7 Year Blog Birthday

I figured I take a second to reflect on my 7 years on running this blog. First I cannot believe it has been 7 years. Keeping this blog going has been extremely important to me professionally. It allows me to refine my thoughts and communicate to others the solutions I am work through. I work very hard to ensure that I post at least one new item a month. Sometimes I crank out a lot of stuff and in only one instance did I miss a month (still annoys me).

This blog got its start when on a long Labor Day weekend when I has some time available and wrote my first blog (http://www.astaticstate.com/2007/09/automation-testing-or-simulation-with.html). No kids jumping on me either <g>.

My series that I wrote on Silverlight MVVM Patterns (http://www.astaticstate.com/2010/04/silverlight-4-using-mvvm-patter-ria.html) is still the most populate series I have written. My series on SharePoint 2010 Architecture is in second (http://www.astaticstate.com/2010/01/sharepoint-2010-service-architecture.html) and third my series on SharePoint Branding (http://www.astaticstate.com/2011/05/branding-master-page.html). Along the way I have written a lot about SharePoint App Dev, Enterprise Search, etc.

Most of my days for the past two years have been totally focused on Office 365. Given the role I am now, I do not do application development anymore. I am really excited to be working with Office 365 and you may have seen my work expand to Exchange Online, Lync Online and Office.

Happy 5 Years

Holy smokes – I just noticed we need celebrate that I have been running this blog for 5 years now. I am ashamed to say that in July of this year, I actually missed a month. How did that happen? Well it is summer time and in July 2012 was one of the most busiest I have ever been with work. Well with all the new SharePoint products to be released in the next couple months, I will have more than enough stuff to do to make up for it. Happy trails….

Happy Four Years Old

Thanks
It is amazing to see that I have been able to keep this blog going for the past 4 years. Through change jobs two times, continue being a top performer at work, having a second child, writing a book, etc. I have kept it going. I have to say thank you to all the readers, your feedback keeps me wanting to write.
Birthday Gift
As a reward, Google Blogger has given me a new interface as this month to write blogs. I had been using Windows Live Writer for the past year to format the blog better. However Google Blogger would continue to foul up the HTML and jack up the presentation for which I have dumped hours into fixing however still can never make perfect. The tool seems better now. I have not moved off Google because it is just too much work given that this is something I do in my personal time.
Stats
I started using Google Stats in May 2009. Here is how I have been doing, pretty happy.

Most popular posts since May 2009 are the following. The Silverlight series I wrote is mind boggling. I had no clue that would become what it did. It is funny because I got put on a contracting engagement for about 9 months doing all Silverlight project with no SharePoint work. Now I am back to really only focusing on SharePoint since I am working at Microsoft now. I am happy to see how popular my SharePoint 2010 architecture series has been as well.

What’s Next?
Expect to see a lot over the next few months on architecture, enterprise patterns and such for Office365 with a focus on SharePoint Online. There are a lot of smart people who are out there who know SharePoint well, but are missing the bigger picture and the strategic thinking of how to align SharePoint Online to create more architecturally sound solutions that save money for organization. A lot more to come there.

Finally at Microsoft

I have finally started my employeement over at Microsoft. I will be focusing on supporting SharePoint sales opportunities for US Federal. My previous company RDA Corporation is still the best professional services company I have ever worked for with a great management team and amazing engineers. I enjoyed every minute of working at RDA.

Once I get settled in I will start blogging again shortly.

Three Years Old

Wow – this blog is now three years old and I have learned so much over these past three years working on it. I attribute much of my success from my ability to sit down, research topics and document it in my blog. I hope that this blog has been helpful to other Microsoft professionals and I will continue to keep supporting it.

Blog Name Change

If you have not noticed, I have changed the name of my blog from www.k2distillery.com to www.astaticstate.com. Why? This not any sort of indication of whether I like K2 blackpearl. I am still a super huge fan of K2 blackpearl and believe it adds tons of value to any organization looking to solve all their business process automation needs. However over the past few years my blog has focused on a lot of things, if not even more on MOSS and .NET in general. So I choose a new fun name for it and hope everyone continues to enjoy my contributions.

Regards,
Jason Apergis