I’m taking some time off this month from work, and think I’ll take a break from blogging too until 2011 (I reserve the right to change my mind if something really interesting comes up). It’s been a pretty good year for me, but as I reflect, it was a busy year too. Here are some highlights.
I began the year by blogging about my first 15 years at Microsoft (part 5 is here). I knew at the time that I was going to leave my position in Microsoft’s Engineering Excellence group, but didn’t know where. In the end, I had several offers, including a few that would have had me leave Microsoft.
However, by the end of February, I had a new office, and a new job in the Office Communicator (now Lync) team. I’ve had a blast on this team and have enjoyed every minute of it.
In April, I gave a STAR keynote for the first time. The talk seemed to go well, and the feedback form comments and scores (9.1/10) were all positive.
Over the summer, I took a short vacation with my family to Toulouse, France. At least I planned for it to be short, but when we got to our house, it was so nice that we decided to stay – for almost a month. I worked for the last two weeks from Toulouse and had a good experience learning how to work remotely. I was hit with some bad news the day before we returned home. My dad had a stroke (his second) and was hit pretty hard. I spent most of the next two months commuting the 100 miles between Microsoft and my parent’s house helping out where I could and delving deeper into the world of remote work (fortunately, I work on a product that makes it easy to do this).
In October, I did a brief North American tour and hit Portland for PNSQC, then Toronto for TesTrek. I also gave two informal webinars: one on test strategy, and another rehashing my PNSQC talk (video here)
Microsoft Lync also shipped in October – my first shipping product in six years. Overall, not a bad year. There’s plenty more that I did – and a ginormous amount of things I wanted to do but didn’t get a chance. I hope that 2011 brings even more challenges, fun, and opportunities for success.
More in January.
Enjoyed reading your blog this year, have a good break and here’s to a great 2011
Enjoyed your blog as well.
Sad to hear about your father.
Have a nice christmas holiday.
Looking forward to reading more interesting articles here in 2011.
Thanks for the sympathy – he’s fine healt-wise these days, but still has a lot of his brain left to heal.
Thanks for reading.
Hope your, your Father, and your family are recovering well in 2011.
Cheers from Nash-Vegas.
Thanks Zach – happy everything to you (and I still am working on a way to get myself to Nash-Vegas sometime)