Would you look at that, I’m even early this year compared to my 2023 post which was earlier than 2022! I’m on a roll!
It’s funny sitting down to write this post because, honestly, I haven’t really done much writing in the past year. In fact, if we exclude the “in review” posts I did, one about 2023 and the other about running (so… nothing to do with tech), I wrote a grand total of 5 blog posts in 2024 (and two of them were about my smart home), which is the first time ever I’ve done only a single digit number of posts in a year.
Now these numbers aren’t entirely accurate of my blogging, I published 4 blogs on the .NET blog so technically I wrote 9 posts, but I don’t really count those as they’re not on my personal blog.
I’m not entirely sure as to why that is though. After all, it’s not like I didn’t do any work in 2024, I guess I just didn’t feel like I had much to say, at least not in this medium or I’m just lazy 😜.
Work
For the first half of 2024 I was still heavily involved in the .NET and AI story, but when Microsoft Build came around in May I handed over the AI aspect and took lead of the .NET Aspire strategy in our team. This is a much better fit for me, after all, the first two blogs I did last year were on Aspire and we’ve got other members in our team with an AI background that can take the lead on that.
Aspire has been great to work on, and it’s been very interesting getting more involved with a product team and seeing how they work. I’ve contributed a few bits of code to the project, done some docs work (one such bit was expanding how to write tests with Aspire which is honestly one of the best features), but the work I’m most proud of, and excited for the future of, is the .NET Aspire Community Toolkit.
I pitched the idea of the Community Toolkit (or “Aspire Contrib” as it was originally pitched) back in June and we finally announced it in November. It really has exploded since then and I’m super excited for the community that we’re building around Aspire. From something that started with only like 2 integrations, we’re almost at 20 with 5 more in PR review (and a bunch more proposed). If you’re building with Aspire, check out what we’ve got to help you build a wider variety of apps. Check out this session from .NET Conf for more on the toolkit and how to build a custom integration.
Speaking
I actually got back into speaking at events even more in 2024, I spoke at nearly 10 in person events (including getting to go to Japan to speak!), and a few online ones as well. And 2025 is shaping up to be just as busy, with 2 events already confirmed for the first half of the year.
Probably the highlight I had was AI Tour Sydney in December, where I got to present about GitHub Copilot and Visual Studio in a 7000 seat arena (look, there might have only been a few hundred in there, but the arena can hold 7000 😜). It’s an arena that Elton John has performed on, so I’ve technically performed on the same stage as him #humblebrag.
If you squint you can see me on stage 😜.
My other speaking highlight was being back at DDD Melbourne (I’m 11 for 12 of their events!) and I got to present about a personal topic, my journey through burnout. It was a very personal talk, and I was very nervous about it, but the response I got was very heartwarming and I’m very grateful for the support I received. I also got to reprise it for DDD Brisbane, and I’m glad I can do my part to remove the stigma around mental health.
And with that, let’s bring on 2025.