Goodbye 2020 Hello 2021
Goodbye 2020
Started to work for InSpark
Last year was certainly an eventful year. Started with a new job at InSpark and after 10 weeks we all know what happened, the first intelligent lockdown. The Netherlands was partially locked, but our office was immediately closed. Fortunately, all our applications run in the cloud and we were able to switch easily. But building a team in these times is not easy. I am really very proud of all my colleagues in the Data and AI team and of course all my other colleagues from InSpark, we made a great year together.
Managed Oxygen
With Managed Oyxgen, our Data Platform as a Service, we’ve made such great improvements that I wouldn’t have thought that it was possible at the beginning of this year. Really cool and compliments to ones who worked so hard on it. On top of our Managed Oxyen we have worked with the whole team on our Sparkhouse Data Accelerator, a Metadata Framework which we can use to automatically extract data from different sources, building history with Delta Lake and load data into an Azure SQL Database/Pool for further transformations of the data.
Cool and innovative projects
We worked closely with Microsoft NL and Corp, but also with our mother company KPN. We’re now seeing the effect of this, we’ve done such great projects and we’re on our way for 2021, Projects using the latest Azure Data Services, image and photo recognition, IOT, Azure Synapse Analytics and Power BI. And for the first quarter we will
In any case, enough to look forward to. We are still looking for reinforcements for our team, so if you want to be part of these super cool projects let me know for sure.
I’m happy with the step I made a year ago and can definitely recommend it to anyone.
And when I look at myself.
Blog
My intention was to write more blogs and articles this year, in the end this only succeeded partly. It turned out to be 24, which is an average of 2 per month. Sometimes I just lacked inspiration, hopefully this inspiration will come back in 2021.
My top post on my website still remains Azure Data Factory Naming Conventions . Nice to see that more and more people are implementing the right standards within their organization.
Certifications
This year I wanted to get my DP-200 and DP-201, it finally became AZ-900 and DP-200. It’s been far too long since I’ve done a certification. Of all the questions everyone really knows the right answer, but still when you see it on a screen and you have to give the correct answer, it is secretly quite difficult.
In any case, the DP-201 is on my agenda this year.
Events
My last personal event this year was SQL Konferenz in Darmstadt, Germany, in early March. Wow, how I miss these personal events. In addition to exchanging knowledge, the personal contacts that you build with everyone, it is also very valuable. With the virtual events this is a lot more difficult.
I was quite proud to be selected for SQL Bits, it remains one of the biggest events in Europe. However, it was a disappointment that it ended up becoming virtual instead of physical. Obviously the correct decision of the organization. You had to record the session yourself beforehand. During the event itself it was broadcast and you had to moderate your own session. Very strange to do that, but in the end I was happy with the result. The platform they used was really good. Compliments to the organization and the volunteers who made it a success for a while.
In addition to SQL Bits, I have spoken on a number of Virtual SQL Saturdays, I only started speaking virtual at the end of the year, but finally there aren’t that many. I didn’t like virtual speaking in the first time, but eventually I started to like it anyway. Before 2021, I have registered for a number of DataSaturdays and will be speaking at the Scottish Summit. Nice things to look forward to.
Whatever a year looks like, the most important thing is that everyone is healthy and safe. I look forward to a great collaboration with everyone.
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