Of course, it also works as good marketing. Participants can submit an article or video across six categories, which will be reviewed by a committee of Azure engineers. They’ll vote on a limited number of stories to feature and highlight one winning story per category. Featured stories will, of course, be published across the company’s platforms, from Medium to its Azure Dev and Open-Source Microsoft blog. A link back to the original content will be provided, while winners will get to chat with the Azure engineering team and get the Recognized Community Contributor title. They’ll also receive a non-monetary prize, such as custom art by committee member Ashley McNamara. “We are grateful for every single story we will receive, as each story will contribute to the efforts of raising awareness of practical, in-depth, and innovative approaches to relevant, emerging, uncovered, advanced use cases and scenarios in the industry,” said Microsoft. Stories must be no more than 1800 words or 5-7 minutes. They have to be new material published between January 20 and March 15, with in-depth technical information, useful code, and relevant, advanced, or innovative use cases/scenarios or apps on Azure. The spec stresses that the stories don’t have to use Azure products specifically, they just need to involve the Azure platform in some form. You could example use Spark on Azure VMs. They’ll be reviewed by the committee from March 16 – March 29, with results announced on the 31st. You can submit your Applied Cloud Story here.
