2016 - That was a Year :-)

Its the time of year for reflection and I have had the most amazing 2016, I am blessed that I love what I do so much. I thoroughly enjoy writing and talking and sharing and commenting and supporting and cherishing all the SQL and PowerShell things. I wrote about using Power Bi to display my checkins. I only started this in June and this is where I have been :-)

swarm

I learnt about Pester and ended the year incorporating it into dbatools and dbareports. I also started using GitHub It is quite surprising to me how much time I now spend using both. I also had to start learning DSC for the client I was working with because as ’the PowerShell guy’ I was the one who could the easiest. I learnt things and then forgot them causing me to find this Pester post via google later in the year!! (That’s a big reason for blogging by the way)

Early in the year we organised with SQL Saturday Exeter

https://www.facebook.com/mark.pryce.maher/videos/10153333580360863/?pnref=story.unseen-section

The Beard says

When you go to an event - Say thank you to the organisers and volunteers

and a TERRIBLE thing happened - I broke my DBA Team mug

Luckily the fine folk at redgate sorted me out with a replacement from deep in the stores somewhere and gave it to me at SQL Saturday Exeter :-) Thank you.

I spoke at the PowerShell Conference Europe and met and made some great friends which lead to me speaking at the PowerShell Monday in Munich and the Dutch PowerShell Usergroup. SQL Saturday Dublin was a blast, its a wonderful city, Manchester had a whole PowerShell Track :-) and Cambridge was memorable for the appalling journey as well as the chance to share a stage with Chrissy. PowerShell Conference Asia in the sovereign city-state of Singapore was such a good event and place. Lastly of course was Slovenia with its fantastic Christmas lights and awesome event organisation. I visited some user groups too. Southampton run by my good friends John Martin and Steph Middleton Congratulations to John on his first MVP award yesterday, Cardiff for the Return of the Battle of the Beards with Terry McCann and Tobiasz Koprowski where the projector threw its toys out of the pram and Birmingham in the school hall which was slightly chilly (theres a joke there for some people)

Amazing things happened

And that’s the biggest and bestest thing about this year. Some amazing new friends and spending time with all my other friends. I started writing out a list but was terrified I would have missed someone out, so to all my friends

THANK YOU for a brilliant 2016 and 2017 shall be just as good :-)

Here are a few of my pics from the year with a lot of my friends

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