What's in this post...
Last Updated on December 28, 2021 by GrahamWalsh
Hi readers
I’d thought I’d cover a year in review for 2021 to see how far I’ve come. Let’s start off with YouTube.
YouTube
I’ve been trying to create more video this year and it has seemed to work well. I have managed to make the YouTube Partner Programme, so now my kids can call me an official YouTuber. Unfortunately, it doesn’t pay the bills or get me a Lambo to drive around in. Let’s look at the year
My best video this year on YouTube was this one
And this is how I have ended the year in stats on YouTube
To see the full video on my Year in Review on YouTube, click here.
Blogging
The site here has been growing nicely, twenty more posts that in 2020, so this is post number 59. As for stats on page views, that has been growing nicely too, from an average 556 per day to 663 per day now. The best day of the week for my site is a Wednesday, with 23% of the views and the most popular time is 3pm in the afternoon, with 7% of views.
The engagement on the posts has also increased, from 164 comments to 181 comments, so again good to see. Many comments are also over on YouTube videos too, so great engagement here.
Merch Store
Another new skill/challenge I gave myself as a bit of fun was to launch a range of merchandise. I did this as many people asked me how and where I got my t-shirt designs that I made. I first had the idea back in October 2019 and revealed it at Microsoft Ignite 2019 in the November. Greg and Christian even wore them on stage to present. The Microsoft DPSS team then also decided to take the idea and send them out to Microsoft partners etc. Since I had customers request them, I build a store off Woo Commerce (via my site here) and a Print on Demand supplier for global supply chain. After many samples, launch it in October 2021 and so far, the most popular items are T-shirts, followed by Hoodies.
You can check out the store here and see all the info on the designs here.
Microsoft Tech Community
I try to regularly contribute to the Microsoft Tech Community, where all things Microsoft products are discussed. I focus on the Microsoft Teams devices related questions and try to help and answer the questions. I’ve been one of the top five answer contributors for a few months over the year. I’ve also written a guest blog on Teams Devices in Education, along with joining on a Live AMA session with Stephen Rose and team, which was great fun.
Other sites – LinkedIn, Twitter, Reddit etc
Conversations have been good on both LinkedIn and Twitter as well throughout the year, and I have tried to be more active on Reddit too, always in the Microsoft Teams subreddit. I’ve also started posting small clicks on Tiktok to try and get down with the kids amongst the crypto kings, fitness experts and dance queens, but again, all around Microsoft Teams updates.
MTDAMA Monthly Community Call
The monthly Microsoft Teams Room Ask Me Anything call got rebranded in 2021 as we focus not just on meeting room devices, so now it’s called Microsoft Teams Devices Ask Me Anything, or MTDAMA for short. We also expanded it over to the APAC region, so it is more time zone friendly. We’ve had some great guest speakers in 2021 and we will continue that in 2022 as well. To find out all the past shows, click here.
Other achievements
The biggest achievements this year (as she said yes) for me was getting engaged to my now fiancé, Nicola. After being together for four years, I popped the question and we’ll be getting married at the end of the summer in 2022.
The other big milestone that I reached today actually was 15,000 minutes of exercise on the Peloton platform. You can find my year in review from Peloton below. In 2021, I did a lot of PowerZone training and this will continue into 2022 and a new challenge starts on the 3rd Janaury.
And finally…
In December I changed jobs. I left Crestron and joined the Norwegian company, Neat. It was time for a new challenge and with Neat about to launch Microsoft Teams running on their devices, it was an exciting opportunity not to be missed. There is so much great technology inside the Neat products, new products coming out as well, it is going to be an exciting time.
If you’ve managed to get this far, thanks for reading and see you in 2022.
Also published on Medium.