vBrain.info – The year which was and the year which will be
Because I’m a big Babylon 5 fan I’m using a modified Zathras quote (“You are the one who was, You are the one who is and you are the one who will be”, Season 3 Ep.17 “War without End, Part II”) for my year in review post title. From a personal and professional perspective my year 2016 was a blast. I met so many new people through the year and also talked to so many smart people, which were all smarter than me, but that’s ok. You can only grow if you know that you knew nothing.
2016 – Professional life and blogging
In the first quarter of 2016 I did a lot of VCAP betas, in total 4 to help the certification team with my feedback to sharpen these exams. Unfortunately the beta scoring took again roughly 7-8 month to complete and I passed 50% of them, which was ok. The only exam I thought I would have passed but failed was the VCAP6-DTM design exam. But there was also a rescoring of this exam because nobody I knew, and this includes also VCDX passed the beta. In the end my scoring went from 219 to 255 which was still very bad for an exam and solution I thought I knew a lot. Even on the CMA design beta exam I had more points (279). During the year I passed the following exams:
- VMware Certified Integration Expert – Network Virtualization (VCIX-NV)
- VMware Certified Professional – Network Virtualization (VCP-NV) -> inherited because of VCIX-NV
- VMware Certified Professional 6 – Network Virtualization (VCP6-NV) -> upgraded from VCP-NV
- VMware Certified Professional 6 – Desktop and Mobility (VCP6-DTM)
- VMware Certified Advanced Professional – Datacenter Virtualization Depoyment (VCAP6-DCV Deployment) – Experience post
- VMware Certified Advanced Professional – Datacenter Virtualization Design (VCAP6-DCV Design) – Experience post
- VMware Certified Advanced Professional – Desktop and Mobility Deployment (VCAP6-DTM Deployment)
- VCA6-DCV, VCA6-DTM, VCA6-NV
- Veeam Certified Engineer VMCE v9
In addition to the passed VCAP I also achieved the following:
- VMware Certified Integration Expert – Data Center Virtualization (VCIX6-DCV)
- VMware Certified Integration Expert – Desktop and Mobility (VCIX6-DTM)
- VMware Certified Integration Expert – Network Virtualization (VCIX6-NV) -> upgraded from VCIX-NV
So from the certification side this was a really good year.
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From the award side, 2016 was also a blast. In January I received my Cisco Champion 2016 award. A month later my vExpert status was renewed for the third time in a row. In April I received the best award of that year and I was really honored that I was part of the Veeam Vanguard 2016 program. And lastly in June I was awarded vExpert NSX 2016. Unfortunately I couldn’t make Veeam Vanguard 2017, but this was expected because there were so many other smart people who did much more during 2016 then I did.
I also participated in the annual Top vBlog voting. Without promoting I went up some places from #187 to #79. This was really awesome and I was very pleased that so many people voted for my blog. Thank you for supporting vBrain.info.
This year I attended my eighth VMworld EMEA privately and on my own costs. Like the year before I scheduled no Breakout sessions because I can watch it afterwards anyway. I used my time for efficient which means I did a lot of networking, visited the Solutions Exchange and attended the VCDX boot camp. I met old friend, tweeps, blog readers, all in all awesome people. Overall the whole conference was really awesome and I was little bit sad when it was over but happy to get some more sleep again.
2016 – Statistics
How did my blog perform in 2016? Here are some statistics of the blog.
| 2016 | 2015 | Difference in % | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pageviews | 87540 | 80595 | +8,6% |
| Views average monthly | 7295 | 6716 | +8,6% |
| Views average daily | 239 | 221 | +8,1% |
| Visitors | 66298 | 58272 | +13,8% |
| Posts | 24 | 27 | -15% |
The improvement in visits and page views are still growing but not with the speed as they did in the last 2 years. I also need to start thinking of how to attract more people to read my blog. I think this is one of the challenges I need to think about in 2017.
2016 – Personal Life
The most significant personal challenge began end of June when I started my 4 month paternity leave to take care of my little daughter who turned one at that time. It was really a challenging time. Getting up early in the morning, prepare breakfast, play with the little one, bring her to bed for the midday nap, prepare lunch, feed her after the nap, play with her again, go for a walk and from time to time getting yelled. There were sometimes some highs and lows but overall it was a great experience and I really recommend it to every father who has the chance to do it.
What to expect for 2017?
This is a short list of my 2017 to-do’s and challenges:
- Be still an awesome Dad – I think this is self-explaining! 🙂
- VCDX – I’m planing to do my defence in December, so there is some time to write the design.
- Write more blog posts (obligatory New Year resolution as usual)
- Become vExpert 2017
- Try to defend my current position at the annual Top vBlog Voting (currently #79)
- Certifications – Currently there are 2 exams on my list to do. VCAP6-CMA design to get the 4h VCIX6 and Veeam VMCE-A: D&O. Maybe in H2/2017 I will do some AWS certifications.
- Learn more about new technologies like Docker or AWS