2018 was literally flying by - and was awesome. I had never ever so many changes in my life than in 2018 - and here are the notable ones!
90 days at Microsoft
1st of October 2018 was my first day with a blue badge. Giving back my MVP title was not an easy decision for me, one that I postponed for many years. But, things change - Microsoft did, too - and it was time for me to try something new. Meeting my role models in person like Scott Guthrie or Donovan Brown really helped me making this step.
So for the past 90 days I am a Microsoft Cloud Solution Architect for Microsoft Germany. And it is great fun for me:
The first days at Microsoft were very overwhelming for me, understanding all the roles and acronyms flying around is hard. And I thought I knew Microsoft pretty well :) But everyone at Microsoft is super helpful and I really enjoyed the super professional onboarding: I watched videos for the entire first week and they are super helpful to understand who is doing what, responsibilities, goals etc.: I love it. So after 90 days I am responsible for the first really big customers, a really different level compared to my previous roles. It is a challenge, but a good one that motivates me big times and I can really identify myself with our mission “to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more”.
Big thanks to my onboarding buddy Steffen who helped me understand how things work! Also a special thanks to my team lead Nadine who supports me on a level I never experienced before!
AzureSaturday Munich / AzureDays.org
AzureSaturday is a really awesome, fun and rewarding event for me. It eats a lot of time, but getting more than 400 like-minded Azure folks in one location on a Saturday is awesome, awesome, awesome. Organizing it with my close friends Ben and Tom is always epic!
Azure Saturday Munich is a free community-focused Azure event dedicated to educating and engaging members of the local technical community. Azure Saturday draws upon the expertise of local Azure IT professionals, developers and solutions architects who come together to share their real world experiences, lessons learned, best practices, and general knowledge with other like-minded individuals
A few pictures from 2018:
The next AzureSaturday in Munich is already scheduled: 18th May of 2019 at Microsoft Germany. It’s a free event with great speakers - get your ticket: azuresaturday.de And for the very first time, AzureSaturday is not only in Munich - our friends Janek and Ben are organizing one in Berlin (9th February, 2019) - go grab a ticket at (azuresaturdayberlin.de)[https://azuresaturdayberlin.de] We are currently supporting three more teams to organize an AzureSaturday internationally - if that is something you want to do, then check AzureDays.org for more details. It is easier than you might think! :)
Personal
I married my girlfriend in Castle Oberschleissheim. Actually we wanted to do it in 2016, but then my wonderful daughter Sophia was born and we had to adjust our plans. Together with our families and closest friends we had a very special day:
Everything was (and still is!) simply perfect.
Learning
My friend Jens asked me: “What did you learn in 2018?”. For the last 90 days I intensified my Azure skills and I tried to do that as broad and deep as possible. So I covered topics from Governance, Security, architecture for performance, Cost Management, Azure Websites, Azure Storage, SAP on Azure, Kubernetes, Terraform, Azure DNS, Azure VMs, Azure DevOps and many many more services - and luckily I had projects in those areas to battle test those learnings. Additionally I sat down to learn for the new Azure Certification AZ-200 - the certification did not made it out of beta and was replaced with AZ-203. Getting that one (and AZ-400) will be on the list for 2019.
Blog
My tiny blog had more than 100.000 views this year - that’s cool!
Recently I wrote a lot more than in the beginning of the year - the post I had the most fun to write was “PENNY PINCHING: MIGRATING APP SERVICE TO AZURE STORAGE WEBSITE HOSTING” because I waited really long for this capability and it simply works. Combined with Azure DevOps and the hugo blog engine its terrific! For 2019 I will write down my learnings at Microsoft but primarily about my favorite cloud: Azure.
Paragliding
In 2018 I had approximately 50 flights, not as many as I wanted, but still some very special locations.
Castle Neuschwanstein, Germany:
Bassano, Italy:
Andelsbuch, Austria:
Lefkas, Greece:
Thank you
So the end was a little picture-heavy - but - I really had a blast in 2018. Thanks to all who were flying with me, looking forward to meet you all in 2019.
Happy new year!
Max
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