2013 was awesome… A big thank you to all!

First and foremost I’d like to wish everybody a very successful and happy 2014! Just over 12 months ago I started this Blog with the idea to build up some sort of personal ‘online’ knowledge base and to perhaps share some of my knowledge with those who might be interested. And although I promoted (and still do) my writing using the various social media channels to try and attract new readers, I never imagined it would turn out the way it did. I mean, having a couple of readers every now and again is awesome on it’s own, but having a constant stream of hundreds or thousands of unique and returning readers is beyond words!

Keep em coming

I’m no guru, I don’t know everything and probably never will, and besides that I probably need to use Google as much as the next person, but who cares?! I certainly don’t! It educates me, I like helping people and it’s very satisfying. Linked-In, Twitter, facebook, direct blog comments or plain simple E-mail, just keep those questions coming. I’ll do my best to try and answer as many as possible. Just note that it could take me a while to get back to you since I’m being kept quite busy these days :-) If I don’t know or can’t find the time to research, I’ll let you know as well and perhaps we’ll come to an answer together.

Some numbers

As of January 1st 2013 I published 42 articles, including this one (with still a few in the pipeline as well), written more than a 100.000 words, managed to get well over 72.000 views together with 230 comments (plus 57000! spam comments, thanks Askimet, for keeping me safe) and 53 direct blog followers. All in just 12 months time! This may not sound like a lot to some, but to me it’s huge and one of the main reasons to keep going! I’d like to thank you for your time, interest and compliments (I’m getting a lot of positive feedback lately which I really appreciate). I really enjoyed the interaction and getting to know other people, either online or face to face. And who knows, perhaps we’ll meet at Citrix Summit in January and have a beer (or two), just drop me a line and the first one is on me :-) 2014 is here, let’s see what it has in store for us, I’m confident it’s going to be great year for all of us!

Shifting focus

2013 was a great, and busy, year to say the least. Since I was still relatively new to most of its contents, I decided to primarily focus on the Citrix portfolio. Now again, I’m no renaissance man and I’ve no intention of becoming one either, but 2013 has certainly taught me a lot, not only with regards to all the technology and diverse products involved, but also about Citrix as a company, the community by which it’s surrounded and of course, the people involved! And to be honest, I liked it all, I’m sticking! As far as my Blogging is concerned, I really enjoyed the interaction with readers / peers on my Blog, Linked-In and Twitter, it has been very educational and a lot of fun to do.

Hosting and presenting

Before 2013 this was something I’d (almost) always been avoiding. I just felt uncomfortable standing and speaking in front of an audience, small, medium or large groups, it didn’t matter. I really needed to find a way to get over my fear of public speaking, because that’s what it was basically. Presenting yourself in front of a group and talking about something that you’re passionate about, sharing your knowledge, is probably the best way to reach people and getting your message delivered, so it had to be done. Last year, after some training, I started hosting and presenting tech sessions myself, which in the end, I really enjoyed doing, for now I’ve done 5 presentations in the past six months. I did one on XD7 for my direct colleagues at Qwise and four more at existing and potential customer sites, again, mostly talking about XenDesktop 7 and XenMobile as well. And although I’m still a bit anxious when it’s time to hit the stage (but who isn’t), it’s something I’d like to keep working on in the (near) future.

But there was more

I also started writing various articles for Intense School, a large ICT training institute in the United States. I mostly write about VDI and Server Based Computing in general, primarily focussing on the Citrix and Microsoft portfolios. Something I will continue to do in 2014. I’ve also been asked (on several occasions) to write and review some books for Packt Publishing. But since my time is limited, and writing for Packt can be really time consuming, I decided not to accept the writing challenge but to review instead. It sounds like a lot of fun and I’m looking forward to the experience! This way I can also keep Blogging / writing on the side without to much trouble. As always, busy but fun times ahead, and who knows what comes up next. I’m always open to suggestions.

2014

Now that we’ve started 2014 I’ll continue to focus on the Citrix portfolio as a whole, but I’ll also try to zoom in, and thus spend some extra time, on XenDesktop and XenMobile (starting with Citrix Summit not to long from now) in particular which is hard enough with all that’s going on. Both Microsoft and VMware deserve some special attention as well since i’ve been neglecting them for the past year or so, at least that’s how I feel. Next to my Blogging adventure, which needles to say, I’ll continue in 2014, 2013 has also been the year in which I achieved the Citrix CCIA status (including some other exams on the side) and attended my first DuCUG event (a very well organised event) and as far as I’m concerned, many will follow. Next up is the Citrix CCE – AD a.k.a. the Designing Citrix XenDesktop 7 Solutions certification (1Y0 – 400) which I’ll try and achieve during Summit, hopefully that was a good choice.

Conclusion

Well that about sums it up, a relatively short summary but one too proud of none the less! I’ll end by highlighting a few of my most viewed Blog posts. And not because I just thought of it, but because I’ve seen about five other fellow Bloggers do it as well, I thought I might as well join them, here they are:

• XenDesktop 7 editions explained
• Get Citrix certified!
• XenDesktop (MCS) Personal vDisks
• FlexCast Management Architecture
• XenDesktop 7 Site Configuration Database… What about it?
• Citrix Provisioning Services 7… A sneak preview
• Configure StoreFront Multi-Site configurations

Thanks again everybody, be safe!

Kind regards,

Bas van Kaam ©

Reference materials used: None.

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