Continuing the series of weekly blog posts, providing a brief summary of notable things from my week.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I should have been in Snowdonia this week – taking a break with my family. Obviously that didn’t happen, with the UK’s social distancing in full effect but at least we were able to defer our accommodation booking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It has been interesting though, being forced to be at home has helped me to learn to relax a little… there’s still a never-ending list of things that need to be done, but they can wait a while.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Last week, I mentioned studying for the AWS Cloud Practitioner Essentials<\/a> Exam and this week saw me completing that training before attempting the exam.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It was my first online-proctored exam and I had some concerns about finding a suitable space. Even in a relatively large home (by UK standards), with a family of four (plus a dog) all at home, it’s can be difficult to find a room with a guarantee not to be disturbed. I’ve heard of people using the bathroom (and I thought about using my car). In the end, and thanks to some advice from colleagues – principally Steve Rush (@MrSteveRush) and Natalie Dellar (@NatalieDellar<\/a>) – as well as some help from Twitter, I managed to cover the TV and some boxes in my loft room, banish the family, and successfully pass the test.<\/p>\n\n\n\n With exam 1 under my belt (I’m now an AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner<\/a>), I decided to squeeze another in before the Easter break and successfully studied for, and passed, the Microsoft Power Platform Fundamentals<\/a> exam, despite losing half a day to some internal sales training.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In both cases, I used the official study materials from Amazon\/Microsoft and, although they were not everything that was needed to pass the exams, the combination of these and my experience from elsewhere helped (for example having already passed the Microsoft Azure Fundamentals<\/a> exam meant that many of the concepts in the AWS exam were already familiar).<\/p>\n\n\n\n These should probably have been in last week’s weeknote (whilst it wasn’t the school holidays so we were trying to educate our children too) but recently it’s become particularly apparent to me that we are not living in times of “working from home” – this is “at home, during a crisis, trying to work”, which is very different:<\/p>\n\n\n\n I think I might have figured out why all of this \u201cwork from home\u201d stuff is driving me crazy. Some other key points I’ve picked up include that:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Inspired by Matt Ballantine’s virally-successful flowchart of a few years ago<\/a>, I tried sketching something. It didn’t catch on in quite the same way, but it does seem to resonate with people. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Video Conferencing Fatigue pic.twitter.com\/8JSGWRWEJa<\/a><\/p>\u2014 Mark Wilson ???? (@markwilsonit) April 8, 2020<\/a><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n In spite of my feelings on social video conferencing, I still took part in two virtual pub quizzes this week (James May’s was awful whilst Nick’s Pub Quiz continues to be fun) together with trans-Atlantic family Zooming over the Easter weekend…<\/p>\n\n\n\n Not driving and not going out for lunchtime solo dog walks has had a big impact on my podcast-listening…<\/p>\n\n\n\n I now need to schedule some time for catching up on The Archers<\/a> and the rest of my podcasts!<\/p>\n\n\n\n Just looked in my Podcasts app and realised how long the backlog is… that’ll be the drop off in travel\/lunchtime dog-walking taking effect. Nice excuse to relax in the afternoon sun ????<\/p>\u2014 Mark Wilson ???? (@markwilsonit) April 11, 2020<\/a><\/blockquote> Thoughts on the current remote working situation<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
I\u2019ve been a WFH employee for 10 years. But that\u2019s not what\u2019s happening now.
People are at home trying to work during a crisis.
That\u2019s not the same as WFH.<\/p>\u2014 Chuck Gose ? (@chuckgose) April 2, 2020<\/a><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\nVideo conference fatigue<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Podcast backlog<\/h3>\n\n\n\n