Keep learning

I'm always learning something new almost every day during my work with our customers, partners and my wonderful colleagues at Sitecore. But IT is a broad field with so many interesting topics. I always wanted to learn something that is not my main area of expertise because I'm curious and I had already so many situations in my work life where it was really helpful to have such knowledge, especially if it is enough knowledge to be dangerous.

Having a family with two bright boys and a beautiful wife didn't leave much room for learning in the last years and my approach to learning wasn't following any structured approached so far. Therefore, I didn't learn anything really well or at all.

End of last year I took some time to think about what I want to learn and how I want to accomplish this. I needed a plan....

The what...

I was always interested in two broader topics: Data/AI and Security. For this year I decided I want to learn more about data and AI. Well, that lead me my next question: What should I learn about data and where should I start? After some research of the different areas like Data Engineering, Data Analysis or Data Science, to name just a few, I decided to start with Data Engineering because it is the foundation of everything else in the data space.

The how...

OK, now that I knew what I want to learn, the next challenge is how to learn it. Are there any courses or is there any provider of trainings that I can do on my own time? After some research I found DataCamp and I tested it for a while. They offer interesting courses and also, which is really important for me, hands-on projects where you can apply your newly gained knowledge.

But I know myself well enough to know that I need a learning goal because otherwise my motivation to learn will vanish quite quickly. DataCamp offers several certifications. In contrast to many certifications in the IT world the certifications at DataCamp also have a practical exam which I find really interesting.

To make a long story short, my learning goal for this year is to pass the Data Engineer Associate Certification until end of 2025.

But this is not all. End of 2024 I stumbled upon DataTalks.Club and their free online courses. One of their courses is the Data Engineering Zoomcamp. When I saw that a new cohort would start on January 13 2025 I decided to give it a try. It is a hands-on course and you have homework to do which helps with motivation and learning if you need to apply what you've learned.

How is it going so far?

As I said earlier, with a family, I don't have much time left outside of work. So my goal for 2025 is to invest at least 25 minutes on a daily basis to learn and never skip more than 2 days in a row. I want to make learning a habit.

So far, it works out quite well. More often than not, I find more than 25 minutes to learn and I'm making good progress with my "Associate Data Engineer in SQL" learning track at DataCamp. I already finished 4 courses so far. Not much, but I'm making progress.

From the Data Engineering Zoomcamp I finished all the videos from Module 1 (Containerization and Infrastructure as Code) and I just finished the homework for the first module.

What else...?

If you look at my LinkedIn profile, you'll notice that I almost never write a post and so far this is probably my longest post ever on LinkedIn. Well, the reason is simple: The Data Engineering Zoomcamp encourages learning in public. You even get extra points in your homework when you share a link to a post where you write about your learning in the Data Engineering Zoomcamp. Well...here we are...it feels a bit like being back in school.

Despite the extra points in the homework, I hope that this post might encourage others to also make learning a habit. I admit that it isn't easy to stick with it but it becomes easier over time. I was always curious and wanted to learn new things but didn't find the right approach so far that works for me and my life. I think I found it now and I plan to share more updates on my learning journey in the future.