Kristyna and I were working through some updates to our site and realize that this was going to be our 250th blog post on Data on Wheels. I thought this would be a good time to reminisce about where we have come from, what has happened through the years, and what is next for Data on Wheels.
Where We Have Come From
On December 7th, 2010, I created a new blog called Data on Wheels on WordPress. My first blog was appropriately named “Time to start that blog.” It was a nice little paragraph that I’m sure no one actually read. so now is your opportunity check it out and like that first blog. I think more interestingly, my first series of blogs was on the nature of SQL Azure. This is back when SQL Azure only had web and business SKUs. Not sure how many of you remember those days, when the max size was 50 gigabytes, and we weren’t sure if it would go anywhere. The promise of greatness was there but there was still much to come.
Before we reflect on what has happened and what has changed through the years, I would like to emphasize how my blogging has started and matured through the years. Whenever I’m asked by others “Why do you blog?”, my response is “I blog for me and no one else.” This is important because we want to continue writing about something we enjoy. I turned my blog into a reference dictionary of things I’ve done, things I’ve heard, and things I did not want to forget. I have also written numerous tribute blogs through the years which highlighted mentors and others who have shaped my career.
What Has Happened Through the Years
We are coming up on year 13 of blogging. There was a period of a few years where my readership was really high because everyone wanted to figure out how to make Excel cool when working with SharePoint. Some of those posts are still being hit regularly today. I’ve also posted on many events that I have attended or presented at. I use my blog as a location for code and presentation materials.
I started when I returned to Magenic. Since then, my journey has taken me to Pragmatic Works and from there to 3Cloud where I am today. Along the way I have written blogs on XMLA, Excel, SQL Server, Azure, window functions, and Power BI. I’m sure I’ve covered many more topics than that including highlighting mentors such as my parents and my wife. looking back to the various posts it is interesting to see the number of events I either wrote about or presented at.
As my role changed through the years from a highly technical focus to more of a people focus, my writing diminished in count. It seemed I moved away from the technology more than I would have liked but managing was definitely a new area for me to work on. On June 8th of 2020, in the middle of a pandemic, I asked my daughter Kristyna to join me in writing this blog. She was just starting her career in Power BI and had done some great things that she wanted to write about. Having her join the Data on Wheels team did a couple things. First, it gave us great fresh technical content for the blog readers. Second, it gave Kristyna an opportunity to work with a large audience from the beginning. She actually has the record now for the most hits in one day for a post for Data on Wheels. That is correct, she’s beat my all-time record! Which is great!
As you may have read on LinkedIn or in some of my posts, I have been diagnosed with ALS. This has obviously made writing blog posts a little more challenging as I have to use voice to text technology in most cases. I have decided that part of what I will be writing about as we move forward is what technology is working for me to keep me active in the workplace. Some days it’s very much a changing environment as the disease takes over more of my body and we try to figure out how to accommodate what’s next.
What’s Next
We look forward to continuing to provide relevant technical content into our data community. It is an awesome place to be for me to have my daughter ready to take over the leadership on this blog and keep it moving forward. She will continue to write about things that excite her and that she wants to share with this community as will I. I will focus a lot more on workplace enablement, but as you can see from the notebooks post sometimes that bleeds over into more technical topics as well.
We are so excited that you have chosen to join us in this journey and look forward to putting together hundreds of more posts that have value or at least some fun for everyone. Just recently we updated our site and cleaned up some of the artifacts from the last few years. We also added a direct link to Working with ALS at the top of the page as there are others who are not focused on technology or are only interested in the products and services I am discovering in my journey. Right next to that link is a link about Distilleries. Kristyna and I both enjoy our whiskey and in her case some cigars, you should ask her. With our recent move to Kentucky, it gave us a unique opportunity to visit distilleries and try new whiskeys along the way. So, our first sharing with us is just which distillers you have visited and whether we have actually done a tour or tastings. We’ll provide more opinionated information as we move along. This is purely for fun, and we hope you enjoy it and provide feedback along the way as well.
Thanks again for joining us and we hope that you all either get a good laugh or learn something new!