What an incredible year. I’ve learned so much and made so many new friends. I’d like to recap what my 2024 looked like as I contemplate what’s next for 2025.

My Role at Microsoft

2024 marked my second year at Microsoft, working on the Azure engineering team. I can’t express how blessed I feel working at such a wonderful organization and company.

Sure, there are challenges — it’s a big place. However, it’s really exciting getting up and going to work knowing that I will be helping to enact positive change on the platform I love.

A lot of people don’t realize this, but my role at Microsoft is not in developer relations. I am not customer-facing. I work on an engineering team within Azure Core that focuses on cross-cutting platform improvements. None of my work is directly related to cloud automation or Terraform. I use Terraform occasionally at work as a normal user. I don’t have a hand in the hard work of bringing Terraform to market for Microsoft — but I know (and am friendly with) many of the people who do. People like Stephen Ma and Mark Gray, who are actually peers of mine within the same Azure Core organization. They work in the Azure Client Tools area, whereas I am in the OneFleet Platform team.

Much of my work is “Below-ARM,” meaning Terraform doesn’t live down there. As you might imagine, both the azurerm and the azapi providers integrate with the ARM REST API at some level. That means these tools, and Terraform by extension, operate “Above-ARM.”

As a result, Terraform and the work I do in the Terraform Community is a passion of mine — it’s not part of my job description at Microsoft. Heck, it doesn’t even show up in my quarterly connects. It’s 100% hobby-town. But that’s okay. I only hope to help Azure customers leverage the platform more effectively and be more successful long-term in their Day 2 operations by leveraging Infrastructure-as-Code — which ultimately helps Microsoft succeed as well. So, it’s a win-win for me, both personally and professionally.

In my day job, I get to work on the world’s supercomputer and make it better through continuous improvement, every day. I am humbled and honored to be able to do so, and I look forward to continuing to make an impact in 2025!

Published My First Book: ‘Mastering Terraform’

I started working on my first book, Mastering Terraform, in early 2023 after being approached by Packt as a potential author for a project they wanted to start related to Terraform. My first question to them when they reached out via LinkedIn was: “Why me?”

Sure, I’d been using Terraform for many years, but what qualified me to write a book on Terraform? Weren’t there already other books on the subject? Still, I had a lifelong ambition of becoming a writer since I was a little boy writing science fiction on my IBM PC Jr. The opportunity couldn’t be overlooked.

When I reviewed the “book plan” they proposed, I said, “Sure, I’m interested in writing a book on Terraform — but not this book. If I’m going to write a book on Terraform, I want to do it my way.”

Intrigued, they said, “OK, come back to us with what you think the book should cover.” And that’s how this adventure started.

While writing the book, I didn’t think it was that big of a deal — after all, it’s not like I was writing the next Tom Clancy novel. However, on the day I announced the book on social media, I was quite scared. What if people hated the book? What if people thought it was terrible? What if I got all 1-star reviews on Amazon? It was pretty scary.

The book released on July 26th, 2024. By then, I had been doing YouTube for over a year and had already faced some internet vitriol and controversy related to the Terraform license change. But on YouTube and Reddit, there are only upvotes and downvotes. On Amazon, a 1-star review can tank your rating for a long time. It was nerve-wracking — until I got my first 1-star review and remembered that age-old wisdom: You can please somebody some of the time, but you can’t please everybody all the time. Some people are just dicks. At least, I think that’s how it goes.

Anyway, the book was published, and the overwhelming support from friends and colleagues was immense. I was over the moon. I couldn’t believe it. It’s truly a blessing to be surrounded by such a genuinely supportive group of people. You can tell when people truly care about you by how they support you without expecting any benefit in return. I try to pay this forward as much as I can.

HashiCorp Ambassador

I was honored to be named a HashiCorp Ambassador in 2024 — my first year! It was a big learning experience and a chance to dip my toe into a much larger world beyond the confines of my baby YouTube channel, “Azure Terraformer.”

It’s been great to participate in two-way conversations about the direction of Terraform and other exciting products from HashiCorp and how they interface with my favorite cloud — Azure. I feel a certain responsibility to give voice to the Azure community within the broader HashiCorp Community. It’s a responsibility I take seriously, and I hope we can continue developing a strong, mutually beneficial relationship between Microsoft and HashiCorp.

Public Speaking

In 2024, I had the opportunity to overcome my stage fright and speak at various venues — both physical and virtual — about topics that interest me and, hopefully, others.

I had the distinct honor of presenting at two HashiCorp events: HashiTalks 2024, where I talked about Azure Kubernetes Service, and HashiDays Australia, where I flew 30 hours to speak for 30 minutes about Terraforming Grafana. I met some amazing people down under and would jump at the chance to visit them again — maybe next time I won’t be stuck in my hotel room feverishly finishing my book!

I spoke at meetups — some that I organized and others that I didn’t. I also had the opportunity to speak on a couple of podcasts, such as the Fireside Chat with Luke Murray and Microsoft Community Insights Podcast with Nicholas Chang. I was a guest on vBrownBag — Chris Williams’ baby — for the second time. I started dabbling with Calls for Presenters (CfPs) on Sessionize and was successfully accepted to Azure Spring Clean and CodeMash (coming up in January 2025).

HashiConf 2024

This year marked my third time attending HashiConf. I attended in 2018 and then in 2023 (both in San Francisco). This year’s event was in Boston, and wow, it was incredible.

HashiCorp generously sponsored a book signing where we handed out 100 copies of my new book, Mastering Terraform. I stood and signed for over four hours. Although my feet were a little tired, and I missed some sessions I’d hoped to attend, it was such an amazing experience meeting so many people excited about Terraform and my book.

