Favourite Personal Highlights of 2021

Introduction to my Personal Highlights of 2021

2021 has been a strange old year for people and me around the globe due to lockdowns and being unable to visit friends and family. This lockdown has not stopped me from achieving some of my goals late last year. Here are some of my personal highlights of 2021.

I have defined some of my goals for 2022 that I want to share.

Presented at New Stars of Data #3

I successfully presented Wide World of Logs at the New Stars of Data #3 event hosted by Ben Weissman. This topic covered an alternate method to monitor your Azure Data Factory Pipelines. This presentation was received very well, and I received some great feedback on areas for improvement.

First YouTube Video Exploring Azure Data Factory UI

I created and published my first YouTube video this year that walked through the various UI elements of Azure Data Factory. I have acquired two subscribers to my YouTube video due to publishing this video.

I learned several skills from creating and editing a YouTube video. As a result, I have created several assets to use in the coming year to create more videos.

APAC AI Community

• Discuss name change for the group
• Started Streaming the user group sessions
• I bought on another presenter

The membership for the user group I run has increased steadily since the start of the year from approx—300 members to 550+ to date. Due to the increase in membership, we have changed the group’s name from the Brisbane AI User Group to the APAC AI Community. Our goal for the name change was to grow our membership from Asia Pacific Region.

We have also trialled using StreamYard to live stream the sessions on YouTube instead of running it on either Zoom or Microsoft Teams. This trial’s completion date is the end of December 2021. A decision on the use of streaming for future user group sessions is imminent by the end of January 2022.

I am happy to report that we have continued to have multiple different presenters from different vendors like Microsoft, Google, and AWS on various exciting topics. We are looking to continue this in the new year.

Presenting at different meetup groups

I successfully achieved one of my goals from last year, where I presented my topic on the Wide World of Logs to the following user groups.

• Adelaide User Group
• Melbourne Microsoft Data Platform User Group
• Perth User Group
• Data Services Community

This presentation was received very well, and I received some great feedback on areas for improvement. I am looking forward to presenting more topics in the coming year.

Achieved a new certification

I finally achieved recognition as a Microsoft Certified Azure Data Engineer. I have documented the steps in my study process and some information about the exam in Successfully Completing Microsoft Exam DP-201 and Successfully Completing Microsoft Exam DP-200.

Plan for 2022

There are several certification goals I am planning to complete in 2022. These include the following

• Microsoft Security Administrator Associate
• Microsoft Certified: DevOps Engineer Expert
• AWS Architect
• TOGAF Certification
• Microsoft Data Scientist Associate
• Google Certified Data Professional

Apart from my certifications, I want to achieve the following as well:

• Conduct 10 presentations by the end of the year at different user groups and international sessions
• Blog more often – Release 10 blog posts by the end of March 2022 and increase site membership by 100.
• Create YouTube Videos – Create 10 YouTube Videos by March 2022 and increase subscribers to 50
• Increase Social Media Followers by 1000 by the end of March 2022

Onwards to 2022

I would like to wish everyone a Happy New Year (2022).

In this climate of Covid-19, it is imperative to look after yourself, your family, your friends, and your neighbours.

Further Reading

Please look at some of my other articles from the home page.