Hello Azure study group members!

Thank you for signing up for MCSF’s first study group for Azure Fundamentals! We will work together to prepare you all to pass the AZ-900 Exam.

We took an informal poll and learned that most of you have not take a Microsoft certification exam before. So we want to give you all the preparation possible to help you pass on your first try.

There are a few things you should know before embarking on this journey. When it comes to studying for Microsoft exams, understand that passing that exam and achieving the certification is only a side-effect. The main goal is learning. A good grasp of the fundamentals of Azure and cloud technology will open up options for your career, increasing your capabilities to solve problems and create solutions, as the Azure cloud puts some of the worlds greatest tools at your disposal.

We are here not just to learn for ourselves, but for the other members of our group. You will learn more, and more deeply, when you help others learn as well.

While we have many people involved with a great deal of experience, we are all learning, both about Azure, and about how to run a user group and study group. This is an experiment, we will learn as we go, and try to learn most from our mistakes. So please be patient as we discover the best ways to learn together.

Introduce Yourselves!

Early this week you should receive a guest invitation for a MCSF Microsoft Teams channel, sent to your email address. This will be our primary means of communicating with the group. We have set up an email list help@mcsfug.com, send a message there if you need assistance registering with Teams. Alternately, email david@davidcobb.net. Once you complete your Teams registration and gain access to the chat, please post a short introduction to the group. Let us know:

Your name
Your work role or title
Your reason for achieving this certification. More than general knowledge or career advancement, what part of Azure interests you?
What might you want to build in Azure once you learn how?
One interesting fact about you 🙂

Group logistics

Our first remote meeting will be December 5th, 2019. Each week we’ll meet remotely Thursday 6:30, the same time of the week as our in person meeting. As the group comes together we may schedule additional meetings, but we encourage the members to gather remotely or in person as schedules and motivation permit.

Plan and Commit

You have decided to achieve this certification, so plan ahead to invest the time to succeed. Use your calendar, plan and set aside 15-60 minute blocks each day, or several times per week, as your schedule permits. Small but consistent blocks of study time will serve you better than long cram sessions. If you start to build this habit today, it will serve you well for this exam, and for your next learning goal.

In our first meeting, we will discuss our target exam date, and get that exam on our schedule and get registered. For most of us, having a deadline will spur us to action and help us study effectively.

Next steps

Before we meet, you can get started learning. There are many resources online for studying for the AZ-900 exam. Let us start with two:

Review Barkha Herman’s user group presentation (57 min) : Azure Fundamentals / Intro to the MS Cloud Landscape. Take notes about terms and concepts that you don’t know, and want to dig into later.

Begin reviewing the learning path for Azure Fundamentals (9 hr 59 min): https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/learn/paths/azure-fundamentals/ You can watch and read from beginning to end, or skim through and dive into the topics that interest you. We will come back to this resource throughout our study time.

Questions

We look forward to hearing from you and meeting on December 5th. Please reach out to us at help@mcsfug.com or david@davidcobb.net with any questions you have.

Enjoy the learning journey!

The MCSF User Group Team