Armon Dadgar, who wrote the foreword for my book, graced the signing with an appearance and signed a copy of the book for me! A fantastic gift in and of itself. Maybe someday I’ll get the chance to have Mitchell sign it too!

Alexandra was an amazing host for me and the other HashiCorp Ambassadors. As it was my first year as an Ambassador at HashiConf, I often felt like a lost little puppy, but she kindly and confidently helped steer me back on the right path. Meeting the other Ambassadors, hanging out with them, grabbing dinner or drinks, sharing ideas, and debating approaches was such a rewarding experience. I feel truly blessed to have made so many new acquaintances and friends. I’m definitely looking forward to seeing them again next year — if I get the chance!

Azure Terraformer

2024 marked the second year of my YouTube channel, Azure Terraformer. This year, however, was transformative for the channel. YouTube was no longer the only platform I used to engage with my audience. As I opened new venues to share my thoughts and ideas about cloud architecture and automation with Azure and Terraform, I looked for ways to broaden the community’s impact — on LinkedIn, Discord, Medium, and more — with additional voices besides just my own.

YouTube

On YouTube, I published 84 videos in 2024, and membership rose to 15 active members. To each of them, I am extremely grateful for their support. I tackled topics like automating Entra ID using the azuread provider, Azure Kubernetes Service, Azure Policy, Azure Resiliency—both regional and Availability Zone-based—automating Grafana with Terraform, the v4.x release of the azurerm provider, and updates to the v2.x version of the azapi provider.

LinkedIn

On LinkedIn, I was shocked to see my following swell to over 22,000 Azure Terraformers — people interested in Azure cloud architecture and automating it with Terraform. If only my YouTube subscribership could grow that fast! ^_^

I used LinkedIn to share my content in both written and video forms, as well as ideas from other creators with similar interests. My goal is for Azure Terraformer to no longer feel like “The Mark Tinderholt Show,” but a broader community of voices from the Azure Terraform ecosystem, sharing practical knowledge and helping others start their Terraforming journeys.

Azure-Terraformer.com

To achieve the goal of broadening Azure Terraformer beyond my personal brand, I decided to set up a dedicated website. The purpose is to publish focused content relevant to the Azure Terraform community, decoupled from my own persona.

Of course, I’ll continue to blog about Terraform on my personal site, but I plan to use Azure-Terraformer.com as a landing page for the broader community and post reader-friendly versions of the video content from my YouTube channel.

I also plan to go back and document every episode of Azure Terraformer on this site so that people can enjoy the content however they prefer — whether by reading or watching.

Medium Publication

Similarly, I started an Azure Terraformer publication on Medium, where I hope to engage other community visionaries to share their insights. We’ve grown from one contributor to five and gained over 100 followers in just two months.

Colleagues of mine at Microsoft — Jared Holgate, Matt White, and Sarah Lean — as well as fellow technologist Glen Yu, have all contributed. I look forward to elevating even more voices within the Azure Terraform community.

I hope we can continue spreading the word about Azure, Terraform, and related technologies, helping others with our collective insights in automating and managing solutions on Azure.

CBUS Meetups

This year was my first organizing meetups in Columbus, Ohio. While it has been challenging to juggle two meetups alongside my other commitments — both personal and community-oriented — I think it has been a successful year.

My co-organizer, Drake Lundstrom, and I successfully rebooted the Azure Meetup of Columbus, Ohio, and even launched our first all-day conference during the Azure Global distributed conference. We ran out of steam toward the end of the year, but I hope to continue this mission in 2025 at a more regular pace. This might mean I’ll have to step up as a speaker more often, or we’ll need to switch formats to group discussions.

The HashiCorp User Group (HUG) of Columbus, Ohio, is also growing and becoming more steady. New energy from across the aisle (at AWS) has been helpful — especially with fellow HashiCorp Ambassador Manu Chandrasekhar stepping in as a co-organizer. I look forward to continuing this collaboration in 2025.

It’s also been great to bridge the multi-cloud chasm in Columbus, Ohio, through a partnership with my friend Angelo Mandato, who runs the AWS Meetup of Columbus. Together, we’ve hosted two multi-cloud events this year — Multi-Cloud Madness in March and the Multi-Cloud Holiday Party. I think it’s really important for practitioners, no matter which cloud they call home, to come together to share ideas and approaches. There’s so much we can learn from one another.

MarkTinderholt.com

I’ve been blogging for a long, long time — 16 years, in fact. For most of that time, I’ve used blogging as a way to archive personal solutions or discoveries. Few people have ever read my posts, which is fine by me. Like “real” artists, I didn’t start writing for others — I started writing for myself. That’s what you’ll find on my blog.

Microsoft Learn — Terraform Fundamentals

Led by our fearless leader, Jared Holgate, we published the first of many modules in the official Microsoft Learning Path for Terraform: Terraform Fundamentals. As many of you know, my role at Microsoft has nothing to do with Terraform or developer advocacy. I’m simply an interested party who is passionate about the Azure platform and helping others make the best use of it. Jared included me in this effort, which became a bit of a “side project” at work. It doesn’t show up on my quarterly “Connects,” but it’s the right thing for Azure, Microsoft, and, most importantly, the Azure practitioner community.

Go check it out here:

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/training/paths/terraform-fundamentals/

What’s next?

Next year, I hope to make an even greater impact through my role at Microsoft Azure. I look forward to producing more content on YouTube, Medium, and my personal blogs. I have a few surprises up my sleeve — but I’m not ready to announce anything just yet. Keep your eyes peeled in 2025 — more to come!

Happy Azure Terraforming in 2025!