptions.

Thanks and a big shout-out to everyone!

I must say I wouldn't have got to this place if it wasn't for a ton of people who constantly supported me directly or indirectly with some encouragement and some tweets which kept me motivated. Thanks everyone! 🙏🙏 I hope to learn and grow more and we will get a moment to collaborate and work together.