So this year has been busy for me, with it being the first full year of working for myself, as well as a bunch of family things that have impacted all of it. We have had an eventful year, work of course has been crazy, some family things back in the UK, wedding of my daughter, wife went back to the UK for three weeks to look after her Mom (surgery complications), I stayed here and played at being Mom and Dad, and working….fun times. It has been about 18 months of learning about the frailty of life, as well as it being very stressful. I have had to move things, and even completely cancel things around for work a few times, realizing that family ALWAYS comes first. From a personal perspective it has been a year of reflection too, realizing what is truly important to me, and understanding that though work is important, there are better and smarter ways of working, and family is most important to me. In the past 18 months, we have head family pass on, my wife had back surgery, a wedding, other family members had complications with surgery, as well other medical issues with family members back in the UK. I came to the realization recently that my normal approach to working at night (after the kids go to bed) and weekends (sometimes), had to stop and now I DO NOT work in the evenings and weekends, which has done wonders for my personal sanity and family time.

As the year wraps up, I have a couple of business trips, with it ending at SPFest Chicago presenting on a few things:

  • IT and Security guide to Digital Transformation
  • Security and Compliance within Office 365
  • Using the Patterns and Practices (PnP) components with SharePoint and SharePoint Online

Outside of this travel, along with my normal consulting work I have also been busy creating courses. I really enjoy creating them and hope they are useful to all that view them. Creating courses is not for everyone and they do take a lot of effort, but I enjoy doing them. By the end of this year, I will have released the following:

Pluralsight Courses

Opsgility Courses

LinkedIn Courses

  • MS-101 Microsoft 365 Mobility and Security – Coming Soon

As the courses get posted over the next few weeks I will update the links. Looking forward to next year too, as I start to plan out more courses to create.

I suppose my personal message is “make the most of family time”, work will always be there in one form or another”. See you somewhere either this year at SPFest Chicago, or next year 🙂