Happy 2019 all!

Just like every other blogger on the world, I also want to write a small retrospective on 2018 and prospective on 2019.

Let’s start with the retrospective first. As I mentioned last year, we were expecting a daughter somewhere in January of 2018. As it happens, she is born on January 24th and very healthy. Even though this was still early in the year, I knew for a fact this day would be the best one of the entire year.

Having 2 small kids growing up in the house is hard, but so gratifying. Being able to work remote is also a great way to see your kids grow up. I think this is very important because everything is happening just too fast!

Aside from blogging quite a lot last year, I’ve also been active in the speaking world. Speaking at a meetup, user group or conference is a great way to spread knowledge to a group of people, interact with them and make new friends. I really love doing this and am grateful for my employer, 4DotNet, is very keen in providing support whenever needed. The best thing about speaking at conferences in different countries is to meet new people and cultures. It’s something I can recommend to everyone.

Because I’ve spent a lot of time blogging, speaking, contributing to open source projects, etc. I’ve also been awarded the Microsoft MVP award in the Microsoft Azure category. I already mentioned the best day of the year was when my daughter was born, but being awarded the Microsoft MVP award certainly was a great day also! Thanks to Tina for awarding me and Gerald for nominating me!

So what’s up for 2019?

I’m not sure yet.

There’s still lots of stuff I want to learn and investigate further in the serverless & Azure Functions space. But, just as last year, I also want to spend some time on Cosmos DB. From a technical perspective, there’s enough to learn in the Azure space and being awarded the Microsoft MVP award really helps me with this learning.

Of course, there’s the global MVP Summit in March. I’m certainly going to be over there. It’s the first time I’ll be at the Microsoft campus and meet hundreds of other MVPs and Microsoft FTE’s.

As mentioned, I love speaking in front of a group. However, I have had the feeling I’ve been gone from home a lot the past year. Speaking abroad, living in hotels for the day job, etc. In 2019 I’m focusing on speaking a bit more in the Benelux so I won’t have to be gone from home for long (if at all). Hopefully, this will work out better with having 2 small kids at home.

For leisure? There’s a lot of books I still have to read. I’m still in book 3 of the 14-book Wheel of Time series. I’ve also bought a couple of new games for my Xbox One, which will take up about 800 hours of gameplay. Then there’s also my other hobby, cooking and barbecuing, which I also want to spend some more time with.

So lots of stuff to do in 2019 and so little time.

What are you all planning to do and have you finished everything you wanted to do in 2018?