vBrain.info – A short 2015 Review
Like last year I’m a little bit late for my 2015 review but it’s still January so I think a last year review is still valid! As every year I recap the highlights of the whole 2015 year and do a short outlook for 2016.
Personal Life
The most important event this year by far was the birth of my little daughter Johanna. I can’t describe how it really feels to be a dad, only other dads knows that feeling. It’s pure awesomeness! I can’t event image how life would be without her. Seeing her laughing and smiling when you enter the room or when you’re playing with her. That is what I personally would call HAPPYNESS.
Professional Life
2015 marked the first complete year in my new role as Technical Account Manager at VMware and it was an awesome year. I could help most of my customers achieving their goals, fixing their problems and get comfortable with the products they have purchased. At the beginning of the job I was afraid that I can’t do so much technical stuff but now one or two customers always wanted to know how features works in detail. These are the moments you’re learning the most.
One of the biggest milestones for me was again the election as vExpert 2015 in February. I really love to be in this community of awesome people. At this point a big thank you to Corey Romero (@vCommunityGuy) and the whole VMware Social Media & Community Team! You’re are doing a great job with this program.
Finally in 2015 we, Andreas Lesslhumer (@lessi001, www.running-system.com) and I did 3 VMUG Austria meetings in Vienna. The meetings could have get more attendees but overall the 3 meetings were really good. Let’s see what 2016 will bring for the VMUG Austrian community, but all I can say is that it started with a blast! 🙂
I also participated in the annual Top vBlog voting but dropped some positions from #139 to #187. I was a little bit depressed after that but I can’t say if it was because of the posts quality, or the quantity of new blogs or because it’s really hard to choose 5 blogs out of 400+. I will never know but for 2016 I have the resolution to climb up some positions.
Certification
To be honest, I was a little bit lazy when it comes to certifications in 2015. This was also maybe because of my first child! I ordered my voucher for VCIX-NV in March and scheduled the exam in December which I unfortunately failed by only 12 points. I also updated my Veeam VMCE to v8 only to be sure I don’t have to go through a class room training and because of the certification junkieness (don’t know if this word actually exists). Because I love to give feedback to our certification and exam team, I did the VCP6-DCV Delta you can read my experience here.
This year I attended my seventh VMworld EMEA privately and on my own costs. This time I scheduled no single Breakout session because you can watch it after the conference anyway. I used my time for more important things which consisted of networking, networking and the Solutions Exchange. I think I’ve never talked to so much people at a conference. I meet old friend, tweeps, blog readers, all in all awesome people. You can read about the conference and my personal experiences here. Overall the whole conference was a blast and I was little bit sad when it was over but happy to get some more sleep again.
Lows
As far as I can remembers I had/have only one low in 2015. It’s time management and keeping focused. These are the main parts I need to work on myself to get it fixed. So what do I mean with keeping focused. It’s quite easy. I’m getting easily distracted if I have to do other more important stuff. A good example is my VCDX application. Everytime I tried to write something for the application I found other things which were at that point of time more important than the original work, like cleaning the room or sorting stuff on my table. I believe if I can “fix” this issues I will be more productive and more efficient in doing things than now. But as I know this will be a long way and a lot of work must be done.
Statistics
How did my blog perform in 2015? Here are some statistics I gathered from my tools.
| 2015 | 2014 | Difference in % | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pageviews | 80595 | 41000 | +96% |
| Most views per day | 465 | 602 | -23% |
| Views average monthly | 6716 | 3297 | +104% |
| Views average daily | 221 | 108 | +105% |
| Visitors | 58272 | 23900 | +153% |
| Posts | 27 | 35 | -23% |
| Countries | 190 | 171 | +11% |
Like in 2014, the whole 2015 year was a blast. When I saw the statistics I went again like “WTF”. It was again a really big improvement in visits and page views. But I saw also that some statistics went down compared to 2014. I assume this is because I’m now a dad and my time is more limited than it was before. Therefor my posts over the year were less. You can see that i haven’t posted anything between November and mid-December. That was not because of lack of content but rather that playing with my little lady was more important then blogging. 🙂
Here are also my Top 10 blog posts for 2015.
I was really surprised that the majority of post in the Top10 are still from 2014.
What to expect for 2016?
This is a short list of my 2016 to-do’s and challenges:
- Be an awesome Dad – I think this is self-explaining! 🙂
- VCDX – it’s still on my roadmap but moved to the background because of my current job role and family status. When you’re not doing actual designs or hands-on then it’s a tough challenge to get all the required information and experience for writing the application.
- Write more blog posts (obligatory New Year resolution as usual)
- Become vExpert 2016
- Try to improve my position at the annual Top vBlog Voting (currently #187)
- Attend VMworld EMEA – Let’s see if I can get a budget for this year!
- Certifications – There are new VCAP6 coming out this year. I’m currently waiting to sit the VCAP6-NV beta which was rescheduled recently. I also do a second attempted for the VCIX-NV.
- Improve time management and concentrate/focus skills (no it’s not for RPG/P&P)