Introducing The Hagrid Awards: Celebrating the Hybrid Cloud Community

First, about that nickname

If you’ve met me at an event, you already know the beard. And you probably know that somewhere along the way, people in this community started calling me Hagrid. I’ve leaned into it — a big, bearded guy who loves keeping things running on the ground and in the cloud. Honestly, it fits. Hagrid was the Keeper of Keys and Grounds, and that’s basically what we all do in hybrid: keep one foot on-prem and one foot in Azure.

So when I ran into the actual Hagrid ride at Ignite, well… I had to.

That little clip is kind of the whole spirit of this thing: have fun, don’t take yourself too seriously, and celebrate the community that makes this space worth showing up for.

So what are The Hagrid Awards?

The Hagrid Awards are a weekly tip-of-the-hat to the people who keep the Microsoft hybrid cloud community strong — the folks working in and sharing about Azure Local, Windows Server / Hyper-V clustering, and Azure Arc-enabled solutions on-prem.

Every week — on what I’m calling Hagrid Hump Day (Wednesdays, because of course) — I pick one person from the community and give them “a Hagrid.” Not a trophy you can put on a shelf, but something better: a genuine, public “hey, this person is doing the work, go follow them.”

Winners get their own little trading card — think baseball card, but for hybrid cloud nerds — with their stats, their specialty, and where to find them. Then I post it across LinkedIn, X, and Facebook and tag them so the whole community can pile on with congrats.

Why I’m doing this

Here’s the honest truth: this community runs on people who share.

The bloggers who document the bug you hit at 2 a.m. The podcasters who explain the thing Microsoft renamed again. The MVPs and the not-yet-MVPs. The person who posts their homelab Azure Local build so the rest of us don’t have to learn it the hard way. None of these people get paid to do it. They do it because they love the tech and they love helping.

That work is easy to take for granted, and it’s easy to miss the newer voices while the same handful of names get all the light. I wanted a simple, repeatable way to say thank you — and to point my audience at people who deserve a bigger one.

I also wanted to be fair about it. So I built an actual list of the folks active in this space and scored them on how much they’re currently contributing specifically around Azure Local, Hyper-V, and Arc — not on reputation, and not on who was famous five years ago. Recent, real, hybrid-focused work. That keeps the spotlight honest and, frankly, keeps it moving to people who are heads-down right now.

How it works

It’s simple on purpose:

Every Wednesday, one winner. A card with their info. Posts across the socials with them tagged. And an open invitation for you to tell me who’s next — because the best nominations come from you, not from a spreadsheet.

That’s it. No voting drama, no politics. Just a weekly nod to good people doing good work.

Who’s first?

You’ll have to check the socials on Hagrid Hump Day to find out. 😏 But I’ll say this — Week 1 goes to someone who is basically the connective tissue of the entire Azure Local community. You’ll know exactly who I mean the second you see the card.

Nominate someone

Know a blogger, speaker, podcaster, or quiet-but-brilliant contributor who deserves a Hagrid? Drop their name in the comments, tag them, or ping me — I’m @CountryCloudBoy just about everywhere.

Let’s celebrate the people who keep hybrid cloud rolling.

The Hagrid Awards are presented by ThisIsMyDemo.cloud, in association with Hybrid Cloud Solutions. Celebrating the hybrid cloud community.

— Kristopher “Country Cloud Boy” Turner 🤠☁️