21st Dec, 2009 was a very special day for me. I got acknowledged for voluntary contribution that I did by helping train 2009 pass-outs that did not had jobs / offers with them on Windows Azure. Microsoft Windows Azure was in Beta stage when this training program was planned by joint venture of Microsoft, Persistent, ICertis and PuneUserGroup in the month of July 2009. Microsoft Azure in the latest Cloud offering by Microsoft as PaaS (Platform as a Service), which allow developers to stay away from Infrastructure worries and only focus on development of application. Though this technology was new to me as well, but event coordinators arranged for Training the trainer program under which some initial jumpstart walk-through was given to trainers. Almost 150+ students attended the program regularly. After the training program, Microsoft had arranged for a contest in which students were suppose to develop an application using Azure and deploy it on to the test-accounts provided by Microsoft. I took this initiative to build onto my cloud knowledge of Amazon EC2 and adding another dimension of Microsoft Cloud offering. I was champion for 1st week and also took an introductory session of introducing Cloud + Azure to the students, also I acted as supporting volunteer during other weeks where sessions were held after office hours on weekdays and on weekends. After 3 and half months of contribution, my day became special because I got recognition for my efforts at the hands of Dr. Anand Deshpande who is the owner of the firm I am working at i.e. Persistent Systems. It is an achievement of a lifetime for me.
