This year has been a roller coaster. Wow just thinking back through all of the stuff that has happened, we went from all of the troubles at the start of the year around AJ’s health and the open heart surgery in April and things are still on going but have got better and much improved as the year has progressed. I guess my most stand out memory from this year was when 2 days after having open heart surgery I sat on AJ’s bed in hospital and said “God, im sooo tired its been such a long week, i cant imagine how you must feel” and his reply was “well you know ive had worse weeks”. That was a big wake up call to man up and I knew all was going to be fine.

The key thing I learned after that was that everything else wasnt really that important and not to stress or worry about those things too much and I think as result I’ve had quite a different outlook on life this year. I also learned about how great the BizTalk and Azure community has been. With everything that happened just after the BizTalk Summit in December 2013 there have been so many people who had been asking how things are and being supportive and id like to again thank everyone. Also a shout out to the Integration MVP’s who are an awesome group of mates too!

I think the best thing I did in 2014 was to provide some support to the North East Hearts & Goals initiative to put a life saving AED in every school in North Tyneside. Thats 46 schools! I donated £1000 to pay for the defibrillator to be placed in Holystone Primary School and the initiative achieved the funding required to do every school which was brilliant.

I guess reviewing 2014 from a work and community perspective now.

Travel

This year ive been lucky enough to visit the following places through work or being invited to community events:

  • Hong Kong
  • Brisbane
  • Sydney
  • Melbourne
  • Seattle
  • Brussels

Speaking Engagements

This year I have spoken at the below user groups. One of the main topics was my talk on Hybrid Connectivity Options on Azure which went down really well in all places.

  • Australia BizTalk Summit
  • Integrate 2014 in Redmond
  • Belgium BizTalk User Group

Im always interested in more opportunities to speak so if your user group is interested let me know 🙂

Articles, Whitepapers & Blogs

I spent a lot more time working on my writing in 2014, gaining more experience and noteriaty in my industry. I wanted to start wrting my own book too but that unfortunately got put on the backburner. I aim on making a start on my book this year though, even if I have to get ghostwriters involved!

I enjoyed writing for lots of different people, publications and blogs in 2014 and hope this continues in the future. Some of the stuff I have enjoyed writing this year includes:

Architecture

BizTalk Microservices

BizTalk

Azure BizTalk Services

Service Bus

 

RabbitMQ

My 2 RabbitMQ Pluralsight courses were published this year. Check those out on the below link:

http://www.pluralsight.com/author/michael-stephenson

 

Helping others

Ive also been fortunately to be invited by friends to be involved in the below projects.

 

A tough year but I think ive achieved quite a lot. I think for 2015 I’m not really planning too much, I think its going to be one of those years where there are so many opportunities flying around and its going to be a good chance to see what comes up that really takes my fancy and go with it.

 

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