2015 debriefing

So it's that time again. Another year has past, and like so many others I want to take a little time to look back at how I have spent my nerdy hours. Most importantly it has been my second years as an independent consultant, and I am still enjoying the freedom and the chance to work on projects that are very different. The big projects this year have been for Ball Group, DR and DI - so the domains could hardly be more different. My role at Ball Group was quite different from what I am used to, as I was more of a domain and technical expert and less hands-on. After that it was good to get back to coding, but it was a good experience. At DR I got to see how much work goes into manageing a tv program and making sure all the assets end up in the right place. DI has been the most fun, with a plesant team and an awesome office providing the setup for some good months, and more to come in the new year.

Microsoft MVP

Speaking at conferences and having more time for community engagements last year landed me my first Microsoft MVP award in the ASP.NET/IIS category. The award has offered me the opportunity to participate in product group interactions, which I have done quite a bit of throughout the year. I also found the time to go to the MVP summit in Seattle, which was a great experience, so I hope I will get to go in the years to come as well.

Focus areas

When it comes to get peeves I have continued to argue that most developers should spend more time on learning their language, platform and especially patterns rather than jumping from framework to framework, leaving complicated projects in their wake. It is an uphill battle at times, with a new shiny framework always dominating the blogs and twitter. I do think I have managed to push the idea to some extent though, and I have had success with building better solutions myself by following that approach and eating my own dogfood. Central to this has been using TypeScript to build rich webapplications from the ground up. This was a big part of my work at both DR and DI, so I am quite happy with that.

More and more Azure

Azure has continued to grow, and especielly improvements to Azure websites that is now called Azure web apps, and to Visual Studio Online which is now called Visual Studio Team Services has made life better for us developers. That combined with Microsoft reinventing ASP.NET and themselves through open sourcing and a cross-platform approach to everything has been a pleasure, and I expect big things will continue to happen in that space.

All about the numbers

As always it is also a time to look at some numbers. There are fewer numbers this year, but I tend to think it is because I have been more focused, and especially the talks have taken up some of my hobby coding time.

• 4 talks at usergroups and conferences.
• 17 blogposts counting this one.
• 2655 total downloads of MiniMe by now, even after bundeling and minification has been part of ASP.NET for a while.
• And a bunch of user group meetings, MVP interactions, online training and podcasts.