We have almost gone a whole week now in 2021 and it has not been the hard pivot that most were hoping for… in fact things around the world seem to be getting worse from the pandemic point of view… however the night is darkest just before the dawn! Looking back at the last twelve months there as a ton of technical innovation as a by-product of the situation caused by the pandemic. Lots of time has been spent talking about the acceleration and quickening of technology to allow a locked up, remote workforce to continue working. I have said often through the course of the year that we had this pandemic at the right time in terms of technological advancement… even just five years ago we would not have gotten through this period of time as smoothly.

What you are Experiencing… is The Quickening!

When I was a kid the movie Highlander came out… it hasn’t aged well, but I do love the quote about The Quickening. Sean Connery (RIP) delivered it perfectly. One of the benefits of the last year in isolation was that technology that supported remote work was advanced at much quicker rates than previous years. The underlying tech, while stable and fit for purpose, was exposed at the seems… mostly around scalability and security. Zoom was a great example of this. Initially used as the default video platform at the start of 2020, some less than desirable happenings and claims around privacy and security led to it being banned in some sectors. To their credit, Zoom were very transparent about their shortcomings and looked to quickly iterate and advance the code to plug the holes and restore confidence again.

The quickening of technologies can be best illustrated by Zoom.

If you look at Zoom again, that clearly led to a quickening of Microsoft Teams development with Microsoft literally throwing the kitchen sink at it to bring it up to scratch (maybe surpass) with Zoom features. I also noticed WebEx bringing out some Zoom like features… and that platform really had remained stagnant for a number of years. Zoom also was representative of the heightened focus on trust and security… because of Zoom’s founders roots (Chinese) the platform suffered from misplaced scrutiny in terms of the data flow. Given the situation  between China and the rest of the world, this wasn’t a surprise… but we also saw a very scary example of software weakness with the Solar Winds breech.

With all that said, I believe this year we will continue to see the advancement of technologies that make our world of today function and continue to allow us to adapt to the situations that are presented to us. The comeback is always greater than the setback, and this year will prove this!

Forward Looking into 2021

Looking back over the past couple of years I haven’t written a forward looking blog post about the year ahead since 2018.

As I sit here working through my goals and initial work schedule for 2021 I thought that for the good of myself, I should focus on what I want to achieve out of this year and beyond. A lot of people I know and people’s who’s blogs I follow the industry are big on setting personal goals for the year, but that’s something that I don’t traditionally like doing. This year I am keeping the main goals close to my chest… in general though, if I look at 2018 goals most of them remain in place.

• Continual Personal and Career Development (don’t rest on the past, continue to push and strive to better myself in every way)
• Excel at my job and strive to always improve (this helps me, my workmates, customers and the company)
• Get at least two quality blog posts out a week (I haven’t done this for a number of years now)
• Deep Dive into new Technology per (This is paramount for my job and career to keep my shit quick so to speak)
• Read at least one book a month (I’ve never been a big reader but need to push myself here)
• More Home Improvements (continue to get the new house to were I want it)

As I get ready to settle into the new year I will be thinking about how I can continue to move forward both professionally…and personally. Last year I focused on decade tends for what the next ten years held… my closing statement was aged pretty well I think.

We live in amazing times and we also work in an amazing industry. What 2020 and beyond holds is set to be stratospheric. That young kid who dreamt about robots and flying cars doesn’t have it just yet… but it’s coming… and when it arrives it will get here at a rate of knots.  We also need to ensure we remain up to date with current technology trends and Industry moves and how data flows as the lifeblood of the whole world. Finally, I can’t stress enough how much thinking about the longer game and what it means to be part of a team means in terms of career progression and self satisfaction.

Hold on people! We are in for more of a ride this decade!

Here is to 2021!

#Direction