It is that time of the year again, time to reflect on 2020 and list some of my personal and professional highlights. I’ve seen a few of these types of posts come by already, throughout the last 10 days or so. It’s always fun and inspiring to see what everybody has been up to, achieved, etc. Of course, in my case Nerdio has played a significant role in 2020 as well.
- First off, in March we moved into our new home where I was able to get my own private office. What a change that made! More to come on my WFH set up shortly – something I have heavily invested in.
- I’ve written 45 blogposts and 1 WVD whitepaper, published on multiple platforms.
- Our book (a project I did together with Christiaan Brinkhoff) Byte-Sized Cloud Design Principles and Architectural Recommendations has been downloaded over 6500 times throughout 2020. Thanks everyone, also to all contributors globally, of course. A ton of work but rewarding at the same time. To Christiaan I want to say thank you and we should do it again sometime, but given our current positions and busy lives, I’m not so sure that would be a smart move. But hey, you never know :)
- My MVP status hasn’t been renewed, though I am still an active MVP for Enterprise mobility. It turned out that the award I was handed in October 2019 was for the 2020-2021 timeframe. Meaning, I was the first MVP to receive the 2020-2021 entitlement, almost a year upfront, which also meant I didn’t have to be renewed in 2020. Something I didn’t know till a few months ago. As a side note, I also nominated others to potentially become an MVP – something all current MVP’s should do.
- We founded EUCdigest (I’m one of the three board members). Together with the EUCdigest Podcast crew we were able to record and publish 22 Podcasts – all kudos go to the team, by the way, I didn’t attend a single recording. Looking at the statistics over 2020 we have done an amazing job, if I say so myself. To be continued…
- I have been a guest in 4 Podcasts throughout 2020.
- I have lost count on the number of presentations I have given throughout 2020, way over 20, that’s for sure. Though, my time at Nerdio has definitely helped with that as well. I presented for, and at (yes, in person, can you believe it) multiple companies – so-called pizza tech sessions, 2 WVD User Group Events, The Microsoft WVD meets community event, IGEL Disrupt, I put together, hosted and presented a two-hour expert session around WVD combined with Nerdio. I was a guest at 2 WVD Roundtable expert sessions organized by Microsoft, and many more.
- The number of physical events I have visited in 2020 = 0
- My own personal website has had around 150.000 views in 2020. Not bad considering my focus has shifted throughout the year, meaning I blogged a lot less on bvk.com
- In between I became a Microsoft Azure Certified Solution Architect and did a few other Cloud related exams as well.
- A few months ago, I had an idea. Why not start multiple WVD User groups globally? I tweeted my thoughts and within 24 hours we had the first 6 User Groups up and running. Today we have at least 14 WVD User groups world-wide (at the time of writing). And by the way, my appreciation goes out to the WVD Community for keeping an eye on all this and everything else they do.
- I founded the Dutch WVD User Group and asked Stefan Dingemanse to join me (and boy, has he been busy to get things going, Tx, Stefan, very nicely done). A bit later we invited Esther Barthel and Niels Kok both to join as well, both very active as well.
- Currently we have organized 2 successful events and have around 240 members as part of our Meetup page already. Thank you all very much for your support. Oh, and the third event is being worked on, to be announced soon.
- I joined Nerdio back in June to become their Filed CTO for the EMEA/UK region, responsible for building up/out the business (in all ways you can think off). I can only say, I have never before enjoyed my work as much as I’ve done throughout 2020. I’m looking forward to 2021 – it is going to be good.
- We were able to sign 20 partners in Europe / EMEA and onboarded numerous customers, with many more on the way.
- I Founded the Nerdio Tech Insider Community Program. I had so much fun putting this together, expect a lot more in 2021, we have a ton of ideas being worked on actively.
- I organized 4 online events, which were very well received. The first event for 2021 has already been announced as well.
- As part of the Tech Insider program, we launched Nerdio Manager for WVD Community Edition, a great milestone and a success from day one. Teamwork makes the dream work, right?
- We currently have over 250 members as part of our Meetup page and over 170 people participating in our Tech Insider Slack channel.
- Even though the above is part of my job, or most of it anyway, it’s hobby as well and I love to spend additional time on all this. I’m thankful for this opportunity and being able to get to know so many of you throughout the months and years.
- No big sporting events this year, obviously. I’m still able to run 10K in under 45 minutes while turning 42 in a month, so pleased with that.
I want to wish you all a merry Christmas, a happy new year, and let’s hope that 2021 has something special (in a positive way, I mean) in stock for us all.
Stay safe and I hope to see you all soon.
Father of three, EMEA Field CTO @ Nerdio, Author of the book Van de Basis tot aan Meester in de Cloud, Co-author of the book Project Byte-Sized and Yuthor of the book: Inside Citrix – The FlexCast Management Architecture, over 500 blog posts and multiple (ultimate) cheat sheets/e-books. Public speaker, sport enthusiast: above-average runner, 3 x burpee-mile finisher and a former semiprofessional snooker player. IT community participant and initiator of the AVD User group Community world wide.
