Today is a very special day. It’s Monday, it’s a new week, and it’s a new month - all sorts of new beginnings. The most important new beginning, however, is that today is my first day as a Senior Consultant in the Data Management and Analytics team in Skill! Yay 🥳
Skill is a Norwegian IT consulting company with over 100 consultants working from two locations. They have teams focused on everything from cloud infrastructure to cloud productivity, from security to business applications, and from collaboration to analytics.
What do they all have in common? They all deliver solutions built on Microsoft technologies! Just like me 🤓
(And just like me, there are many people in Skill who love giving back and helping their communities! I’m honored that I can now call fellow Microsoft MVPs Jan Vidar Elven, Magnus Goksöyr, and Ulrikke Akerbæk my coworkers 🤩)
I’ve joined the Data Management and Analytics team, and will continue to focus on Azure Data and the Microsoft Data Platform. I get to dive deeper into fun things like Azure Synapse Analytics and Azure Data Factory, and I’m hoping to learn even more about Power BI and the rest of the Power Platform. Maybe I’ll even pick up a thing or two about infrastructure, networking, and security?
I’m very much looking forward to this new chapter. Great people, a supportive workplace, and exciting technologies…? I’M SO EXCITED! 😊
On September 28th, 2021, I passed exam DP-900: Azure Data Fundamentals, yay! 🥳 The exam is mainly intended for those who are new to working with the Azure data platform, but is also required for achieving Microsoft partner status in the Data Platform competency.
In this post, I share how I prepared for the exam and what my experience was like on the day of the exam.
On Wednesday, November 17th, 2021, I will be speaking at MVP Dagen 2021! This is a free event where attendees can learn tips and tricks and get updates about Microsoft technologies from Norwegian MVPs.
There are several reasons why this is a very special event to me. It will be my first in-person event since February 2020, and I’m really looking forward to seeing and hanging out with fellow speakers and attendees again! It covers a wide variety of topics so I get to learn about cool things outside my regular data bubble. And… I will be delivering a session in Norwegian… about PowerPoint… Whaaat!? 🤯😁
I will be presenting a brand new session called Bli en PowerPoint (Slide Master)-mester på 1-2-3! (It roughly translates to something like Becoming a PowerPoint (Slide Master) Master in 3 Simple Steps!) It’s a 40-minute mostly demo-based session on how to make PowerPoint work for you instead of against you.
Why am I presenting a session on PowerPoint, though? Excellent question! Johan Ludvig Brattås (@intoleranse) had already submitted a great session called Azure Synapse + Power BI + Purview = True that I want to attend, and I reeeaaally didn’t want to compete with him for a speaking slot. Since attendees will have wildly different backgrounds and expertises, I decided to submit a session on a topic that most are familiar with. So! I chose something I feel like a know a thing or two about: creating slide decks with minimal effort.
On Saturday, October 2nd, I’m guesting the anniversay show of Rockin’ The Code World with dotNetDave 🥳 The show starts at 10:00 AM PST / 19:00 CEST and we’ll be talking about things like Azure Data, blogging, career development, and maybe even a little bit about keeping up in a fast-paced world. Yay! I hope you’ll tune in 🤓
It’s been one month since I migrated from WordPress to Hugo. In my original post, I mentioned some of the immediate benefits of migrating: I saved money, performance went up, and I was totally geeking out about getting to learn new skills. It was all about the tech, really. Today, I want to reflect on some of the less obvious benefits and how migrating has had a positive impact on me this past month 😊
I think I can summarize it in one sentence:
I enjoy blogging again because I’ve taken back control of my website.
That sounds a bit strange, doesn’t it? I mean, this has always been my website and I have always been in control of it. But what I’ve realized is that for many years, WordPress and its features and plugins shaped how I used - and didn’t use - my blog.
I can’t and I don’t really blame WordPress. This is mostly about my habits and thought processes and how I started changing them. However, that change only happened because I migrated to a new blogging platform. It was only after I started using Hugo that I realized how I could do things differently.
