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About
Growing up in Sweden my first contact with a computer came when I was 5 years old back in 1992. Our first computer was a Mac Plus in black and white display colors. This was the age of running old modems that gave horrible ringing tones when dialing up. But it came several creative and minimalistic games that introduced me to the IT world. In another room my first video game console, the 8-bit Nintendo Entertainment System, became a central space for me and my mom playing Zelda until late hours. From there it went on, to computers with 16 colors, Super Nintendo with 16-bits, computers with 3D rendering, games that were run on several discs.
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It wasn’t until after I joined University that I explored my interest for IT development. While computers and low-level programming didn’t catch my mind I still fancied the logistic thinking of programming applications and designing games. On my free time I would play around with simple game development tools with the aim of implemententing my game ideas. But in the end, those game development ambitions turned to waste as the market for game developers were grim and rumours of bad work environments in the game industry were unattractive for a graduate like me. Those years in my University did not only prepare me for the IT market but also got me introduced to the modern area of Board Games through classmates, which would later become a big passion of mine.
Instead I focused on Java development, got into a company where I could improve my craftmanship with development processes and quality assurance. It wasn’t until around 2019 where a colleague introduced me to Cloud using Amazon Web Service, or AWS, as a tool. At that time the term Cloud was still joked as being “up in the Clouds” and “you never know where things are”. This was a fun way to play around with big architectural topics with minimal understanding of enterprise architecture, while still being involved with programming as configuration for Cloud services.
My collection of Board Games has increased dramatically with over 30 games, I have several old trendy card games such as Magic The Gathering and Pokemon TCG in the attic and like to either gather friends around the kitchen table or get myself out to Board Game meetups.
Today I work as a Solution Architect, Public Speaker and Consultant with a focus on AWS, DevOps and Application Development. I am a certified Java developer and AWS Solution Architect. As part of the field I arrange workshops and educations for the Cloud community, either with adults or children, where I spread my knowledge and share my experience of working with Cloud.
You can follow me here on Cloud Crusaders or catch me on my LinkedIn where I also share some of my colleagues content.
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Magnus Sjรถstrand
Creator