The recap of the passing year 2019

Good morning girls and boys, ladies and gentlemen, in the new year 2020! I recently thought that we had started a new decade. But that’s not true. The new decade begins next year, so we have to wait a moment.

This is not just another list of new year’s resolutions… because I’m not a big fan of that kind of thing. Don’t get me wrong. That doesn’t mean that I’m not planning and having goals. I definitely have got them. I’m definitely a “planner” guy – love doing the plans, writing them down and checking what has happened after a certain period of time. What I meant is the period between Christmas and New Year Eve not particularly well moment to me to think about next year. That time is for me to relax and recharge the batteries.

Past

A few significant things happened for me in the previous year. One of those was a job change. I don’t want to repeat myself about the reason and circumstances because I describe it here. What I can say now, from time perspective (over 3 months now), it was a pretty good decision and I’m happy where I am. Obviously, I can not compare my current situation to that of what would happen otherwise, but so far so good.

I managed to encourage my friend to join me on the blog. Michal Sadowski has been started writing posts in December 2018. We also have recorded a few episodes (5 so far) of the podcast together. Michal is experienced MCT as well as DBA, going towards a Data Engineer direction either. Recently he was writing about Docker and containers in this series. We have more plans for this year, hence I hope that his activity would even grow here. I still cannot understand why he is not an MVP yet, but I deeply believe that this will change in 2020.

The most-read posts (on this blog) in 2019

Like a year ago, also in this year, I would like to share with you the top 10* most popular articles visited during 2019. Here they are:

1. 1. How to create DACPAC file?
   2. SCD type 1 & type 2 in MERGE statement
   3. Installation SQL Server client tools
   4. Unattended installation of SQL Server
   5. New DB project with SSDT and import existing database
   6. Deployment of Azure Data Factory with Azure DevOps
   7. Setting up Code Repository for Azure Data Factory v2
   8. Azure Data Factory v2 and its available components in Data Flows
   9. Slowly Changing Dimensions (SCD)
   10. Mapping Data Flow in Azure Data Factory (v2)

* Ranking based on Unique Page Views from Google Analytics.

If you follow me (@NowinskiK) or @SQLPlayer on Twitter – you might have remembered when I was pleased to spread out the word about that achievement, which I’m pretty proud of. Namely, we reached the traffic of 10k visitors a month.

Boom! The number of blog visitors has broken the barrier of 10k per month. We wanna thank you to all visitors and as well as authors: @NowinskiK & @SadowskiMichal. Keep going! #mvpbuzz #Azure @SQLServer pic.twitter.com/yM6dosGgqh

— SQLPlayer (@SQLPlayer) November 2, 2019

Podcast in numbers

Hence, let’s reveal some numbers and statistics about the podcast (total):

• 1,425 plays
• 3,897 downloads
• 27 listenable episodes published to date
• Over 19 hours of recorded conversations
• 42’43” is an average length of all episodes
• 13 different places where the chats have taken place
• 40,676 visits on interview’s pages

The chart below comes from Spreaker where my podcast is hosted. The figures represent the whole year 2019.

Twitter

This is mainly for the record:
@NowinskiK: 763 Following, 1142 Followers, 6715 Tweets.
@SQLPlayer: 327 Following, 348 Followers, 1918 Tweets.

YouTube

At the end of the year 2019, I recorded the first technical video and published it on YouTube channel. Why? Two reasons. One: some things or steps are easier to explain by showing, hence an article is not an ideal way. Two: I hope I will take less time to prepare one video in contrary to write down a blog post. I hope because it isn’t a case yet. I need more practice, obviously.
So, check out my first video and stay tuned to watch more in 2020:

SQLPlayer channel on YouTube.

Microsoft Certificates

I passed the exam on December 31st. It was fun. I had only a few days for preparations and my attitude was like: Let’s take the exam and see what kind of questions it will bring. Probably I’d fail, then prepare better and attempt again. But I passed at the first attempt. Even more, I was feeling that during the exam. You know, such feeling like “not so bad, not so bad. There is a chance”.

What could be better than getting up at 6am on December 31st and taking the online exam for the first time from home? It may only be better to pass this exam 🙂 This is how the year ends! ?? pic.twitter.com/njZRx9uFaJ

— Kamil Nowinski (@NowinskiK) December 31, 2019

Plan for 2020

I must disappoint you here. I’m not gonna make any new year’s resolution. After a passing year of experience and thoughts – I built a shortlist of ideas for the incoming year. As usual, this is an initial list and will be evolving during the year.

Less conference
I will try to take part in fewer conferences comparing to 2019. Or at least not more. All in order to save time and focus on…

More blogging & making videos
Yes, this is the next year when I’m planning to focus on the blog. I’m really pleased to develop that point and type of knowledge. Also, I glad to see that the blog is growing (by the number of visitors). I will be doing that as long as it makes me happy.

More exams & certifications
On the really last day of 2019, I passed the exam AZ-203. It was over 3 years since my last Microsoft exam is taken. I had no clear path for exams during 2019, but I decided to change this in 2020. This is because I have that gap and also, working with Azure services a lot – it will help me to verify & extend my knowledge and confirm my qualifications.

One project
This year, I’m planning to build one project. Completely new to me. I don’t want to reveal the details, but I will when finish. It’s a secret yet and only insiders know.

Happy New Year! *

This is me. And what about you? What’re your plans, dreams, goals? Share your thoughts with me and leave a comment. Whether you do it or not – I wish you

Happy New Year! Fight for every millimeter of happiness and remember that only a happy person can make others happy.

* Originally, I had a plan on the 2nd of January to release this post. But it has finally happened, even though a bit late.