Well this will be my last post of this year. Nothing technical in this post just a overview of the year 2009.

It was a very exciting year which started with a new job at Inovativ in February. Inovativ enables me to specialize myself more and more on the System Center platform.

My first project this year was running the Technology Adoption Program (TAP) for OpsMgr R2. I went to Microsoft Redmond for a 3 day training which was a great experience!

Besides my projects I have been working with Kerrie Meyler as a contributing author for the System Center Configuration Manager 2007 Unleashed book. I have been writing articles before, but writing chapters for a book was a new, fun and cool experience. The result is a great book which has been published in July.

In April I went to the Microsoft Management Summit (MMS) in Las Vegas. This is the main event for IT Management solutions from Microsoft. It was a great time in Vegas and met lots of interesting people.

No events in May. Early May I gave a single day master class about the basics of ConfigMgr. With Inovativ we have those master classes a couple of times a year.

In July I received the Microsoft Most Valuable Professional award which was the crown on all my contributions to the community. A huge and excited milestone for myself! Thanks again to everyone who made this happen!
That month we also had our SCUG meeting where I gave a session about deploying Windows 7 with System Center Configuration Manager SP2.

In the month September and October we had some great announcements. September started with the announcement of ConfigMgr R3. A new release with new features and improvements. That month Inovativ had his own event in the Netherlands; Meer dan Beheer. I gave a presentation about System Center Configuration Manager. The event was a great success!

Service Pack 2 of ConfigMgr became RTM in October! In October I also attended the Microsoft Technet Live event as ‘Ask the Expert’ in the Netherlands. Steve Ballmer did the keynote, pretty cool! I always like those events in the Netherlands where you meet colleagues and customers. Steve also did an interview at the Erasmus University. Although some is in Dutch you can watch the interview here.

November I went to the System Center Service Manager TAP event and the Microsoft TechEd EMEA event in Berlin. Microsoft TechEd is the congress for everyone working in IT. This year the main focus was; Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows 7 and Exchange 2010.
I was ‘Ask the Expert’ at the ConfigMgr booth. I met a lot of people and really loved answering all kind of questions regarding ConfigMgr!

This year was the first time the event was held in Berlin. Although a bit colder than Barcelona (where the event was held previous years), Berlin is a great city to stay, especially with Wally Mead, Samuel Erskine and fellow ConfigMgr MVPs; Torsten Meringer, Ronni Pedersen and Adrian Stoian.

Right after TechEd we had our second SCUG meeting in the Netherlands. We had two speakers from Microsoft Redmond; Wally Mead for ConfigMgr and Daniel Savage for OpsMgr. Thank you guys!

And now it is December and the last day of the year. While writing this post I’m amazed to see what you can achieve in a single year! Overall it has been a great year for me and if 2010 will be as good as 2009 I’m pretty satisfied.

I wish you all a great and happy new year!