2010 in review

Seeing its New Years Eve and I’m home early (perils of a young family) I thought I’d take a few minutes to reflect on 2010.

For me professionally 2010 was a phenomenal year.  Here is a bit of a break down :

This year I spent a lot of time presenting.  I presented at a grand total of 12 events, which is a huge improvement on the 5 of the previous year, some highlights include :

• Over the course of the year I presented at every SharePoint Saturday in Australia except for Perth.  Sorry Perth, you were just too far… this year!
• In May and December I organised and ran two successful events in Brisbane, SharePoint Saturday and Infrastructure Saturday
• In December I presented at an overseas gig, SharePoint Saturday New Zealand
• In June I presented at the Australian SharePoint Conference, this was a great experience and one I hope to repeat in 2011.
• In August I had the privilege of presenting at Tech Ed Australia with Ben Fletcher.  This one was a long term goal I did not really expect to achieve this year, but somehow got there.  Thanks for the help Ben!
• And finally the highlight of the year, I had the honour of attending the inaugural Microsoft Evangelist Academy.  I could rave about this for days, but its probably easier to look back a post or two on the blog for the full details.

Career wise what I think is probably the best and most exciting step and joined OBS in April as an Infrastructure Consultant.  Since before I even started I have been in awe of just how fantastic this company is, after sharing an office with them for 18 months prior to joining up, I got a very exclusive sneak preview into the exceptional people and work that really makes this company pop.  I had a fantastic first eight months, worked on some mammoth projects, got to work shoulder to shoulder with some of the people I consider to be the best in the SharePoint world, learnt a heap and generally had a blast.

So what is there to expect in 2011?

There are two professional aspects I am really going to focus on in 2011.

1. I’m really looking forward to seeing what 2011 has to offer for me at OBS.  There are some fairly exciting things on the boil, and I have a few goals I’d like to achieve that I’d rather not share here yet.
2. With the help of the Microsoft Evangelist Academy and a lot of my own hard work I’m going to really focus on my Presenting.  There are a lot of things I can do to really improve my presentation skills and making some really excellent presentations at events this year.  I also have a mini-goal of presenting at an event in the States, hopefully I can make that happen!

So 2010, thanks for a exceptionally good year.  Bring on 2011, I think it will be even better!