2010 year in review

2010 was a year of firsts in many ways. It has been my first full year as a married man (an amazing experience). It’s been the year where I first flew in a hot air balloon (also an amazing experience). The first time I went skiing with a pregnant woman (my wife btw) and to top it all of the year I became a father. The birth of my daughter Milla has of cause been the pivotal moment of the year if not my life. It has been an amazing experience so far and I am sure it will continue that way. No self-respecting new father would end a section like this without a picture of his precious little girl.

The year started with Lotusphere in January which again was a great experience. After Lotusphere my wife and I once again went for 8-day spur around Florida to shop, go to a theme park or two and just relax. This year we also went to Key West for a few days and it was great fun. Unfortunately Super Bowl wasn’t played until we got back home to Denmark but that has changed for 2011 so we’re really looking forward to watching the game in a bar somewhere in Florida. It’s just more fun when you’re in the right timezone 🙂

Work wise it has been quite busy year. Besides teaching our Notes 8.5 Application Development workshop 3 times I also became Lotus Connections 2.5 certified. My first certification ever. Before becoming certified I had a very unnuanced perspective on certification but throughout the process I have changed my view. I learned a lot during the process and I now clearly see a place for certifications and wholeheartedly support them. I will tip my hat to all those who are certified.

It was quite a busy Lotus Connections year. I joined the weekly design partner calls for what is now called Lotus Connections 3.0 and it was a nice experience. The product is definitely improving and becoming even better with each release. I also did 5 customer installs of Lotus Connections in 2011 ranging from a target audience of 20 to 70.000. You will be hearing more about the latter in 2011 as it goes live. For the latter I also got to develop based on some o the cool API’s available in Websphere Application Server. It has been a fun project.

It was a quiet year speaking-wise. I only spoke at Lotusphere Comes to You here in Denmark and at the Dutch Lotus User Group (NLLUG) in September. 2011 will be far more busy starting off with two sessions at Lotusphere 2011.

In November we moved offices – the new offices are great and I look forward to a busy year in the new offices. I am sure we will find time for a house warming come the new year.

2010 was also the year where the company took the plunge into cloud computing. It is not that we haven’t used cloud services before but we realized that it did not make sense for us to operate our own Lotus Connections or Lotus Sametime environments. Instead we took the plunge and shut down those servers and moved all employees to LotusLive. It was only 6 servers but still… 🙂

With the best wishes of a Merry Christmas and a happy New Year. I hope to see you all in Orlando (and yes I’m bringing my daughter),

/Mikkel