This past weekend, I realized was blessed by quite a few things:

1) An understanding wife, who lets me go and train people in other cities while dealing with our children.
2) The SQL Saturday program, where I have met wonderful people, and started volunteering my technical talents.
3) An awesome employer, who does well by us, and by the greater community.
4) Being a mentor for many people.

I was fortunate enough to designate SQL Saturday DC as the place where Microsoft would sponsor an after-event for a Cloud meetup centered around Diversity, Inclusion, and what career paths might be out there for people.
We had about 30 people attend, and it was a nice mix of people.

We discussed learning paths for people to “get into” the cloud, which I believe will help almost any IT pro or developer out there.

The list of sites to get training for free, validated by a few others, centers around these sites:

Microsoft Documentation (Pretty good nowadays!) https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/
Learning via docs: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/learn/
Hands-on labs: https://www.microsoft.com/handsonlabs
In-Person events: https://events.microsoft.com/
SQL Saturday (Centered around Microsoft data platform): http://www.sqlsaturday.com
Microsoft virtual academy: https://mva.microsoft.com/
EdX has tons of material: https://www.edx.org/course?search_query=microsoft

There also are paid options via the following:

Pluralsight: https://www.pluralsight.com/
Lynda.com, now part of LinkedIn Learning: https://www.lynda.com/
Udemy: https://www.udemy.com/

Depending on your learning style, the above is a good start. The key is, start slow, pick something you like, and expand from there!

To gain more in-person networking and support, join a local user group.

The best place to find a user group is via the Meetup site (http://www.meetup.comhttp://www.meetup.com). Search for a topic (SQL, Azure, hiking) and it’ll display meetups within a distance of where you specify. A technical-focused user group is a good way to get connected with others and learn as well.

Once you get a bit of knowledge, and experience, it may pay to take an exam, as a sign of achievement, as well as sometimes a requirement for a few employers.

Microsoft certification exams can be found here:
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/learning/exam-list.aspx

Finally what sort of jobs can one get?

I will address that in a later blog post.

Thank you, and feel free to give me feedback!