Happy New Year! 2011 briefly in review...

 I wanted to quickly reflect on 2011 as I've had a heck of a year, both personally and professionally.

• At the tail end of 2010, my twin girls (Madeleine and Abbigail) were born.  Close enough to 2011 and so life changing I had to mention it first and foremost.
• After eight years with Minas Basin Pulp & Power, I resigned in March of 2011 and joined Scotsburn Dairy Group.  Scotsburn had just adopted Lotus Notes and there was so much potential in terms of collaboration solutions.  It was a great fit and a role I could really dig into.
• I was selected as an IBM Champion for IBM Collaboration Solutions.  Whoa...really? 
• I've done a number of webcasts promoting ICS and social business
• My writing for MC Press was pretty steady, but I decided to only put out about 6 articles in 2012. 
• In December I signed my first book publishing contract.  Look for iSocial – Leveraging IBM i on Power as Your Social Collaboration Workhorse in spring/summer 2012. My mom promises to buy a copy so you should too. ;)
•  I started a petition to get IBM Connections (later adding Sametime and Lotus Notes Traveler) on IBM i.  The tally right now is 167 customers and business partners representing 405,000 potential user licenses.  I have to thank Gabriele Spaszewski from a company called Dachser in Germany.  I'd like to think of Gaby as one of the strongest advocates of the petition through IBM in Europe.  Keep at it!  We'll get there!
• I totally should mention Kim Greene and Amy Hoerle for the above point too! 
• I've been very fortunate to meet a number of people at IBM and other customers whom I've read their blogs and articles for years.  Meeting a number of other IBM Champions and Lotus gurus in Boston in October was also a treat.  Lisa Duke, Rob Novak, Sharon Bellamy, Handly Cameron, Carl Tyler, Darren Duke, Bill Malchisky, Theo Heselmans, Chris Miller, Francie Tanner, Bruce Elgort...just to name a few. 
• Speaking of Boston, being one of the few people on Blackberry (it seemed) during a 2-3 day outage really stamped the importance of bringing other devices into our environment.
• Again, about Boston...I love that town by the way...I drove an hour or so to Plymouth and visited the Cabby Shack.  I had a 16 oz prime rib for $16 and a bowl of their world famous "chowda."  The chowda alone is worth the drive.  Hell, it's worth moving to Plymouth for.  Best chowda evah!
• My son started pre-school.  He's all grown up.
• Built a house!  Well, not personally...contractors built it. 
• Got an iPad.  For some, it's no big deal...but I've been Apple-ignorant my whole career.  I'm slowly liking it...like olives for people who never liked olives.  I love olives so the analogy is weak.
• Made a big effort to change my thinking about the perceived IBM i naming "issue."  There isn't an issue at all.  It's not iSeries, System i, AS/400 or anything else.  It's IBM i on Power Systems.  Trevor Perry sums it up pretty well here.