After such a memorable 2020 year (for both good & bad reasons) I’ve been itching to publish my retrospective.

I’ve split this retro into two parts ‘pre COVID-19’ and ‘during COVID-19’ to assist with my recollection of events. Yay.

So what the heck happened in 2020?

Pre COVID-19 (Jan to Mar 2020)

• Witnessed the Black Summer
• Blogged about Zero-Touch BitLocker with PowerShell which amazingly sat in draft for 2 years
• Started blogging about tech on https://blog.kloud.com.au/
• Played left-back in an AAM team for CHUFC
• Attended Microsoft OpenHack on Containers and blogged about it
• Missed out on Microsoft Ignite!
• Consulted to Qantas on SSO/ADFS projects
• Officially aged by 1 year…
• Published a summary of my 5 recent tech blogs to LinkedIn
• Kicked off jloudon.com and blogged about the experience
• Deployed my 1st GitHub Action during the GitHub Hackaton and received some nice swag
• Started using Twitter

During COVID-19 (Apr to Dec 2020)

• Attended all meetings/standups virtually…except for a couple weeks in Dec 2020
• Received numerous invitations to virtual events/meetups and attended some when the sun, stars, and moon aligned
• Reconfigured my home office environment to optimise for permanent working from home (more natural light/desk space)
• Was able to send my daughter to an Early Learning Centre as places became available. Possibly due to parents pulling their children out around the same time?
• Progressed through my employer’s brand change from Kloud Solutions to Telstra Purple
• Continued blogging about tech on the new https://purple.telstra.com.au/blog
• Sat and passed my 1st online proctored exam AZ-104 back when it was still in beta
• Consulted to Woolworths on DevOps/Automation/Governance projects
• Skilled up on Azure Policy as Code/JSON, Terraform/HCL, Ansible/YAML, GitHub Actions, and Azure DevOps
• Awarded the Collaboration Award from Telstra Purple. Thank you Michael O’Leary for the nomination!
• Discovered the joy that results from mispronouncing ‘barre’
• Dived into the opensource community via my GlobalBao org releasing 8x public repos into the wild west including my #1 popular repo Terraform-AzureRM-Policy
• Sat and passed HashiCorp’s Terraform Associate Exam
• Walked over 20,000 steps daily for a week during Telstra Purple’s Zombie Challenge
• Witnessed the birth of the Andrew Probyn v Scott Morrison meme
• Awarded the Content Hero badge from the Microsoft Azure team (self-submission)
• Advocated for blogging at Telstra Purple presenting an internal hour-long virtual session covering blogging tips, tricks, methodology.
• Decided to avoid cruise ships indefinitely
• Finished the year with 20x blogs covering many IaC/DevOps topics and averaging 1500-2000 hits per month to jloudon.com
• Converted my blog backlog from Excel to a GitHub Project to track changes easier
• Farewelled my employer Kloud Solutions/Telstra Purple after 2+ wonderful years and many great memories

My Year Wrapped

• 732+ coffees downed (2x366)
• 20 new blog posts (jloudon.com)
• 5 “thank you for blogging” community msgs (Social Media)
• 700 contributions, 4 pull requests, 3 stars, 33 issues (GitHub)
• 1 Hackathon event and 1 swag pack (GitHub)
• 2 Exams passed (HashiCorp & Microsoft)
• 1 OpenHack event (Microsoft)
• 1 Community Award (Microsoft)
• 1 Swag Pack (Microsoft)
• 2 Care Packages (Telstra Purple)
• 1 Monthly Award (Telstra Purple)

2020 was a year I’m not going to forget quickly. I’ve been incredibly lucky to have a family that supports my passion for IT, and also friends and colleagues who are gracious and generous in sharing their insights with me. You guys rock!

To all of you, stay safe out there, and best wishes to your 2021.

Jesse