Darian Johnson

I’ve been on a lot of different projects during my 20 years at Accenture. Sometimes you’re working on projects that might not seem glamorous, but they are critical to the business. And there are so many fun things that you can do to keep learning, growing and being creative. Through our Accenture robotics community and multiple cloud communities, we’re building things that might apply to our clients two or three years from now.

When I started my role, I decided it was time to dig deeper into AWS and cloud technologies. I saw there was a contest to build code for a popular digital assistant; it was the perfect way to learn more. Since then, I’ve become AWS certified, and I continue to do development on the digital assistant product. I’ve been able to blend my work with my passion.

My spare-time work on the digital assistant helped me to be a better technologist during my day job in Accenture’s AWS group. I’m a big believer that anyone in technology needs to know how to do this stuff. Doing it in my free time gives me a better perspective of what’s in the marketplace, and what our clients and business need to know about.

If you’re interested in technology, then start by building something. There is so much information online. Build something—and don’t get discouraged if the first thing you build is not great. You’ll try a second time…and a third time. In time, you’ll start to build fun stuff and learn along the way. Now, I’m learning things that don’t necessarily apply to my job today, but they likely will down the line.

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Working and Playing in the Cloud at Accenture